Flip Flop Challenge

This is a round up of the Flip Flop Challenge!  Just click on a picture below to see the full blogpost.

Flip Flop #28: Recreate your favourite day

I'm calling this another delicate manicure, just so that I eventually finish this challenge!  What I actually wanted to do was multicoloured half moons with China Glaze It's A Trap-eze, but I painted the China Glaze on and it never got any further than that...

Anyhoo, I wanted to show you a couple of my new polishes :)

This is OPI You're Such a Budapest from the new Euro Centrale collection mini set, topped with two coats of OPI Lights of Emerald City.

As usual, the purple is actually warmer than it appears here/  Seems ridiculous that my camera hates purple so much when it is itself purple...baffling.

The glitter was a little disappointing really...  It contains small iridescent (I have no idea if that's how it's spelt...) squares, as well as larger white squares.  The base is reeeaally thick.  I don't know if thinning it down with some Seche Restore would make it more manageable, or if it would just ruin the suspension base?  Advice would be appreciated!  The white squares were pretty difficult to fish out as well.  I do like the effect, I think it's pretty and quite unusual, but all in all a little underwhelming to be honest.

What do you think?  Do you have your eye on any of the polishes from either of these collections?

I have a few reviews coming up for you over the next week or two (one thing that I'm particularly excited about - it's going to change my freehanding life!) so watch this space.

Flip Flop #27: Recreate someone else's

Yeah so we'll just ignore the fact that this was a February challenge from here on..only one more left to post though!

Whilst I was MIA, I reached 30000 pageviews and 200 followers, so thank you all!

Due to my indecisive ways, I used a random number generator to select a manicure to recreate or day 27 of the challenge (yes, honestly), and I ended up selecting this manicure from Organic Neglect.  This was for Lizajane's day 25 (inspired by a tutorial manicure).  I do actually have OPI Designer de Better, which Lizajane used, but I decided to go for something a little more subtle and work-appropriate (if leopard print is ever work appropriate).

I used two coats of China Glaze Elephant Walk, then added leopard print tips with a silver nail art pen (sorry, it doesn't show up very well!).  Speaking of elephants, we watched a documentary last night about a zoo and it showed an elephant giving birth, and oh my word!  That baby came out so quickly, I don't know how it even survived hitting the floor with that much force lol.

Flip Flop #26: A Theme You Missed

The choices for day 26 were a theme you missed or your favourite polish.  Now, I can't possibly choose between all my little pretties, and I thought it would be more interesting to go for a theme I missed :)

Back on day...whatever it was...I decided not to do a stained glass manicure because I thought you needed jellies to do it.  It seems I was getting confused with a manicure that I think I saw on Chalkboard Nails?  So anyway, I decided to do a stained glass manicure for this day.

It's not the tidiest of manicures, sorry!  I used a base of Barry M Matt White so I could get away with one coat of all the stained glass colours.  I used China Glaze Man Hunt (I seem to be using this all the time recently!), Barry M Bright Red, Red Glitter, Lemon Ice Cream and Bright Purple, and Max Factor Bright Orange.  Then I used a black nail art pen to outline all the little panels of glass.

Only two days left, you never know I might even get this challenge finished by the end of March!

Flip Flop #25: Tape

Sorry! My boyfriend came home on Thursday, which you'll notice correlates rather well with my last post...whoops!  His presence isn't good for my blog lol.

Anyway, the choices for day 25 were Youtube Tutorial or Tape.  I said a few posts ago I might do a flame manicure using the needle drag technique, which I'd seen in a Youtube video a little while ago.  However, I had this idea for a subtle tape manicure that I wanted to try out, so the flame manicure will have to remain on my to do list!

I used Barry M Gold Foil on my index and middle fingers, then taped off the criss cross pattern with some striping tape, and used Sally Hansen Green Tea on top.  I used two coats of this on my other three nails, but I managed to get away with just one coat for these nails!  Then I applied a couple of studs just to finish the look off.

Here's a little glimpse of my right hand, because the taping turned out better here rather strangely.  Please ignore the mess of nail polish though, my left hand is not very gifted lol.

Flip Flop #24: Rainbow

So I had this amaaaazing idea of doing a rainbow across all my nails, with a pot of gold at the end.  It would've been epic.

However, time is something I seem to be constantly lacking recently.  Plus I couldn't bring myself to spend all that time doing it only to have to take it off for work in the morning (Although apparently my nails have been noticed...they were discussing in a meeting possible jobs I could do, and one suggestion was something involving drains and yuckiness - as if that's happening - and one of the women just said 'Have you seen Sam's nails? I don't think she'll want to do that..').

So anyway, I did these super lazy rainbow nails instead.  Sorry.  All of my manicures have been a bit poo lately.  To be honest, I'm looking forward to the challenge being over so I can go at my own pace a bit more.  If I ever say I'm going to do a month long challenge again, please stop me.

From left to right, I used Barry M Bright Red, Max Factor Bright Orange, Barry M Lemon Ice Cream, Max Factor Cactus Green, Barry M Spring Green, China Glaze Man Hunt, OPI Roadhouse Blues and Barry M Vivid Purple.  Phew!

I really love my middle finger :)  My index finger didn't photograph very well did it?  You can't even see the red!  I like the ring finger as well, although it's very subtle.  Maybe it would've been good with a little green on that nail as well?  Oh and apologies for the tipwear, I decided it was a good idea to do dishes (must be coming down with something).

Flip Flop #...23?

Ugh, Monday.  Monday Monday Monday...  Today was looooong.

But anyway, we are now one day closer to Thursday :)  And on Thursday my lovely boyfriend is back from 6.5 weeks at sea.  Yay, I can't wait!!

Today I have lightning nails for you :)

I thought I might end up loving them as much as I love galaxy nails.  But, alas, I do not.  I think I should have used some lighter colours, but there we go.

I used a base of Barry M Black, and then sponged on some Barry M Vivid Purple and Berry Ice Cream and China Glaze Man Hunt.  Then I drew on the lightning with a white nail art pen.

Have you tried lightning nails?  Any tips for making them prettier?

Flip Flop #22: Plaid

Last post of the day - I shall never catch up lol.

The choices for day 22 were plaid or moustaches.  I opted for plaid because I haven't tried it before, and it seemed like a good opportunity to use some pretty pastel colours :)

I used Barry M Matt White, Berry Ice Cream and Blueberry Ice Cream.  The stripes were freehanded on with two different size striping brushes.  The lines aren't perfect, but I think it looks quite pretty :)

Here's a reminder of what's left in the challenge:

Let's see if I can finish on Thursday like we're supposed to!

Flip Flop #21: Dots

The other option for today was flames - this is something I want to try using the needle drag technique (actually I saw a tutorial for this on YouTube, so I could do that for one of the other challenge days), but I had a dotty idea that I wanted to try out.

I used OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons, and then dotted with Max Factor Bright Orange and Cactus Green, and Hello Kitty Play Ya.

I'm really pleased with this :)  I love the bright colours on the nude base.  If I was to do it again though I think maybe I'd either do all the nails the same or have it so the pattern joins up across all the nails.  what do you think?

Flip Flop #20: V-gap

I swear all I did yesterday was paint my nails, how am I still 4 days behind??  Oh well, here's day 20 for you!

The choices were Flowers or V-Gap.  Since I haven't tried a v-gap before, I decided to go with that.  Looking at other people's day 20 manicures though, there seems to be a lit of difference of opinion of what a v-gap manicure is.  I may have got the wrong end of the stick, but I've stuck with what I originally thought it was.

Unfortunately it's one of those incidences of Seche Vite just being too darn shiny, but I think you can make the design out alright in this picture  I used Layla Ceramic Effect Green Galaxy (purchased from Sally Magpies).  Then I taped off triangles down the middle of my nails and painted two coats of Barry M Black.

Now for some Layla porn.  Soooo pretty!

It's a gorgeous forest green squishy jelly, that almost looks black in some lights (or rather, not in direct light).

The base is seriously packed full of microglitter. (I don't know why it looks lumpy in the picture, I didn't notice that irl at all).

There are also medium and large green hexes.  All these pictures are two coats with one coat of Seche Vite.

Sigh...it's beautiful.

Day 19: Outline

I do believe these are also referred to as framed nails?  Anyway, this is something I haven't tried before, so I decided to go with this over the other option wings.

The way I've seen this done in the past is to paint your outline colour first, then tape of your tips and paint your second colour, leaving a little bit of a margin around it.  I sort of did it like this, but minus the tape - I just freehanded tips on in my outline colour.  Not as neat as you'd get with tape, but I really hate the stuff lol.

Naturally what little sunlight we had disappeared when I went to take pictures of these!  I used Jessica Ruffled Bottoms and Layla Gold Idol.

My nails are really curved, so you can't really see that there's an outline at the sides as well!  So here's a side shot just to prove they are there lol.

Thanks to the rubbish British weather, Gold Idol looks like a rather poor scattered holo here.  It's actually an AMAZING really strong linear holo.  Here's a picture with flash that shows it much better!

 Have you tried outline nails?  Or would you have chosen to have a go at wings instead?

Flip Flop #17: Delicate

So finally my day 17 manicure!

I used OPI On Stranger Tides (I love this polish so much, it's the only one I've ever bought two bottles of!) and then used a white nail art pen to freehand on the little lace half moons.  Quick and simple, but quite cute I think :)

Flip Flop #18: Galaxy Nails

I'm being naughty and posting out of order. Clearly just such a rebel...

My day 17 nails are on the process of being completed, but I did my day 18 nails yesterday, so you're seeing those first!

I've done galaxy nails before, which you can see here.  I absolutely adored them, although I didn't think they came across as lovely in the photo as they were.  I wanted to do something slightly different this time, that is after all the fun of doing challenges!  So I tried to do one big galaxy that spans across all my nails, instead of all the little galaxies that I did last time :)

I love them again...

I used Barry M Black, and then went sponge-crazy with Barry M Matt White, OPI On Stranger Tides, Barry M Bright Pink, Jessica Ruffled Bottoms and China Glaze Man Hunt.  I didn't have any silver glitter on me, so I added a few dots with the white polish.

Flip Flop #16: Animal Print

The other choice for today was stripes, but as is I was going to choose that over animal stripes!

Now I had a long hard think about this.  I've done a lot of leopard print and zebra print manicures, I've had a go at tiger and poison dart frog.  So what to do this time...

Well, after mulling it over, coming up with some new ideas, I finally settled on....leopard print!

Yeah ok, so not exactly new and exciting. BUT it does have a little twist.  Flocking powder!

I used Barry M Gold Foil, with OPI Warm and Fozzie for the spots.  Then I outlined my spots using a black nail art pen, and sprinkled on some flocking powder.  I think this is a pretty awesome idea, and how good would fuzzy zebra stripes look??  However, I think it needs more fuzz.  Maybe brown fuzzy spots as well?  I shall have to try it!  Maybe when I'm back in my flat though, I've got more than enough flocking powder on the hotel carpet.  And bed.  And chair.  It's their fault really for only having teeny little sheets of paper...

Anyway, I believe I'm currently three days behind.  I'll definitely catch up at the weekend if I don't before then (assuming I'm back in my flat by then!).

Flip Flop #15: Stamping

Hello ladies :)  I hope you've all had a lovely Sunday!

I'm now settled in my hotel for the next few days.  It has a four poster bed and it's so high I have to jump onto it.  AMAZING.  I'm suddenly far more okay with being kicked out of my flat for a few days.  I just wish I could have my cooked breakfast now though, yum yum yum.

So for day 15 the choices were Stamping or Jelly Sandwich.  I still haven't tried a jelly sandwich, but I went with stamping because I already had an idea that I'd been wanting to try out.

When I received my stamping plate from Born Pretty Store (you can see the review here) I had the idea of doing multicoloured stamping with the apple image, so that's what I attempted today!  Be warned, this is my first attempt at using more than just one colour!

I used (from L-R) OPI Flick Chick Cherry, Barry M Matt White, China Glaze Manhunt and Jessica Ruffled Bottoms, and the yellow is Rimmel Sunshine.

I'm fairly pleased with this.  I was hoping to get more orange and green between the colours, maybe this could be achieved by changing the direction I was scraping in?  I love the blue into the purple though, I think that looks really pretty :)  I had a little trouble with my scaper though - you can see on my middle finger there's a cheeky little red patch that I didn't quite scrape off.  It's a Konad scraper though so I wouldn't expect to have problems!

Right, well I think I'm going to enjoy a complimentary hot chocolate and read a little more of my book.  I'm sure the novelty of the hotel will wear off tomorrow though lol.

Flip Flop #14: French/Valentine's Day

Right so scrap all that rubbish about it being too late for Valentine's Day, I decided to combine both of the day 14 options and create a quick Valentine's French manicure!

My nails are a little short for french tips at the moment really, so I cheated and absorbed a little of my nail bed into my tip.  By a little...I mean most of the tip is nail bed.  I've only got about a mm of tip at the moment, and I still managed to break a corner off my middle finger!

So here you have my naked nails.  Well...I touched up my ring finger slightly because I've got this massive white spot where I must have bashed it a few weeks ago and it's still got about halfway to go before it grows out.  Boo.  The tips are Barry M Matt White, dotted with OPI Flick Chick Cherry.  Then I picked a few hearts out of KleanColor Twinkly Love.

Twinkly Love is a rather thick polish, and you can see that it's a bit gunky around the hearts here.  I probably could've done with dabbing some of the polish off after placing the hearts, or maybe just another coat of Seche Vite to smooth it all out.

What do you think?  It's weirding me out a bit having such white tips...they certainly don't look like that underneath the polish!

Flip Flop #13: Sponging

I fully intended to spend today getting caught up with this challenge, but instead I spent the day looking at hotels in Paris and didn't paint my nails even once.  Whoops!  I have, however, booked somewhere for my boyfriend and I for next month.  I just need to book the trains tomorrow :)  Yay!  Now of course I need to plan my Paris manicure...

But on to Flip Flop related business.  The choices for day 13 were Watercolour or Sponging.  I really felt I should attempt watercolour...but I didn't want to.  I do love myself a good sponging manicure (in fact, I prepared a tutorial for you aaages ago that I haven't got round to posting!).  I thought I should attempt to do something a little different though, so I had the idea of cutting out shapes of sponge and using these to sort of stamp on my nails.  Much like potato printing!

So I thought some bold colours over nude would look good.  Originally I was going to randomly stamp my circles and triangles over the nail, but in the end I decided to make sort of tips instead.  Which I regret!  Not too happy with how this turned out, but I do like the idea of using shaped sponge.

I used OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons for my base colour, and then Jessica Ruffled Bottoms for the circles and China Glaze Man Hunt for the triangles.

On to day 14!  It's a bit late for Valentine's Day, so I suppose I'll have have to go with French Tips!

Here's a reminder of what's coming up in the challenge:

Flip Flop #12: Matte

Helloooooo!  It's Friiiiiidaaaaay!

I have wine, and I have chocolate, and I've just got some wonderful news, so I'm feeling rather great!

A brief aside...there's some program on the telly and they keep showing really close up of him holding things and he's got proper skanky dry skin around his nails and bruised nail beds.  Yuck.  Get yourself a nail blogger for the close ups!

Anyhoo, the choices for Day 12 were Drips or Matte.  I've attempted drips before as part of my boyfriend's birthday manicure (on my nails, not his!) here.  It is something I'd probably like to have a go at doing as a full manicure at some point, but I wasn't feeling it last night, so I went with matte instead.  Interestingly (or not, actually) literally everytime I type 'matte' (yes, even then) I always type 'matter' first and have to delete the 'r'.  Very odd.  I wonder if it's from typing up too many physics things about the interaction of radiation with matter...  Or perhaps from typing 'what's the matter?' every time my teenage sister begins a little rant (I don't know if you actually read my blog Amber, but if you do, I'm joking of course...).

So I've been enjoying chucking some matte top coat over everything recently.  Buuut since it was the theme for this manicure, I felt it should be a manicure that was based around matte-ness rather than just any old manicure mattified.  I'm not sure I'm making sense.

But here's what I did anyway.

I used a Special FX polish that sadly has no name, then topped it with the Rimmel matte top coat.  And THEN...well.  I tried to stamp with normal top coat, but that didn't work.  I thought maybe it was because it was cheap and the formula wasn't great, so I Seche Vite'd all my nails, and then tried to stamp with the matte top coat.  That didn't work either.

SO, I re-matted everything and decided to do dots.  Although by this point I couldn't be bothered dotting all my nails, so I just went for the index and middle finger nails.  The dots were bigger than I intended...I think my little topcoat pool was too deep!  Then on all my other nails I added a stripe of top coat down the middle.  I'm not sure this really shows up in the pictures, but you can see it if you know it's there lol.

All in all, a bit of a faff.  A nice way to have some subtle nail art though, if you're going somewhere bolder nails wouldn't be appropriate :)

I realise I'm not yet caught up with the challenge, but just a little advance notice that I might get further behind next week!  I'm being kicked out of my flat for the week for some building work to be done, so I'll only have a limited selection of my pretties with me.  But I'll do my best.

Flip Flop #11: Splatter

So today I learnt that I can't to splatter manis.  Absolute disaster.  I don't get it...I have no idea what I was doing wrong.  And then I got a bit light headed from all the blowing lol.  So in the end I went for blobbing polish on and blowing it across the nail.  Didn't really work at all because it spread out far to nice and evenly.  But here's what I ended up with anyway!

Yeah...

I used Barry M Grey, then 'splattered' with Jessica Ruffled Bottoms and GOSH Holographic Hero.  I've probably managed to take the only photos in existence of this polish where it doesn't look holographic...that's an achievement right?

Flip Flop #10: Half Moons

I've had this manicure in my 'ideas' folder for aaages, and I finally got round to trying it!  I pinched the idea from Top Coat It - you should check her blog out, there's some fantastic nail art on there.

CRABS!  And sparkly disco crabs, at that.

I used China Glaze Kalahari Kiss (the colour isn't very accurate here!) then I freehanded on the half moons and claws using Barry M Bright Red and Red Glitter, then added eyes with a dotting tool and Barry M Matt White and Black.

Aren't they adorable?  So glad I finally got round to trying this!  And yes, the fat claw on my thumb crab is totally intentional...