#SUMMERNORULES: Canada Day

Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends!
Of course this is also the theme for the #SUMMERNORULES Challenge and I had so much fun creating this mani! Not because it's very complicated, but because I discovered I suck at drawing a maple leaf... big time!

I wanted to try something new, so I made my own maple leaf decal! I drew the leaf on a piece of plastic, added a top coat, waited for it to dry and then peeled it off to place the home made decal on my nail. This was actually very easy, besides the fact I can't draw a maple leaf to save my life!

The placing of the decal was a little tricky too, because I made it slightly to big. Not that you can see it in this picture, because I only overdid the top coat. But overall, not a bad effort. I'm definitely going to be playing around with this technique, it's fun and easy and you can go wild with the design.

As for the polishes I used, the white is OPI Boyfriend and I've declared it dead after this mani. I almost didn't have enough left in the bottle to get an even coverage for this mani and now it's official: I used up an entire bottle of OPI My Boyfriend scales walls. I'm a little sad...

The red is China Glaze Vermillion, one of my favorite reds to use in nail art, because it's a true red and extremely opaque and easy to use. My bottle has a major layer missing already, so I have to be careful not to use this one up too.

Have you joined the fun yet?

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#SPRINGNORULES: Butterfly

It's Friday, that means my weekend starts at 5 o'clock today! Tomorrow is Kings Day and I'm looking forward to a nice day with my husband, enjoying the flee market and we'll probably end up an a terras with a drink. Fingers crossed for nice weather!

Today's #springnorules theme is Butterfly. I love butterflies, but oh man, was it hard to get one on my nails! The first one looked like just a blob on my nails, for the second one I painted my background too dark, so you couldn't see the butterfly, let's just say it was a mess!

My third and last attempt was better, still not as nice as I would've liked, but you can definitely tell it's a butterfly!

I really like the caterpillar I added and this time my flowers look like flowers, not eggs, so I'm happy with this. I'm thinking about doing another mani with the caterpillar, but I'm still thinking about that one.

Only 1 more day in the challenge and that theme is picnic. Hopefully I'm able to think of something nice to do for that one, because at the moment, I'm drawing a blanc... Luckily, I still have a couple of days to come up with a cool design.

Have a great weekend!
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#SPRINGNORULES: Rainbow

Today's #SPRINGNORULES theme is Rainbows. I love seeing rainbows, they always makes me smile. When I lived in Ireland, me and my husband used to joke around about finally getting our change to find that pot of gold, but we were never able to find the end of a rainbow. Every time we thought we were close, the darn thing disappeared. Such a shame, I could buy a whole lot of polish with a pot of gold...

For my mani, I kept it simple. I did think about doing a gradient sponged mani, but knowing my sponging abilities are limited, that would have turned out extremely messy. So I opted for rainbow stripes instead.

Clean, simple, colorful and fun. I really like this and it's so easy, anybody can do it!

Next up in this challenge is Butterfly and I'm already dreading it. During this challenge I've found there are 2 things I stink at: anything plant related and animals... they just don't turn out the way I want. So fingers crossed I will be able to pull off a decent Butterfly!

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#SPRINGNORULES: Bunnies

Happy Easter everybody!
I hope you are enjoying this holiday and I hope the weather is as nice where you are as it has been here. It's so sunny and bright (with a little bit of rain, but I'm ignoring that), Spring has definitely begun!

Today's theme is Bunnies and I'm almost as bad in drawing bunnies as I am in drawing grass, but my grass got better, so I decided to combine the two and do bunnies in the grass. I was actually ok with my design, that is, untill I showed it to my husband and he said my bunny looked more like a rat...

After that, I couldn't see anything else but a rat on my nail and I have to admit, he was right. Not very nice, but right. So off it came and I started again.

This time no grass, but a nice, fat, juicy carrot for my bunnies. I like these cute bunnies a lot better and even dear old hubs told me they looked like proper bunnies, so jeeh!

I'm loving this challenge so far, big fat failures and all. Only a couple of days left and I'm going to be sad when it's over, but I intend to enjoy every last mani!

Did you do a bunnies mani?

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#SPRINGNORULES: Easter Eggs

Happy Friday everybody!!!

Today's #springnorules theme is Easter Eggs and I knew I wanted this mani to be colorful and hand painted, because that's how I used to paint my Easter eggs.

I haven't painted an egg in years, not since I was little, but coincidence has it that while I was painting my Easter egg nails, my mother send me a picture of my three year old niece painting eggs and eating chocolate eggs. I looked at her creations and decided to stick with the colors she used, so this little mani is inspired her.

I like this a lot, it's by no means perfect, but it's fun and it reminds me of my little niece. I haven't seen her in over a month and that is way too long! I'll have to drive up to go see my family soon.

What's your favorite thing to do around Easter?

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#SPRINGNORULES: Flowers

I've been looking forward to today's #SPRINGNORULES theme: Flower so much, that is, until I actually started painting them on my nails. I came to a shocking realization: I have no talent for flowers! Zero, none, I'm absolute crap at painting flowers actually!

My first attempt was pathetic, I was going for gorgeous daisies on green green grass, but ended up with fried eggs on grass. Seriously, even my husband thought they looked like eggs.

After this train wreck I decided to give it another go. I went with different colors for the flowers, but unfortunately that only made it worse. Not only did I end up with a total mess on my nails, they still looked like like fried eggs! Colorful... but still fried eggs! Not a good look on me (or anyone I would assume) at all!

I'm giving up, flowers are just not my thing. If any of you know an easy way to make them cute and fun without the fried egg effect, I'd love to hear it!

Are you a star at painting flowers or a complete and utter mess like me?

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#SPRINGNORULES: Rain

Another #SPRINGNORULES day! I'm really loving all of the mani's and I'm feeling so inspired because of al the creative people joining in. Today's theme is Rain and I knew exactly what I wanted to do! Lucy's Stash did a great tutorial with one stroke rain drops and I absolutely loved it, so I knew that was what I wanted to do for today's theme. I gave it a go and well... not a success... rather a big fat fail! So bad, I ended up with just a blue mess on my nail, not even worthy of a picture. So I took it off and had to accept the fact that my nail art skills are still very limited.

Back to the drawing board for me and I decided to do a much simpler mani, with rain poring down my nails. I used all China Glaze polishes for this mani, Pelican Gray for the base, Splish Splash for the rain and Fairy Dust to give the rain a little sparkle.

I like the end result. Simple, fun and with a little sparkle. I can actually pull this mani off, even at work. My boss seems to really enjoy my nail art, especially the big fat failures, lol.

Did you do a Rain mani? If so, I'd love to see your creation, so feel free to link it in the comments.

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