I actually remembered to paint one of the Digital Dozen Birthday mani's this week. I usually always forget and the end of the month sneaks up on me and I miss out. 

I was quite happy with how this mani looked in real life, and that the water colour appearance of it did seem to match the inspiration photo quite well. That is until I edited my photos and uploaded them here. Now I don't like it much, the shades of green are wrong, and the shimmery duochrome green base seems to reflect way too much light to be able to capture it nicely.

Anyway, it's the thought that counts with these Birthday Mani's, so shout out to the Digital Dozen January Birthday girls, Courtney and Brethil.

I'm just a day late with this mani, and really it's a very simple on that I quickly put together for the last day of the prompt.  Not much to say about this other than I love the base colour.  This is a relatively new shade from Picture Polish called London, and it's a pale steely blue shade with a nice scattered holo pop.

It's already late and I really need to go off an paint my nails tonight, cause 1) I've have these crystals on my nails for more than two days now and the lumpy sharp crystals are starting to give me the shits. 2) It's my daughter's 7th birthday tomorrow and I can't let the tradition of birthday nails go past! So with that, I'm off.

I tried creating something new tonight. My execution wasn't the best, but it's definitely a technique that I want to try again and get better at.  I combined the techniques of glitter placement and stamping decals.  

I really wanted to do some glitter placement for one of the manis in this weeks prompt. But full glitter placement manis take about 2-3 hours to do, and whilst I do love them (and actually don't mind creating them), I just don't have that sort of time to create a mani when I flying by the seat of my pants to get something painted to post.

I was rather disappointed to have to remove this tonight to paint my final design, because it looked super sparkly and was very eye catching.

I also used Crows Toes Bifrost, which I bought probably a year ago and it's sat, wasted, in my untried drawer.  Bifrost is an amazing microglitter and a totally unique colour combo in my collection.

To create the stamping decals I used some butterfly designs off the layered Clear Jelly Stamper plates as my template.  After I had stamped the solid background colour onto my silicone mat, I painted a thin coat of foil adhesive to just the butterfly wing parts. I then used different hex glitters to place the colours into the butterfly wing shapes. I did then try stamping with the butterfly outlines, but they were too fine and couldn't be seen, so I just outlined each butterfly with a fine brush and some polish.  Next was one last layer of top coat, and then I peeled them off my silicone stamping mat and applied them like regular stamping decals.  

I will try this again soon, and will film it. I'd also like to try it with some slightly smaller hex glitters too, as these were just a little bit too big.

Day 3 and I'm managing to stay one day ahead of my manis.  Today's polishes are bought to you courtesy of my friend from work and my daughter.

My daughter received the cutest set of polishes for Christmas from her Grandma and Pa, and I just had to borrow them for one mani. Scroll down to see the packaging to see what I mean.  I used the bright cremes to create a reverse sunset gradient (cause usually sunset gradients have the yellow bit at the bottom of the nail).

The glitter polish doesn't have a name as far as I know, but was gifted to my by my friend at work who creates delightful resin jewellery and sells through various local markets as well as through her online shop..  She mixed up this polish to match one of her best selling sets of earrings.  You can check out her online shop - Glitterbomb Jewels.

Day two and I've got a pretty boring mani I feel. Sorry about that. It actually look quite pretty in real life, but it's very underwhelming in these photos.

The glitter polish is one I haven't used for ages, and it's one of the OPI Breast Cancer awareness polishes called Pink of Hearts from the 2013 duo.  It's actually a milky pink crelly with pastel glitters and a matte finish. I think it's the matte finish on the original polish that really makes this special, because most of the pastel glitters seemed to just look silver once I applied glossy top coat.

It's another Digital Dozen week already, and I really thought I had another week up my sleeve before it started, so I'm afraid to say that I'm starting the new year chasing my tail from the beginning.  The upside is that I had already painted these nails and wore them whilst I was away in Queensland before Christmas, and I'm the queen of taking shortcuts!

This mani also provided me with a new found favourite product. The Dance Legend Binary polishes.  I've swatched various Binary shades before, but this was the first real time I put them to a wear test.  I did a gradient base of two Bi shades. Lilia (the pink) and Lisa (the blue). On their own they are both amazing polishes, smooth and gloss to apply and great pigmentation.  

Cause a regular gradient just wasn't going to cut it two weeks before Christmas, I had to add some bling. So I burnished in some of the holo flake powder.  There are bunches of places you can get this stuff now.  I got my little baggie from Spectraflair4U early last year I think, and it's still only $6 USD a gram.  After that was rubbed in I applied a coat of the Dance Legend Binary top coat.

Did this last on my nails. Well let me tell you that this would have survived a nuclear explosion I think.  I gave my nails some pretty harsh treatment whilst away. We visited the Gold Coast theme parks for 7 days straight, including full days at Wet n Wild. At the end of it I only had a little bit of tip wear.  

I've actually started using the Binary top coat as my go-to top coat for the last month instead of Seche Vite, which is really quite shocking for me, cause I'm a Seche Vite girl through and through. Sure, the Binary top coat doesn't dry quite as quick as Seche, but I sure can't beat the staying power when I want my mani to last for several days. 

Dance Legend polishes provided for consideration.

Happy New Year.  2018...can you believe it!  Here is my first mani of the year, and I've actually remembered ahead of time to complete a prompt for the 26 Great Nail Art ideas challenge.  The prompt is Metallic with one colour. I was going to burnish chrome powders into my nails, but in the end I decided to pull our my  Born Pretty Store Mirror Polish, because since we got the chrome powders, the polish doesn't get any love anymore.

I also chose to stamp with a colour that I would usually never choose. Orange.  I really wanted to go with green or blue, because generally I prefer cool toned shades, but I forced myself to step out of my usual comfort zone and got with this. 

The stamping image is from plate KN-27, which I got from DRK nails.  It's actually a slightly curved zigzag patter, bt I like how it looks like something you would create with nail vinyls.