I'm going to keep this short tonight.  Both my kids have the flu so I didn't sleep much last night. Hubby stayed home from work to look after them whilst I put in an epic 10 hour work day in prep for our major project going live on Friday. I'm totally wiped out and glad the challenge finishes tomorrow.

For inspired by a tutorial I have created a mani that I originally saw by @Coewless, and then traced back to @JudyRox, who had a video tutorial.  My lines don't have the same neatness and sharpness that both those ladies do, but I'm still happy with the mani none the less.

Inspired by the supernatural is probably the hardest prompt for me to think of something for.  Infact I wonder how this prompt ever made it into the 31 day challenge, because I can think of so many other prompts that I would have chosen before supernatural. Anyway, it is what it is, and this year I have done some watercolour ghosts.

I started with a base of Ulta3 It's a bit grey and then applied matte top coat.  Next I got some watered down white acrylic paint and painted some ghostly figures using the same technique that you use when doing a water colour bubble manicure.  

I really like how the middle finger turned out. There is something about it that reminds me of Samara from The Ring - which completely freaked me out!  The others look a little more alien like with their bald heads and black googly eyes - but either way, they are supernatural enough for me.

Inspired by a flag day. I find this one a bit of a weird theme to create nail art for.  I've done the Australian flag to death, so I want to steer clear of that, and it seems weird to do another countries flag when it's not their national day. So as I normally do, I did some googling for some inspiration, but that didn't lead me anywhere.

What caught my attention was an animated TV show that was on in the background.  That triggered a memory and I knew which flag I would do.  

I'm not going to tell you just yet what flag this is, because I want to see if anyone else out there knows.  I'll post the details of the flag in the comments section tomorrow - so let me know if you think you know what this flag is and what is it from.

When you think about well known Australian artists, there are only a few that jump to the forefront of your mind.  The artwork that I have depicted on my nails is surely one that every Australian will recognise.  I attempted a recreation of Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly.

This was all free hand painted with nail polish, not acrylic paints. I used a whole range of colours and brands to create this, so I wont bother listing them off.

Can you all believe we are nearly at the end of the challenge!  Only a few more mani's to do and we are done!  I have a huge project at work finishing up and going 'live' next Friday, so after that I'm planning to spend lots of time catching up on everyone's mani's linked through the inlinkz for the challenge.

Image credit: National Gallery of Australia.

We are nearing the end of the challenge and I'm starting to feel a little wiped out from it all.  Or maybe it's just because I have a head full of snot from yucky spring cold!  Either way, I went with an easy mani for this one.  Simple pattern stamping over a gorgeous polish.

The pattern I've chosen is tartan or is it plaid? I dunno I get those two confused.  Anyway it's an easy stamp that looks great.  This design is from Born Pretty Stamping plate QA96. It stamped really nicely for a cheap plate. I used Mundo de Unas Black stamping polish.

My base polish is a new collaboration shade from Picture Polish called Sizzle by Cosmetic Sanctuary.

A few weeks ago I saved a URL with a whole bunch of red carpet dresses from the Emmy Awards.  when it was time to do my nails for this prompt, I scoured through that long list of photos ready to be inspired by something.  Sadly I wasn't inspired by any of them.  Most of the dresses were just a single colour, which didn't leave me with much to work with.

Enter my saved photos of Modcloth dresses that I had on my ipad as nail inspiration.  This one again caught my eye - Modcloth's Spellbinding Ability Dress.

I started with a gradient that went from white to dark pink, I used Picture Polish Bright White, Flirt and Vampire.  I then stamped some white roses and leaves over the top using an image from DRK-A plate.  Next I painted over some of the white using pink and orange polish, but still leaving enough of the white showing through to see the rose patterns.  I'm really happy with how well it matched the dress.

What's the last book you read?  I'm not much of a book reader - not enough time left it the day for it for me.  So it comes as no surprise to me that the last book I read was something I read to the kids. The Cat in the Hat Comes Back to be exact.

Just so it's clear, I don't much fancy myself as much of a free hand nail artist.  That's why I love using stamping and decals, unfortunately there wasn't any full sized stamps or decals that matched in with my theme (well except for the Cat's hat), so free hand it was!

I used the Cat's Hat image from MJ XIII plate from My Online Shop and coloured it in for some advanced stamping. I then free handed the Cat's face in under the hat.  I'm pretty happy with how his face turned out, especially when looking from a distance.  Up close you can see that my lines are rather thick - I really need to buy an ultra fine nail art brush (anyone got any recs?)

Blogger is jacking me around tonight and this is now the third time I've written up this blog post - argh who had time for that! Ok, now to recall what I originally wrote for the third time.

Move nails time.  This was one of the few manis I had planned from well before the beginning of the challenge.  The last movie I saw at the movie theatre was How to Train Your Dragon 2, during the last school holiday's with the kiddos.  My kids are obsessed with the two movies and the TV series.

They know every dragon by name, every dragon species, ever character and most of the episodes word for word!  You can imagine that I was pretty pleased with myself when I showed my nails to the kids and they both excitedly squealed - TOOTHLESS NAILS!

If you are a cat lover and you have not seen these movies, particularly the second one, they you have to check it out. It's very clear that the animators got a lot of feline inspiration for this cute little fellow, because  I can't believe how cat like Toothless is.  He is just adorable and makes me wish he was real and that I was his dragon rider!

Here are my nails.  I did a black base and topped that with OPI Matte Top Coat.  I then painted the eyes on free hand using a mix of a few yellow and green polishes.  I then added the black pupils and the white highlight dots.  For the spots, I just used my dotting tool and did random shaped blobs using Seche Vite top coat.

Inspired by a song - there are so many options that I didn't know where to start and I just wasn't feeling it this year, but in the end I did a mani that I've wanted to try for a while. Rain drops using gel polish.

There are plenty of songs about the rain, so I'm not going to pick just one.

Rather than making this a dark and stormy rain mani, I went with a spring shower theme. As such I did a soft blue gradient for the background.  I then added some white and grey clouds at the top. To create the rain drops, I used a dotting tool and dotted on some elongated dots to look like drips.
I then cured them under the UV lamp.  I did this three times to really build up some depth in the rain drops. 

This mani was interesting to look at and and fun to wear, cause I kept playing with the tops of my nails to feel the smooth lumpy texture.

Yes, this is a rainbow watermarble, and no I don't have my days mixed up.  This is definitely my inspired by a colour mani, and there is a good reason why I have a rainbow marble.

Last year when I did this challenge, I had no idea what "Inspired by a colour" meant. So I checked out how Sarah from Chalkboard Nail interpreted it.  She took it to mean, inspired by a nail polish colour - eg the name of it.  So that is what I did last year.  I had planned to do that this year too and I sat down in front of my stash list to read through the names of all the polishes in my collection.  Not a single polish name jumped out at me for something I could paint.  I was totally out of inspiration. 

This is when I turned around to Mr 6 and asked him what is favourite colour was.  I figured I would paint something in his favourite colour as he always loves checking out my nail art.  His answer to me was "RAINBOW - my favourite colour is rainbow mum!"

Screw it, I thought, I'm going to do a rainbow marble using my polishes, because I'm now 'he shit' at doing watermarbles and I want to show off. Tee hee.

Needless to say, I'm pretty damn happy with how this came out.  From someone that couldn't do a watermarble to save themselves a few months ago (just ask my local Canberra nail girls from when we did a Watermarbling polishing session together) to what I'm able to do now!  YIPPEE!