A Girl and Her Polish's Soft Neon Gradient - NCC Recreations

Hey y'all!

It's finally Friday, and that of course brings the next round of Nail Challenge Collaborative posts!  This month we're celebrating 3 years of NCC nail art by recreating past NCC looks.  For my third, I've elected to recreate A Girl and Her Polish's Soft Neon Gradient, a gorgeous look on which I think I missed the mark.

Firey Striping - WIDW

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I'm back with another What I Did (With It) Wednesday!  Today I'll show you the nail art I created with my swatch of Finger Paints Surreal Sunset - this black and matte striped design that is full of fire!

Marbling with Permanent Marker (Sharpie) Nail Art

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Happy Ash Wednesday?  Since today's holiday didn't really inspire me to do any nail art, I thought I'd look forward to tomorrow, which is the start of the Chinese New Year.  This is the year of the sheep or goat, and that didn't really inspire me much either, but I wanted to try a new technique that has been making the rounds of the nail artist community recently, which is the hot new trend of using alcohol-soluble inks for nail art.  You can purchase the inks in bottles at craft stores, or more economically you can look in your office supplies and find permanent felt-tip markers, most commonly known under the brand name of Sharpie.  What I ended up with didn't really look very Chinese New Year, but it still looks pretty cool.

Chrome stamping over glitter bling nail art

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Once again, another holiday has completely snuck up on me, and for no good reason other than I've just been in my own little world, but that's okay.  Last year I was quite surprised to discover that Mardi Gras isn't a "thing" as we 'murkins know it in the UK, but they call it "Pancake Day" and the premise is pretty much the same.  I got my ingredients together over the weekend, and tomorrow I'll be griddling up some fluffy pancakes for dinner, because yum!  While today's nail art isn't exactly traditional for Mardi Gras, I think the festive flair and spectacular blingyness make it totally appropriate for living it up on Fat Tuesday tomorrow.

31DC-D29 - Blue Base

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Well, I finally saw the dentist yesterday, and prognosis: root canal.  Fun!  All I can say is that I'm happy that I'm not in the overwhelming pain that I've suffered the past 5 days waiting for that appointment!  Now we can return to regular broadcasting... whatever that means around here.  Today's prompt for the 31DC is Blue Base, so I decided to play around with another abstract technique to create this look.

31DC-D28 - Non-Glitter Topper

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We're so close to the end of the 31-Day Challenge now that I can almost smell it, but that may have something to do with pain killers for my tooth affecting my ability to sense things properly.  The good news is that the dentist will see me this afternoon, and with a bit of luck I'll have my wits about me enough to finish the month and get ready for the beginning of February, when I'll be launching a new giveaway, so stay tuned for that!  Today's prompt for the challenge is Non-Glitter Toppers, and that gave me the perfect opportunity to play with some new goodies in my stash.

31DC-D24 - Decals

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Today's prompt for the 31-Day Challenge is Decals, and whereas I had intended to do a tutorial for making homemade water slide decals, time got away from me and I seem to have lost my water slide paper anyway, so that's gonna get pushed back, but it IS coming.  Instead I turned to a baggie in the bottom of my nail art kit that contains all the random decals and stickers that I somehow end up with but never use.  I pulled out a set of pretty French Tips and used them to make this look.

31DC-D17 - Recreate a mani

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Happy Saturday!  Today's prompt for the 31-Day Challenge is "Recreate a Mani by your Favorite Blogger."  I actually have far too many "favorite" bloggers to be able to pick just one, but I've had a few manis in my hat for future recreations, so I've just pulled one of those out of the vault.  Jessica at BeHappyAndBuyPolish created this awesome dark blue and neon coral dotticure for her "What You Need to Have (And Keep) Great Nails While At College" composite post, and I loved the color combination so much that I knew I wanted to have a go at recreating it.  Although I didn't have the same colors as Jessica, I approximated them with what I had on hand, and came up with this look.

31DC-D16 - Tranquility

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Ah, Friday is here at last, and this one in particular also would have been my dad's 74th birthday, so I am thinking of him today.  The theme for the 31-Day Challenge today is Tranquility, which is a nice, open prompt that gives lots of wiggle room for technique and interpretation.  Because I liked yesterday's green smoky watercolor effect so much, I wanted to practice with it a bit more, so I give you these blue smoked nails to represent the theme.  They have an aquatic feel that I think translates to tranquility for a lot of people.

Magical Mondays and 31DC-D12 - Film

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Happy Magical Monday!  Today I'm back with the next installment of the collab series I'm doing with Belle Glamour, celebrating one of our favorite mutual interests, Harry Potter.  It also works out quite nicely that today's prompt for the 31-Day Challenge is Film, so I could kill two birds with one stone!  This month, Cat and I are showcasing our favorite characters from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's (Sorceror's) Stone.  My personal favorite character is Hagrid, played by Robbie Coltrane in the films.

31DC-D11 - Reversed Polarities

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Today's prompt for the 31-Day Challenge is Reversed Polarities, which confused quite a few people, apparently.  Originally I had intended to do a purple and yellow half-and-half nail with some needle dragging in concentric circles, but after Debbie explained what she meant with this prompt on a group discussion board, I had to rethink what I was doing.  The less confusing term for this look would be something like photo negative, or inverted colors, where the colors of a nail art are flipped to the opposite color.  I almost immediately thought a skyline mani would look cool with the colors inverted, and possibly because we just booked our next trip to Austin, I just had to give it a try with my hometown's skyline.

31DC-D10 - Glitter Base

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Happy Saturday!  I hope you're all staying warm and keeping safe.  Today's prompt in the 31-Day Challenge is Glitter Base, and I was feeling truly uninspired for a very long time until these started forming in my head while looking at one of my new indie polishes.

31DC-D8 - Monochromatic

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I feel like I've lost track of the days.  I had gotten into so such a good groove with the M-W-F-S posting schedule, and then December came and the 12DOC challenge threw that all askew, and now we've rolled on into 2015 with this 31DC and I don't know what I'm doing WITH MY LIFE anymore.  Also because Mr. Faff and I have not bought new calendars yet, I have a blank space on my wall where I normally track the days, so it's like, where am I?  What am I doing?  WHO AM I???  So exhausting!  Okay, vent over.  Today I think is Thursday, and today's prompt for the 31DC is Monochromatic.  I toyed with the idea of doing shades of a single color (because did you know that monochrome doesn't just mean black and white?) but ultimately decided that I wanted to play with something in my stash that I hadn't tried yet, so I went to greyscale for this look.

31DC-D7 - Pink and Aqua

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Happy Humpday!  You have officially survived the first week of 2015!  I did a bit more playing with the new camera, and I think I'm on the verge of getting my daytime light box settings sussed, as you'll see in the pics.  Today I have a cute and colorful gradient look with some dual-toned stamping over the top to celebrate today's 31-Day Challenge prompt: Pink and Aqua!

31DC-D3 - Water Spotting

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Top o' the Saturday mornin' to yas!  I am definitely starting to really regret not having built myself a small lead on this 31-Day Challenge, because it has left me without time to really get a grip on using my new camera, so I've temporarily reverted back to my little Samsung point-and-shoot until I can crank some nail art out and get ahead of the game.  Today's prompt is Water Spotting, and it gave me a great excuse to pull a new FX polish out of my untrieds and create this purple and white look.

12DOC: Freestyle Christmas Tartan Plaid

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Today is an exciting day for two reasons!  First, it is the final prompt for the 12 Days of Christmas challenge which has consumed this month's blogging activity for me, and the second reason is a fairly big blogging milestone.  This is my 300th post!  Who would've thought when I started this journey just over a year ago that I'd have logged 300 entries into this blog?  It's very bizarre for me.  In any event, today's final prompt for this challenge is Freestyle, leaving it completely open to each artist's interpretation.  I took inspiration from another artist's design for the Red and Green prompt and while my attempt is nowhere near as sophisticated or chic as Natasja's of Love Life Lacquer, here are my Christmas tartan/plaid nails!

12DOC: Red and Green Candy Canes

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We are now in the final half of the 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Challenge, and today's prompt is Red and Green colors.  I took inspiration from the colorful Christmas candy canes (and two of Barry M's Winter Silk shades) to create this striped design.

12DOC: Snowmen

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Happy Friday!  Can you believe we've already made it through the first week of December, and Christmas is only 3 weeks away?  Sometimes it feels like the first half of the year drags on and takes forever, then as soon as September hits, everything whizzes past!  Marching right along in the 12 Days of Christmas challenge is today's prompt: Snowmen, so I turned once again to that trusty pack of nail charms I bought at Poundland, and added some freehand nail art to flesh out my look.

12DOC: Snowflakes

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Happy 1st of December!  We're on the countdown now to Christmas and New Years, and that means a LOT of seasonal nail art from all of your favorite nail artists.  It seems like we only just finished last month's Challenge Your Nail Art series, and here we are starting a new series today.  For the next 3 weeks, we're going to be visiting the Twelve Days of Christmas, with prompts every other day.  Since this schedule runs roughshod over my usual M-W-F-S posting schedule, I'm going to abandon my normal schedule and hold off swatch posts (with one important exception this weekend), so that I can get all this nail art done and still have time to get my Christmas stuff in gear.  All that said, let's get into this challenge!  Our first prompt is Snowflakes!

Fall-ing for Nail Art: Traditional Thanksgiving

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Happy Thanksgiving!  To my US readers, I hope you're all stuffed to the gills with yummy food and in the company of loved ones.  At the very least, I hope each and everyone one of you can find something for which to be thankful, and that goes for all of you, regardless of your national origin or geographic location.  Today's final prompt in the Fall-ing for Nail Art challenge is Traditional Thanksgiving images, and I bounced back on forth for this prompt for several days, trying to find something that wasn't too cliched or that hasn't been seen a million times already.  I've got a very untraditional take on traditional images, and it was inspired by my shopping trip today where I was really overloaded with all the Christmas decorations and sales going up in November.  It seems to happen earlier and earlier with each passing year, and here in the UK I was actually seeing Christmas sales going up before Halloween!