Disney's Little Mermaid Nail Art - LNMBC

Hey y'all!

It's been a while since I did any nail art for the Llama Nails Movies/Books Challenge, but this week's prompt of Disney finally motivated me to do something I've been debating for a very long time - glitter placement.  After having a long think about my favorite Disney movies, I settled on one that is both a personal favorite for the music and which I felt I had a good supply of appropriate glitters to get the look I wanted, so, today's look is inspired by Disney's Little Mermaid.

House of Flying Daggers Nail Art

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The second prompt of the Inspire Me Nails Challenge is Movies, and this week's prompt for the Llama Nails Book/Movie Challenge is Action, so I created this nail art based on one of my favorite scenes in 2004's House of Flying Daggers.

Cleopatra nail art - LNMBC

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Today brings us round to another trip through the Llama Nails Movies and Books challenge.  Today's prompt is Historical, and so I wanted to attempt to pay tribute to one of Elizabeth Taylor's most memorable (in my opinion) films, Cleopatra.

Singin' in the Rain nail art - LNMBC

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DOUBLE POSTING?  WHAT WHAT??  Well, today starts a new Llama Nails Challenge, and this time around the themes are all based on movies and books.  I am going to try pretty hard to get all the prompts completed but, like today, they may not always be terribly involved or intense completions.  I am excited to be able to share some of my favorite movies and books with you via this challenge, and after perusing the list I really couldn't figure out what category to place my all time favorite movie into, so it actually winds up here in the premiere slot.  Here's my tribute to the Comedy film, Singin' in the Rain.

Blue Rock Splatter Nail Art - LTNC

Hey y'all!

Today draws us to the conclusion of another Llama Nails Challenge - this being my second completed challenge with the group.  The final prompt for the Techniques Challenge was another new technique for me, the splatter technique.  I thought briefly about cheating because I own a couple of splatter stamps, but felt it would be wrong to cheat on the final prompt of the challenge when I've been faithful to the original techniques throughout.  Besides, if I can make the newsprint technique work, I can do anything!  Feeling strong, I created this look, which reminds Mr. Faff and I both of some kind of vein-y mineral rock.

Freehand Jacquard and Corset nail art - LNTC

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Yesterday marked the Faff's one year wedding anniversary, and in good fashion, of course I spent a good part of the evening getting this post ready to publish while he took care of planting the evergreen sapling that was my gift to him (he gave me complete box sets of Heroes and Sherlock).  We're pretty low-key in this household, so festivities involved a "special" homecooked meal of slow-cooker steak in mushroom gravy and jacket sweet potato, a bit of wine, and some televisual feasting.  It's really, really, really hard to believe we've been married for a year now and that I haven't murdered him in his sleep.

Yet.  ;)

I digress.  Today's penultimate prompt for the Llama Nails Technique Challenge is Freehand design, and I was a bit flummoxed for ideas on this until I browsed my Pinterest inspiration board and remembered that I'd always wanted to give a corset nail another try.  Once that was set, the jacquard print fell into place and I had some nail art!

One-stroke Calla Lily Nail Art - LNTC

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I had been dreading this technique for several weeks now, and in fact put the actual painting off until just yesterday, which only made it even more stressful.  It's not that I'm afraid of one-stroke painting, necessarily, but my painting skills are not large and I'm just a beginner with using acrylic paints on nails anyway.  This one seemed... more daunting.  With that said, let me present to you my one-stroke tulips nail art.

Watercolor Skittlette Nails - LNTC

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Yesterday I took a day off - didn't turn on the computer all day long. Didn't mess with my nails, didn't even enter the "office" except to pull a cardigan out of my wardrobe before I went into town.  I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I'd had a minor disaster while coloring my hair; my glove busted and I got a really bad stain on my index fingernail.  The backside of that is because I was so fussed with the staining on my nail that I was totally distracted and ended up kind of botching the rest of my hair coloring, so I decided that rather than mess with it, I would let a pro handle it, so that's where I was for a good 2.5 hours yesterday afternoon.  When I got home I just couldn't be bothered to edit pics and write today's post in advance so I did it this morning.  I've told you this long story just to get to the point of why my post is a couple hours later than normal.  And also to prepare you for the copper penny hair that will be appearing in a video soon, because I feel it's important to be prepared for such things.  Also, today I have watercolor nail art.

Newspaper Nails LTNC

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Can you believe it's already Wednesday and May is almost over?  Zoom zoom zoom!  This week's prompt for the Technique Challenge is Newspaper Nails - a technique that I had never tried and which lived up to the name "challenge."

Swirly Matte Gradient nail art - LNTC

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This week the Llama Nails challenge brings me to a technique that I've shown a LOT of over the short life of this blog, but it is one of my favorite techniques for achieving beautiful nails without a whole lot of talent required.  To change things up, I actually attempted a different method to achieve gradient nails, but it got a bit mussed and I wasn't happy with the results, so I ultimately went back to my tried and true.

Waterspotted Neon nail art - LNTC

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This week the Llama Nails Technique Challenge prompted me to try a new technique of which I was very, very frightened.  After having pulled out so many hairs over trying to water marble, I figured that water spotting would yield much the same result.  I am happy to report that it was much easier, although arguably my results aren't as nice as they could have been.

Holo dot skittles - LNTC

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Wednesday brings us back around to the Llama Nails Technique Challenge, and this week we're all making skittles, which is a reference to the candy and probably goes back to a manicure long ago where some lovely nail artist painted all of her nails different bright candy colors and decided it looked like fruity candy.  Anyway... my own creation for today's challenge is a bit of a fail on two fronts, primarily because even though I really did use different polishes on every nail (promise!) they all kind of look the same, and secondly because my stamping kind of sucks.  Here, look.

Foil's Gold: Black and Gold Foil Skittles - LNTC

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This week the Llama Nail Techniques Challenge has prompted us to do foils.  I am aware that this caused a lot of stress amongst those of us who are completing the challenge.  Personally I wasn't worried so much about working with the foils, but more about creating a dynamic look.  I played with creating designs using my striping brush for my birthday, but when the time came to actually do my challenge look, I felt a BIT overwhelmed, cuz...

Blue Galaxy Nail Art - LNTC

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Today the Llama ladies were challenged to produce a look that has been done so incredibly well by so many nail artists, so it was kind of hard to find a way to make it just a little bit different.  I'm talking about galaxy nails, of course, which is a relatively simple technique that just requires a bit of time but very little precision.  I opted to go with a blue galaxy, because... reasons.

Another flocking nail art - LNTC

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Wednesday brings another go-round for the Llama Nail Technique Challenge, and this week we're all flocked up - with flocked nails!  I chose to create a seasonally appropriate white and neon.

Purple and Blue Water Marble LTNC

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So today's look is actually one that I did while we were on holiday in Texas, and there's a really good reason for it - I can't watermarble in England!  I'm not sure if it's a temperature thing, or just that I have a hard time finding distilled water, or what the deal is, but I have tried it a fair few times with lots of different polishes and water types and temperatures, and it just never works out.  SO... when I saw that the Llama Nails Technique this week was water marbling, I knew I was going to have to do some serious forward planning.  These are also the last pictures of my long square nails before ThatDay(tm), so this post is a bit bittersweet for me on that note anyway, but just look how pretty!

Purple Roses? Ombre, claro! LNTC

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Today's prompt in the Llama Nails Technique Challenge is Ombre, which is a look I hadn't yet really done but just couldn't leave it plain, so I spruced it up with some stamping using the same colors on staggered nails.

'Ikat a cold on 'oliday... LNTC - Ikat

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The Faffs recently returned from a 2-week trip to Texas so I could visit family and friends and of course shop for a mess of nail art goodies, coffee, and other sundries.  Unfortunately, both of us came down pretty miserably sick at the beginning of the visit, so our vacation was definitely not what it could have or should have been.  I missed out on spending as much time with my peeps as I would've wanted, and we definitely didn't feel up to doing everything we had planned to do.  However, it's still nice to get away and of course Mommy Faff and I were happy to spend time together.  The Chibi monster also seemed happy to see me and was grateful to have someone else to play with.  He's definitely showing signs of slowing down though, and he gets exhausted very easily so we had to play in very short bursts.  The plus side of all of this is that there will be a haul post coming up very soon (if you follow me on Instagram you may have seen a rather huge nailmail picture I shared, but that didn't include my retail purchases!).  The down side is that while I managed to get 2 weeks worth of nail art up and scheduled before we left, I came back to an empty buffer again, so today's post has literally been photographed and edited today.  Whee for working on the fly!

This week's theme for the Llama Nails Techniques Challenge is Ikat - which I know very little about except that it's pronounced ee-kaht rather than eye-cat.  I'm quite sure there's a joke about Apple's newest pet product out there, but I'm still a bit too full of sinus stuff to possibly attempt more than one pun today, and the title of this post wore me plum out.  Anyway...

I will take what is mine with fire and blood - LNTC-3D

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If you read my post on Monday for St. Patrick's Day, you know I teased today's post.  Can I just say how excited I am that this manicure is finally seeing the light of day?  Be forewarned, it's HUGELY pic-heavy, and for good reason!

When I read through the prompts for the Llama Nails Challenge and saw 3D, I had to have a good long think about what I would do, since I've used so many 3D elements in manis past.  Then I read that season 4 of Game of Thrones is coming in April, and this look started forming in my little head.  I wanted to pay tribute to Daenerys and her beautiful babies, so I have created a dragon egg manicure for you!  As a bonus, I've put together a little pictorial for how I created this look, so be sure to read through to the end if you want to see it.

I'm not sad, I'm just Distressed - LNTC

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Today's Llama Nails technique is Distressed, which is possibly one of the easiest nail art looks to pull off, since it doesn't require ANY tools and absolutely NO precision!  I did a distressed look back at Halloween for another Llama Nails challenge, so I was quite happy to have another go at this simple technique.  Chalkboard Nails has a great tutorial if you're interested in seeing a bit more description, but seriously, this is so easy it hardly requires instruction!