Dec 12, 2012

Challenges

I have a few challenge catch ups to post.  I've been doing my nails for the Aussie Christmas Challenge and Aussie Nails Monday but am behind on blogging them (I've been a bit pre-occuppied with Christmas planning and partying) so here's the last few.  Sunday was the Aussie Christmas Challenge theme GREEN.  It was also the day of hubbies work Christmas party for families so I didn't get to do my nails until Sunday night.  For the party I just wiped off all my polish in the morning, leaving the red Gelicious.  A quick and simple Christmas manicure.  I didn't realise until I saw the photos from the day just how long and red my nails looked.  They really stood out!  Oh and on Saturday I dyed my hair brown.  It was a big step for me, going darker and doing it myself, but it was actually quite easy.  The colour is darker than I expected which could be because it's over blonde but at least it didn't go orange.  I'm not sure how long it will last, I expect it to fade quite a bit and it could look strange when my roots grow in lighter.  I'll have to rethink the colour then.  Here's a family photo with Santa from the party,  see the red talons and brown hair.  It doesn't look too dark in the photo.  The flash has lightened it but I don't look like the rest of the blonde/ginger family anymore :(  My hair is closer to my mother-in-laws colour now.  Please excuse the lack of makeup.  It was just a hot afternoon carols and a sausage sizzle for lunch so we didn't bother dressing up, then we impulsively decided to all have a photo taken with Santa.
Anyway for my green themed nails I was a bit stuck trying to work over the red Gelicious.  I didn't want to just paint over it again, I wanted to either work with it or remove it but I hate having to remove Gelicious while it's still got so much wear left.   I've been painting over and removing polish from the Gelicious so much and it takes it all without any lifting but that red base has been my own little personal challenge for over a week now.   I thought red was good for Christmas but it's not so good for nail art underwear.   I have a lot of green polishes and green is my favourite colour but for me Christmas green is all about the tree.  We have a Christmas tree theme coming up later in the challenge so I didn't want to paint trees.  In the end I just painted some green pine branches across the red background.
I used a bunch of Ulta3 greens for this, mainly because the Ulta3 drawer is the one closest to my desk :)  This was actually a really quick and easy design to do and I liked the feathery foliage.
This led nicely into the next manicure challenge which was Aussie Nails Monday with the theme of DELICATE.  I had a lot of ideas for delicate but wanted to make it Christmasy.  We've been decorating the tree and I think pine needles look soft and delicate, (and hurt like crazy when they stick up your nails) and I keep having to remind the boys how delicate the baubles are.  Some of them I've had for many years and they're made of iridescent glass.  So for delicate nail art I added some Christmas balls to my pine branches.
I stuck them on with topcoat then covered the lot with a layer of INM Out The Door Northern Lights Hologram Topcoat Gold.  Of course there was no sun so I couldn't get a decent sparkly photo :(
Now todays Aussie Christmas Challenge theme is ELF and I knew exactly which polish I wanted to use but it was time to lose the red.  My nails really needed cutting and it was getting a bit hard to come up with ways to do nail art for these challenges over red so last night I removed the Gelicious, cut my nails and this morning I redid them with Gelicious Alive, a very slightly pink tinted clear.  This will be my new 'underwear' polish for the next few weeks.  For elves I used some nail stickers I've been hoarding since last Christmas.  Strangely though the colour has faded a lot.  They've been kept in my drawer away from the light but I'm sure I remember them being a lot more colourful when I got them.
I don't use nail stickers much.  I prefer water decals because I find stickers too thick usually but these are actually nice and thin.  Shame about the colour.  Then for my special elf polish I used Loki's Lacquer Cotton-Headed Ninny Muggins.  The name is a quote from the movie Elf, which if you haven't seen you should (go on it's Christmas, watch some silly Christmas movies).  I love the name and I love the polish.  I don't know if Tara will be selling this one but she should.  It looks great layered over dark colours to bring out the blinginess of the glitters but for this I just wanted it on it's own across my tips.  I think I still had delicate in mind and wanted the tiny glitters to stand out against my nail colour.
It's a really smooth glitter.  This is without topcoat because I didn't want to risk wrinkling the stickers but the glitter feels like it has been topcoated.  It sparkles so much when the light hits it.  I feel like I've dipped my nails in a pot of Christmas magic :)

Here's the rest of the girls doing the Aussie Nails Monday Challenge.
Courtney - Tales From The Makeup Bag     Sarah - Shatter Me Claire     Chantelle - A Polished Prance
Teneil - Tee Bee’s Nails     Nicole - The Epitome of Superficiality      Bec - Lacquer Dreams
Naomi - NananaisNails     Eboni - Enamoured With Enamel     Katie - Pretty Polish Please
Adelle - Adelle1985(Instagram)     Kelly - Kelly's Kolors     Nicki,     Rosemarie - Every Little Polish
Melissa - Mel My Issta     Natalie - Walk In My Eyeshadow     Jennifer - JennLojko(Instagram)
Kristy - The Polish Haven     Emma - Nails In The Desert     Erin - Erinzi(Instagram)
Brie - Strawbrie(Instagram)     Astrid - Lovessweetas(Instagram)     Jasmyn - Jas’ Blingtastic Nails
Kate - Mckfresh (Instagram)     Jessica - starting January :)


5 comments:

  1. Fantastic manis Bec. Love the pine branches and then with the dimantes added? Gorgeous.

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  2. Loving both mani! Loki's Lacquer Cotton-Headed Ninny Muggins looks awesome~

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  3. Beautiful mani's and such a lovely natural family photo :)

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  4. Beautiful mani's and such a lovely natural family photo.

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