design re-do & contest entry!

since my first attempt of the "grown up flower" design by mr candiipants did not work too well, i tried it again! and this time was a definite success!

this was also another contest entry in instagram and it was pastel themed. i love pastels, so i pretty much drooled over these until they chipped into nothing.

how cute are these, seriously. also, i am obviously obsessed with Lime Crime and need and intervention. spring is coming and they are bright pastels... so i'm pretty much going to be using them all up. i used Lavendairy for the base and a pink nail art pen for the flowers.

don't really know where my pinky is going in this picture. i also love the stud accents. studs everywhere, all the time, every day. i love them completely.

i have seen lots of recreations of the design online, have any of you taken a shot at it? i'd love to see!
ps. follow me on instagram @ninelions for up to date photos of all the crazy contests i've been entering.

flower pattern that started out cute...

but then got all dragged and blah thanks to a goopy topcoat. i should know better! oh well.

these nails were inspired by mr candiipants. she's great at coming up with cool pattern mixes and color combos. when i saw her tutorial for a "grown up flower print" i had to try it out.

so as you can see, there's some nice red streaks on my pointer finger and some major dragging on my middle finger, but isn't it dang cute!? i put my own twist on the design with some vine-like accents. the flowers were actually easy breezy to create if you have the patience.

i used Lime Crime Milky Ways as my base & some nail art pens for the design.

has dragging ever ruined one of your cool manis? lesson learned, stop trying to use your goopy old top coat to the last drop.

I am no good at these challenges!

Sorry guys! I decided to take a little break from the challenge. I got discouraged when I did awesome cherry blossom nails for the flower challenge and they chipped before I could even take photos.

I did do kinda a mash-up of delicate and glitter yesterday though which I will post later tonight. For now I will leave you with the only picture I got of my cherry blossom nails.

A New Nail Art Challenge

I know I had already started another challenge, but it was sadly uninspiring for me. I kept wanting to skip days and I felt unmotivated. I was looking for something a little different but then I remembered this challenge I did around this time last year. Now that I have a little more experience and creativity, I think it will be twice as fun!

Lots of different options for every day. That's what attracted me! So here is Day One: Red Nails.

Red nails are an obvious classic. Red looks good with just about any color (except green, I'll leave that combo for Christmas), so it's always been a go to of mine when I can't settle on a color.
This is Zoya Maura. This is one of the first polishes I added to my collection and I've always loved it. The best way to describe it is a neon red creme. It's a super bright red leaning a tiny bit on the orange-y side.

Of course I wasn't just going to leave this mani all red! My nails have been bare all weekend. I was at the music festival Boonstock here in Canada, so I took all my polish off my nails before hand.
The yellow flowers are done with China Glaze Solar Power and a dotting tool. I then did little white dots with a nail art pen from eBay.

Someone said this reminds them of Spongebob! It kinda does look like the flowers, doesn't it? I thought it was a cute way to do a summery, happy mani. This was really simple to do, because the yellow is opaque enough that you don't have to keep going over the flowers.

Do this challenge with me! Drop a link i the comments and I'll be sure to check out how your challenge is coming along :)

Inspiration Monday: Bright Flowers

I wanted to start a weekly tradition for myself to keep me inspired, and I kept searching for what people were doing for their weekly challenges. Then I thought to myself, what if I do a weekly inspired mani? Inspired by a photo, pattern, tv show, jewelry, anything! So here is my first Inspiration Monday! What a good way to make mondays better.

This week's mani is inspired by my iPhone background. I have this little app that I can download background off, and all the ones I download are always floral. Because I'm obsessed with floral.

 

Here is my inspiration photo. Pretty, huh? So bright and cheery.

And here is my inspiration mani! The base color is Joe Fresh Cement, which is an awesome medium grey jelly that paints wonderfully. I did the lines with a white NYC polish (it has no name). The reason I dotted the lines is because they are so subtle in the photo and there's no way I could've got them thin enough to look the same. I like the way they look dotted.

I did the flower accent nail by first painting a white background for them like in the picture. Then I put a blob of Zoya Reneé for the pink flower, China Glaze Breakin' for the orange flower and China Glaze For Audrey for the blue flower. I made them look a little more like flowers by swirling a little white on top of them. The vines were done with OPI Who The Shrek Are You? and a dotting tool. 

What do you guys think about this mani? And would any of you like to partake in Inspiration Monday? Leave a comment and let me know :)