Today's mani marks the end of the year long weekly challenge for the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Challenge. I'll get around to a round up post sometime next week, but I'm very happy to report that I completed all 52/52 weeks of the year long challenge.  The theme for the final prompt for the challenge is Earth tones.  I was actually suppose to combine that with 'accent nail', but I was having way too much fun with this technique that I ended up doing all my fingers.

And what is this technique you might ask? Well I have no idea, but it was created by Sveta Sanders and she just called it an abstract nail art design. For today's prompt in the 31 Day Challenge, we are to be inspired by a tutorial, clearly I chose a tutorial by Sveta and you should absolutely check out Sveta's tutorial for this on youtube.

I actually filmed my efforts doing this one, so I will try edit that and get it up on instagram too.

OMG, I did freehand nail art again. Yippee! But it was hard, and I hope it looks like what I was going for.  I did a simple saran wrap look on my other nails because it took me so long to paint my feature nail. I used a white base and a very pale blue for the saran wrap and looked very icy and cold.

If you are not a watcher of Game of Thrones, then you probably don't know who the Night's King is, but basically he is the baddest dude there is in the show. He has the power to raise people from the dead to make his army of white walkers and he is pretty much un-killable, unless you have a fancy valyrian steel sword or some volcanic dragon glass.  Yep, I'm geeking out a bit here!

I really wanted to paint his arms into this mani, to show the scene at the end of the Hardhome episode where he raises all the dead wildlings, cause that scene was bad-ass. But the arms I tried to paint looked too comical, so I removed them. I wish I was able to make is blue eyes glow more too.

I reckon inspired by a flag would have to be the worst prompt in the whole challenge.  It's one that I really struggle to draw inspiration from. I wonder that the person was thinking when they came up with that prompt.  Certainly if we were to create a new 31 Day Challenge there are a lot of new techniques that we could include instead of weird prompts like this one.  

Anyway, I was really wracking my brain to think of a flag to paint on my nails, and then up popped a design on my Instagram feed from @dorisnailsdairy. Man I love finding new Instagram accounts with amazing nail art!

Unfortunately I didn't have the same stamping plate as Doris to get the checkerboard pattern, so I had to use a stamp that had much larger checks on it. My gradient is also looking a bit patchy and in retrospect I should have done a little bit more dabba dabba dabba.

For those that are still wondering what kind of flag this is, it represents the NASCAR flag, which is a combination of the standard car race checkerboard with a rainbow print and text through the middle.

So who else is counting down the days until the challenge is done!  I actually only have one mani left to do, the very last prompt, and I hope to knock that one off tomorrow because I'm just too tired to do it tonight.  I had a very restless sleep last night.  First I was too cold, so I turned my electric blanket on my bed. Then I got too hot, so I turned it down. Except that I didn't actually turn it down, I actually turned it up.  Next I woke up in a stream of sweat and threw the blankets off, plus because I was sleeping on the very edge of the mattress to get away from the heat, I discovered that Miss Nahla cat was very happy to take centre stop on my bed in the heat, and she wasn't going to give it it.  So yeah, tired today and heading to bed after this post.

Inspired by Artwork is a hard prompt, especially when you don't feel like taking on the challenge of doing free hand nail art.  I certainly wasn't up for anything challenging, but then finding a design that is achievable is a challenge in itself.

I ended up choosing this design after I remembered a photo that I'd see of the 'new' (installed in 2015) floor in the entrance foyer at the National Gallery of Australia.  The National Gallery houses Australia's most famous art works, and is also the place that gets all the international famous art works displayed. So it seemed appropriate to choose this design from that location.  The below photo was taken during installation, and I found it really hard to find many others.  In fact I don't even know if it was a permanent installation or just a temporary artwork in itself.  Maybe I could actually go there and check it out! LOL.  It would be been pretty awesome if I had managed a visit whilst I had these nails on.

Day 26 on the challenge I we have inspired by a pattern.  I find this prompt pretty easy, as there are so many patterns out there, and so many of them are now available on stamping plates, which make it so easy to great very neat and accurate patterns.

The pattern I chose this year is hounds tooth.  99% of the time you see this pattern it is done with black and white, so naturally I had to spice it up a bit and make it really bright, especially as we are into spring down under!

I created stamping decals for this mani, because it is way easier to colour the patterns in on a silicone matt than trying to do this any other way.  In fact I don't even know how we used to do nail art like this before the invention of silicone mats. Other than just doing them one at a time on the stamper??

Phew, we are nearly finished the 31 Day Challenge.  It's been a tough slog this year, although I probably say that every year!  But it's been ages since I've done a post every night for this long - it's exhausting and starts to take the fun away from it again.

Today's prompt is fashion, and it's one of my least favourite prompts in the challenge.  I have no clue on fashion really, so I just end up googling different red carpet events with the hope of finding a dress that jumps out at me for nail art.  

I eventually found this dress that Kate Hudson wore to the premier of Bride Wars, and it's geometirc pattern looked like it would translate well to my nails.  All of this is free hand, except for the finest little dots which I stamped on.

Today I'm again combining prompt from the two nail art challenges I've been doing. The 31 Day Challenge Books prompt, and 40 Great Nail art ideas Autumn prompt.

I design was inspired by just typing 'Autumn Books' into a google image search, and I found a whole heap of pictures showing open books with autumn leaves fallen on them.

I'm so in love with clear stampers because hey now make doing double stamping like this so easy.  I love how the black beneath the leaves makes them look like shadows.