31 Day Nail Challenge, Day 28: Inspired by a Flag

I'm so excited to share this mani with you today! For the 28th day of the challenge, I was inspired by the flag of the Philippines.

The Philippines are an archipelago of more than 7000 islands, located in the western Pacific Ocean. They are also where my mom was born and most of my family lives. My mom is my hero and inspires me every day, and my family there is very dear to me even though I haven't been able to see them for four years. I'm really happy I get to do a mani like this in the challenge, this one really comes from my heart!

The Flag of the Philippines is a red and a blue stripe, with a white triangle on the left side. In the triangle, there is a sun with 8 rays and a star in every corner. For this mani, I painted my middle finger with Sally Hansen White On and the others with a red franken I made. As soon as the red dried, I taped half of the nails off and painted the other with Essie Mesmerized. 

I stamped on the stars from the Konad m3 plate with Orly Glitz, and freehanded the sun with the same polish.

I really love how these came out, and my mom was excited, too! At first I wasn't sure because the red is a jelly and the blue is a creme, but I think it looks fine. And of course the sun is not perfectly centred, but I don't think that was very apparent in real life. 

I guess the next step is to make a german flag because that's where I was born, a spanish and american flag for my fiance and a norwegian flag for my moms boyfriend! I'm so happy to have such a multicultural environment, I love learning about different countries/cultures and traveling. 

Thank you so much for reading, especially today! I hope you liked this mani!

31 Day Challenge, Day 11: Polka Dots

Welcome to day 11 of the 31 Day Challenge, Polka Dots! Before we get to the good stuff, let me just say, I'm so excited to be blogging and overwhelmed by the number of views I'm getting every day. I never even thought more than 10 people would look at my nails, let alone comment on any of my posts. I know most of you (if not all) are here because you see my little link under the great posts of all the other fabulous bloggers, and I just want to say thank you for clicking on that thumbnail and having a look at what I do :)

Now, back to business! Here we have a red franken that I did a couple of weeks ago, with a couple of random polishes that I have no recollection of. Then I painted a white fishtail-style tip and dotted the edge of it in white, creating a scalloped look. I added the red dots to the middle of the white dots to make it look eyelet-like. Clearly I have no trouble at all explaining this :D I hope you get what I'm saying.

I did the white dots on top of the red with a cuticle stick instead of a dotting tool, because I didn't want them too be too large. I'm not doing a lot of dotting manis because I have trouble keeping them uniform and in a pattern, but I'm pretty happy with this one. 

Again, thank you for stopping by, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this mani! 

31 Day Challenge, Day 10: gradient

Hello everyone! I'm a bit later to the party than usual today, I hope I don't make a habit of it :)

For todays gradient, I tried to do a multi striped gradient for the first time. I used a makeup sponge and painted the polishes on it directly, then sponged them on my nail. Here you see Kiko #401 Peacock Green and #402 Jewel Pink. 

Then I stamped the gradient with BM-307, I love those pretty cupcake! My ring finger ended up a bit paler than the rest, but that's only visible in direct sunlight. 

I had a lot of fun creating this mani, and I love to look at it, it's just too cute! I'll try using a couple more colors for my next gradient, but right now I'm looking forward to Polka Dot day tomorrow :)

31 Day Challenge, Day 4: Green

Welcome to day 4! I have something very dear to me to show you today, my second franken ever!

You see, green is not really my favorite color, but I somehow can't stop buying green polish. There's just so many shades, and they're all so different! What I didn't have until last night, though, was a nice, deep, bottle green. And I wanted one, on my nails, right that moment (or at least in the immediate future). So I made one myself. 

These I the polishes I used, from left to right: Essie Pretty Edgy, Maybelline Dark Chocolate, P2  Dangerous. I got out a less half full bottle of clear nail polish from the dollar store and poured a third of Pretty Edgy into it. This was about the time I realised how yellow toned Pretty Edgy is and it became clear that I couln't just darken the whole thing with black to get my perfect bottle green. So I got out the dark tealish Dangerous and added about a quarter of the bottle. Much better. Then I added a couple of drops of Dark Chocolate, swatching in between to see what exactly I was actually doing. I can't remember how many drops it took, but as you can see, the bottle is still pretty full. 

This is three coats in the sunlight. I had some bubbling, as you can see near the cuticle of my ring finger, but I think that's more due to the fact that I couldn't wait after I shook it to death/until everthing was mixed up. And because I can't leave perfectly good things alone, I added some stamping on my pointer and thumb with BM-314 and Kiko Steel Grey. The more I look at Steel Grey, the more I feel like it looks good with everything.

Here you can see my thumb! I find it super weird to "pose" without something in my hand, and include my thumb in pictures. I will practice this, I promise. 

What you should actually look at is how beautiful the holo is on top of this green. I'm really happy I decided to stamp it in the end. 

I'll leave you with a picture I'm more comfortable with, and hope you like my second try at frankening! 

Red Roses

I love stamping my nails. It's what has really gotten me into nail art again. A couple of months ago, my great future mother in law gifted me a Konad stamping kit with stamper, scraper, two image plates and three Konad stamping polishes, along with one Bundle Monster plate that she added. 

When I want some easy nail art, I just grab my stamping kit and go to town on my nails. Here I used Essie Topless & Barefoot as a base, stamped an image from the Konad m76 plate in black, and filled out the flowers with a red jelly I frankened. The topcoat I used was inm Out the Door.

The Essence Matte Black stamping polish I used shows through the red jelly, so I wasn't very concerned with my application. I just used a dotting tool for the red.