52 Week PICK N MIX Challenge Week 1: Teal & ‪#‎31Nails2014‬: Day 6: Inspired by a NAILS cover

Hello everyone!

This nail art was inspired by the NAILS cover of the October 2012 Issue. I made this for day 6 in Nails Magazine's 31 Days of Nail Art Challenge 2014 ‪(#‎31nails2014‬) back in January. But because I haven't showed it here on the blog yet, and because "teal" is one of the prompts for week 1 in the new 52 week challenge, I'm writing about both today. First I'll tell a little about the new challenge, and then about trying to solve the task for #‎31nails2014 Day 6, which should be inspired by a NAILS cover. And at the end of the post you can see what everyone made for week 1 if you click on the Inlinkz Link Up. I'll also link to the #31Nails2014 nail art I've made so far.

The 52 Week PICK N MIX Challenge #52WPNMC consists of two prompts each week for a year, and we can make one of them or both or combine them. Needless to say, I'll probably not be able to make nail art and blog about it every week, but I'll do it when I can. This week I chose to do "teal", and next week I hope to do both a pattern and a color. But most weeks I'll probably do a combination. If you want to find out more, you can read what the creator of this challenge writes. Just click here.

‎31nails2014‬: Day 6: Inspired by a NAILS cover:

I struggled with this challenge. First I tried to make the baby blue to white gradient, and stamp a puzzle pattern over it, but apparently my sponge had dust on it... Then I tried to make caviar nails... And some other things happened. So a week of valuable time was lost. Then I got stuck on day 6, although I had made the ombre nails a week earlier. Finally on Friday I tried the "blue and green spray on water/ spotted nails", and it looked horrible in my Ott- Lite and indoor lighting. I wish we had more daylight in winter, so that I could make more challenges per day. And I struggled taking pictures in indoor lighting/ with an Ott- Lite without making the polish looking matte.

What I did & how it was supposed to be done:

This manicure is inspired by the OCTOBER 2012 ISSUE NAILS cover. After I made this nail art and applied a second coat of Seche Vite, I found out how it can be done, and a bigger picture of the cover nail art... Lol. Here is a picture tutorial. I used regular nail polish, and used different techniques back and forth until it looked a bit like the original manicure.

As MaeLing Parrish does in her tutorial, I started with a random pattern, but I used blues and greens. Then I stamped with blue stamping polish and Messy Mansion MM02. I saw that I had too much contrast, and tried to darken the light areas and to lighten the dark areas. To do that, I turned the plate into a palette by turning it, and used a dotting tool and some sheer polishes; a blue jelly, green flakie and blue flakie. And then I felt it needed more green. If you compare my manicure to the tiny little picture that I tried to copy, this doesn't look that bad.

Products used:

Christian Dior #489 Cobalt and here
Yes Love: F23
MI-NY: #177 Blue Sky
Gosh: #540 Ocean
Gosh: #618 Tilted Blue
Essence: #02 I'm backstage
Ruby Kisses: MNP29 Blue Ray Drama
Konad: SP Blue
Messy Mansion: MM02 (stamping plate & pallette) (used many many times)
XL stamper
Dotting tool
H&M: Blue Wave
Lilypad Lacquer: Blueberry (blue jelly)
Nfu- Oh: #56 (green flakie in green jelly)
Nfu- Oh: #52 (blue flakie in blurple jelly)
And as usual back then: IsaDora #600 Clear as base coat and Seche Vite top coat.

After the stamping I saw that I needed to make some changes, so I ended up using a lot of colors. I hope I have remembered all of them. If I do this again I now know which ones that worked best, so the list will be shorter.

In January one of my goals was to do this 31 Day Challenge. I did the nail art for some of the days, and we were allowed to use old nail art, so I didn't have many left to do. But I only made a few blog posts about them. I hope to show the rest before the year is over. You can see the ones I've made so far in my facebook photo album.

Lani

An InLinkz Link-up