Holographic stars and strawberries

When the sun is shining, it's time for the holo polishes to come out and play! I bought my first holo polish from Urban Outfitters as a pick-me-up present to myself. Wasn't expecting much, but OH MAN when I brought this baby out in the sun, I was completely floored. I mean, LOOK AT THIS!

I freehanded on some cascading stars with black acrylic paint. Indoors, you can still see some of the rainbow effect. I'm just sorry I didn't get a picture in the sun with the stars.

After this first wonderful experience with a holo, I was craving more. I picked up Color Club "Miss Bliss" and "Over the Moon". I used Miss Bliss for some holographic strawberries over "Bossy Boots" from butter London, a really gorgeous, pistachio green. The strawberry leaves were painted with Essie "Mojito Madness".

Holographic strawberries have magical properties, you know. If you eat one, you will gain enough strength to defeat the evil Dark Wizard Mage King.

Alice in Wonderland: Big or Small?

"One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter."

Only in Wonderland will eating two different sides of a mushroom make you grow bigger or smaller. 

The base I used is two coats of China Glaze "Fast Track" topped with one coat of butter London "Tart With a Heart". Most of the other colours I used were custom mixed, so I won't bother listing them all out here.

Painting the mushroom was interesting - it looks like some kind of alien fungus that I wouldn't even touch, let alone eat haha! At least the cookies came out cute. I used the same method for the "EAT ME" cookie as for my milk & cookies design, only with smaller dots.

Alice in Wonderland Nail Art Series

• Cheshire Cat
• Down the Rabbit Hole 
• Unbirthday

   

Rainbow Clouds with Butter London The Black Knight

While not participating in the 31 day challenge myself, seeing all the different and interesting designs people are coming up with is very inspiring! Recently, the theme was "Rainbow Nails", and I got the urge to do my own. This is a variation on the happy clouds mani I did before, and again, inspired by Jane from Nailside's rainbow design. Love!

Another name I have for this mani is "Bleeding Rainbow" (some dark parody of "Reading Rainbow" perhaps). The colours bled out from the arc into the clouds and rain - is what I was going for here.

My base is one coat of black with one coat of Butter London "The Black Knight". Then I painted the white arc first using the bottle brush, starting from the side of my nail and extending down to the tip in one stroke. For the rainbow clouds, it's easiest to get the rounded edges when you have a small bead of polish on the end of your brush (but not so that it's dripping). The raindrops were painted with a nail art brush.

Yellow - China Glaze "Lemon Fizz"
Purple - Zoya "Reagan"
Blue -China Glaze "For Audrey"
Light Purple - Nature Republic colour PP402

 

The Black Knight has a sheer black base with predominately blue, red, and fuchsia microglitter. If you look real closely, you can see even tinier silver, yellow, and green glitter in there. On it's own, it would take three coats to become opaque, but if you paint a black base, you'll only need one.

Closeup of the glitter - how amazing does that look??

Hope you enjoyed this! I'm sure I'll be inspired many more times while this 31 Day Challenge is going on.