*Nothing to Disclose*

     Ok, so I've got a super quick blog post for you today because it's playoff season for me and I'm working on borrowed time as it is. For those of you who don't know I play on a softball team and we were on the field until after 11 pm Monday night for playoffs. Yay, we are winning but boy am I tired. Being the glutton for punishment that I am I agreed to help out 2 different friends on their Volleyball teams for playoffs which are Tuesday and Wednesday night. I'm either going to be in great shape after this on unable to move. I guess time will tell on that one.

    Anyway back to the reason you're here, the nail art! I have fallen so hopelessly behind on the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas challenge that I know I will never catch up, but I'm determined to finish it! I'll have all my posts done, albeit months behind but the inlinks are no longer open so I won't be able to share the other looks with you. However, if you're reading this post and participating in the challenge please feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.  So just what is the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Challenge? Well, it's simple really, This challenge is set up a bit differently than most. For starters, there is the option to do weekly manicures with one week dedicated to themes, and one to colors. Or you can do every other week and stick with themes only or colors only. For the color portion of the challenge, each person is also assigned a pattern. The end result is 40 different looks all done in the same colors. As most of you know I opted to do the color challenge and you can see my previous looks using Teal, Orange, Purple and Green, Black and White, Grey, Glitter toppers, Pale Blue , 3 shades of Purple, Turquoise and 3 shades of Green. 

    For this prompt the color is Violet and I was given the pattern Aztec. Well, I sort of screwed up and thought it was tribal so feel free to use your imagination on this one. Or since my "tribal" manicure from a few months ago ended up looking more "Aztec" let's just say that I did this on purpose to give each pattern their 15 seconds of fame on my blog. Yeah, that sounds better than me just being scatterbrained and mixing them up!

    So this look was very easy to put together and I want to toot my own horn a bit about that image placement. Look at how centered they are on my nail!! That will probably never happen again so bask in its beauty while you can. 

    For my base colors, I used Sally Hansen Lively Lilac and Sinful Colors Snow Me White. For the image, I used NNail plate B97 and Hit the Bottle As Black as Night. The accent nail I stamped with Lively Lilac to tie it all together. After a layer of top coat, this manicure was complete. Just like this post is about to be. I hope you enjoyed this look. I will be back Friday to share more of my hectic life with you. Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing!

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      Happy Friday to everyone! I'm finally back with another look for the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Challenge. This week is 3 shades of green! How appropriate with yesterday being St. Patricks Day. Hmmm that was some clever planning by The Crumpet huh. Or do you think it was just the luck of the Irish?

     Now if you're new here you might be wondering what the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Challenge is all about. So first of all welcome, I'm so glad you're here! And secondly, here's a little bit about what this challenge actually is. This challenge is set up a bit differently than most. For starters there is the option to do weekly manicures with one week dedicated to themes, and one to colors. Or you can do every other week and stick with themes only or colors only. For the color portion of the challenge each person is also assigned a pattern. The end result is 40 different looks all done in the same colors. As most of you know I opted to do the color challenge and you can see my previous looks using Teal, Orange, Purple and Green, Black and White, Grey, Glitter toppers, Pale Blue , 3 shades of Purple and Turquoise.  Whew we've done a lot of looks so far! Now for today's manicure.

    My "pattern" for today was an accent nail. I know not really a pattern but it is a nail art look so it still fits the theme. And is a really easy look to pull off! After thinking way too hard about what I wanted to do for my manicure I decided on the seran wrap technique.

      If you have ever done this technique you know it makes a mess. And there's nothing worse than cleaning up green nail polish from your skin right? Well blue and red polish are right up there too I guess.  I used my new bottle of Simply Peel latex barrier from My Bliss Kiss to keep the mess at bay and was very happy with the results. Plus it makes your skin sparkly when it dries and who doesnt like to sparkle?

*Nothing to Disclose*

     It's time for another look from the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Challenge! I don't know if you know this but I am actually really enjoying this challenge. Normally I get stressed during a challenge and struggle to get my looks done. But not this time! And you want to know why? This challenge is set up a bit differently than most. For starters there is the option to do weekly manicures with one week dedicated to themes, and one to colors. Or you can do every other week and stick with themes only or colors only. For the color portion of the challenge each person is also assigned a pattern. The end result is 40 different looks all done in the same colors. As most of you know I opted to do the color challenge and you can see my previous looks using Teal, Orange, Purple and Green, Black and White, Grey, Glitter toppers, Pale Blue and 3 shades of Purple.  This posting every other week is just my speed and helps keep me relaxed and stress free for the challenge. 

     This week the color theme is Aqua or Turquoise  and my pattern prompt is water color. The water color technique is one that I love but have been afraid to attempt until now. And to be completely honest this is one look that I didn't nail, but now I have a little more confidence and look forward to trying again. After I watch a few more YouTube videos on how's it's done of course. 

*Nothing to Disclose*

     It's Friday, which means it's time for another look from the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Challenge. For those of you not familiar with this challenge here's a quick recap...This challenge is set up a bit differently than most. For starters there is the option to do weekly manicures with one week dedicated to themes, and one to colors. Or you can do every other week and stick with themes only or colors only. For the color portion of the challenge each person is also assigned a pattern. The end result is 40 different looks all done in the same colors. I opted to do the color challenge and you can see my previous looks using Teal, Orange, Purple and Green, Black and White, Grey, Glitter toppers, and Pale Blue.  This week we are using 3 shades of purple and the technique I have is water marble. 

    Water marbling is one of the reasons I got into nail art, and was the first look I tried. So this was a fun week for me with remembering the excitement I felt back then and how proud I was when it turned out to be a success. I still haven't mastered how to get all my nails to look the same and probably never will to be honest. But I sorta like having each nail similar but not exact. And that's just how this manicure turned out. 

*Nothing to Disclose*

     Its time come again for another installment of the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Challenge. For those of you unfamiliar with this challenge here's a quick explanation. This challenge is set up a bit differently than most. For starters there is the option to do weekly manicures with one week dedicated to themes, and one to colors. Or you can do every other week and stick with themes only or colors only. For the color portion of the challenge each person is also assigned a pattern. The end result is 40 different looks all done in the same colors. I've opted to do the color portion of the challenge and have been having a lot of fun so far. 

     Now after doing 2 similar looks for this challenge I wanted to try and think outside the box and come up with some interesting looks to share. I think I did just that with my tie-dye manicure but for this week I was crunched for time and took the easy way out. You'd think after having 2 weeks off from work I would have found a little time to do some nail art! Sadly my style seems to be put things off till the very last minute lately. So here is my pale blue base manicure with a tribal pattern. 

     I started with Pure Ice Prince Charming from the newly released Fairy-tale Forrest Collection. A pale blue with subtle micro shimmer. 

  

     Thank God my clear jelly stamper showed up last week because it made adding the tribal pattern go on almost effortlessly and faster than I've ever done a stamping manicure before. Seriously if you like to stamp and haven't pick this miracle stamper yet do it right now. I mean it, open a new window and order that baby up. I'll wait.... got your order placed? OK let's continue.

*Nothing to Disclose*

     Its that time of year again. Christmas shopping, cookie baking, holiday parties and in my house the plague. The one thing my children share no matter what without fail is their germs, and after being nurse mommy for the last 3 weeks it's my turn so today's post is going to be a quick one. 

     This week both the Hobby Polish Bloggers monthly link up and the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas challenge have lined up perfectly so I can share my Christmas manicure for both with one post. I love it when things work out in my favor. Now most of you know I have been doing the color/pattern prompt for the challenge but this week I'm breaking from my regular schedule to join in on a theme week. Because of the holidays the color prompts were taking quite a long break and I wanted to keep my nail art momentum going. Now for today's nail art look....

*Nothing to Disclose*

      It's time once again for another look from the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Challenge. For those of you not familiar with this challenge here's a quick recap...This challenge is set up a bit differently than most. For starters there is the option to do weekly manicures with one week dedicated to themes, and one to colors. Or you can do every other week and stick with themes only or colors only. For the color portion of the challenge each person is also assigned a pattern. The end result is 40 different looks all done in the same colors. I opted to do the color challenge and you can see my previous looks using Teal, Orange, Purple and Green, Black and White and Grey. 

      This week the color is glitter topper or flakie and my pattern is tie-dye. Ummm yeah I was scared when I first saw this and had no idea how the heck I was going to pull it off. After a few failed attempts at making some tie-dye style decals I decided to throw the rule book out the window and just play around a bit to see what I could get.  Are you ready for my results?

*Nothing to Disclose*

       Its time once again for another look from the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Challenge. If you're new around here or just not sure what this challenge is here's a quick recap...This challenge is set up a bit differently than most. For starters there is the option to do weekly manicures with one week dedicated to themes, and one to colors. Or you can do every other week and stick with themes only or colors only. For the color portion of the challenge each person is also assigned a pattern. The end result is 40 different looks all done in the same colors. If you saw my Teal or Orange, Purple and Green manicures you already know that I picked the every other week color option of the challenge. 

     This week my pattern was a tape manicure which made me giggle a bit because I already used tape for the stripes in my orange, purple and green manicure. This time I rotated my tape 45 degrees and created this look. 

*Nothing to Disclose*

*Nothing to Disclose*

     Its time once again for another look from the 40 Great Nail Art Looks Challenge. For those of you who don't know, This challenge is set up a bit differently than most. For starters, there is the option to do weekly manicures with one week dedicated to themes, and one to colors. Or you can do every other week and stick with themes only or colors only. For the color portion of the challenge, each person is also assigned a pattern. The end result is 40 different looks all done in the same colors.  If you caught my Teal manicure a few posts back you already know that I picked the color/pattern option. If not don't worry there's still time for you to read it. 

    This week my pattern was stripes and I had an idea of what I wanted to do immediately, a reciprocal gradient! I used all Sinful Colors polishes for this manicure starting with a base of Snow me White.

    For the Gradient, I used Enchanted (purple) Clementine (orange) and Exotic Green. Once it was dry I placed striping tape vertically on my nail, rotated my sponge 180 degrees and repeated the gradient process. 

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      Today is the start of a 52-week nail art challenge put together by the Crumpet. Now I know what you might be thinking.... but Katie, you're not posting very much lately. How the heck are you going to pull off a 52-week challenge? Want to know the secret? I only have to post every other week. That gives me two weeks to get a mani painted and a post done, and that should help get my mojo back. 

     The first prompt I am doing is teal. Now all the other ladies will be doing teal manicures also but the catch is we each have a different pattern. I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with, but first, let's get to my manicure.