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.

Nail Art Inspired By A Polish Box!

So after swatching all of my new Lime Crimes, I wanted to do some funky art! I was looking around for inspiration and I spotted one of my polish boxes.

So hey, why not! Here is some art over Lime Crime Milky Ways.

Here's a shot of my nails over the box, so you can see the design. A cute black & white flower box. I think this is from Ikea or something, but it's one of my many boxes I keep polish in (I need a better storage system)

And here are the close-ups! As you can see I have a better handle on my camera now. I chose different flower designs on the box to create on my nails and this is what I came up with! Pretty neat, huh?

I like my thumb the best! I thought this was a fun way to keep the color from yesterday on my nails, but do something fun with it! I used an eBay nail art pen to do the designs.

Inspiration from the things around you can definitely create some of the best manis!

Challenge Day 25: Inspired By Fashion

I didn't pick a specific outfit or designer for this challenge. Instead, I picked my favorite fashion trend! Can you guess what it is? I named my blog after it!

Lace! Lace has been huge in the fashion world for ages and, in my opinion, never goes out of style. I own so many shirts and dresses featuring lace, I decided to feature it on my fingers!

I chose to do a funky black lace design! It was simple to create a lace look without getting too fancy. I just alternated between a scalloped design and dots.

The base color used was Zoya Goldie, because what goes better with lace than flashy gold?

Do you like wearing lace? I think it was fun to wear my favorite fashion trend on my fingers!

Challenge Day 24: Inspired By A Book

The theme for this challenge was Inspired By A Book. This was not a hard decision at all, why not chose the book that women everywhere have lost their minds over?

I chose 50 Shades Of Grey. You don't have to be a bondage connoisseur or anything to read this book, it's pretty good! I would recommend it to anyone.

I created the "50 Shades" look by doing an ombre! The polishes used for the ombre were Joe Fresh Concrete, Zoya Kelly and a generic black polish. I also mixed white into Kelly to get the greys on my pointer and middle fingers.

Then I painted a tie on my ring finger to mimic the tie on the cover of the book. Nothing special, because my tie is quite a bit less detailed. But I think I portrayed the idea well!

Have you read 50 Shades of Grey? And what book did you use for inspiration?

Challenge Day 23: Inspired By A Movie

It's no question that I obviously failed this challenge. Big time. But I'm still going to try my best to finish it at my own pace.
Work has gotten really busy for me (which is a really good thing), so I'm trying to focus my energy on that. It was also my birthday and my 2 year anniversary with my boyfriend yesterday so that's exciting!

Anyway, this challenge was Inspired By A Movie. I didn't really know how to be inspired by a movie so I was looking through my collection of DVD's and saw The Notebook.
Then I thought of her super cute bathing suit!

If you're a bird, I'm a bird! I love The Notebook. It for sure made me fall in love with Ryan Gosling.

I recreated the pattern on her bathing suit (or outfit whatever it is) for this mani! My stripes were a little messy for this but i think it's pretty close to the pattern!

Ignore my messy stripes. I even recreated the pocket! The colors used for this mani were China Glaze Purr-fect Plum, OPI Comet Loves Cupid and Joe Fresh Concrete.

Did any of you mess up on the challenge? Hope I'm not the only one!

Challenge Day 3: Yellow feat. Some Lady Gaga Inspiration!

Oh boy, oh boy. I am so excited to show you all these beautiful babies. This mani came out exactly how I planned, and I couldn't be happier.

I had some inspiration for this mani in the form of Lady Gaga's dress in the video for Paparazzi (Single released in 2009... oops! I'm a little late!). Lots of nail art addicts across the globe have done a version of these nails. I knew I had to try it out one day, so here they are!

Remember the yellow mouse dress in the video? Remember the thousands of inspired mani's that erupted afterward? Haha, here's mine! Three years later. 

 

I started with OPI The It Color as my base. It's my one and only favorite yellow and obviously a pretty good match to the dress she wore in the video. While the mousies aren't exactly the same, I did it the easy way and did a Minnie/Mickey mouse print.

The mouse print was done with a dotting tool and a generic drugstore black polish. Super easy to create because the ears are the same size as the head, so you don't have to switch dotting tools or anything! Super cute. Maybe I'll be Minnie Mouse for Halloween and do my nails this way with red instead!

I love accent fingers. I recently became a professional manicurist at work as well as a hairstylist and one of my coworkers called me "the queen of accent fingers." So I did a "Cocktail" mani featuring the print and on the rest of my nails I did a gradient with China Glaze I'm Not Lion (So pretty!).

Tomorrow is green! I'm sad I'll only be rocking this mani for a day. Oh well!

Also, look out for a new weekly post I'll be doing showing off some manicures I've done on clients at work for the week! It will be like an Instagrammed collection of awesome. So excited!

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 :)