To #31DC2014 Or Not?

September is just on the other side of the weekend and this means two things to me – firstly, that I am coming up to my 1 Year Blog-iversary! I began this little blog on September 1st 2013 so that I could participate in the 31 Day Challenge 2013 and I nearly made it to the end, getting up to 28 before I ran out of puff.

Which leads me onto number 2. The 31 Day Challenge 2014 begins on September 1st and I’d love to join in, but I just don’t know if I can manage it! In September I’ll be handing in my PhD thesis (hopefully) *and* moving house and on top of that I doubt I’d be able to give the 31DC2014 all the time and attention it deserves. You might have noticed that since Lily Allen week at the beginning of the month my blog postings have… not happened.

31 Day Challenge Day 28: Inspired By A Flag

I hail from the South West of England, in the United Kingdom. From Devon, to be precise. Did you know that Devon has a flag? It’s named after St Petroc, who (according to Wikipedia) was a prince notable for ministering in Devon and Cornwall. Here’s a fun fact – the flag was adopted following a competition in 2003 and gained official recognition from Devon County Council in 2006. The colours are quite well known in Devon – I study at the University of Exeter and the sports teams all wear these colours. Anyway, lesson over! Here are my nails:

31 Day Challenge Day 27: Inspired By Artwork

This was a fun theme. These nails are a little Edward Monkton, a little bit Keith Haring, and very largely drawing from 10 Blank Canvases. I love her nails!

31 Day Challenge Day 26: Inspired By A Pattern

In contrast to the last few days, I’ve known what I was doing for this theme ever since I first started the challenge. In fact, this may have been the pattern that convinced me to try out this daft idea to begin with. It’s from a great bag that my mum had on holiday for toting around her beach gear. I’m not sure now why I took a picture of the pattern but didn’t take a picture of the whole bag.

31 Day Challenge Day 25: Inspired By Fashion

Er… I had no idea what to do for this. I looked at some pictures from recent London Fashion Week, but I was uninspired. So I looked around my own collection, and settled on a trend that I really love – the Peter Pan collar. (That’s the technical term for those really cute rounded collars that have been around for the last year.) A great excuse to get my Models Own Fruit Pastels out again!

31 Day Challenge Day 24: Inspired By A Book

I struggled with an idea for this theme. I read a lot of books, but they’re mostly on Kindle and they’re mainly tacky romance… My favourite book is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, but I get a lot of ridicule for that and the only thing I could have painted on my nails would have been buildings and we all would have been bored by that… maybe next year. So I went through the small collection of physical books that sit on my bookcase (the rest are all in storage, sob) and picked the one with the most interesting cover. Which led me here:

31 Day Challenge Day 23: Inspired By A Movie

Can you guess which movie I chose from these nails?

Hopefully there’ll be a geek or two out there…. Scott Pilgrim vs The World.

This is one of my top ten favourite films ever. It describes itself as an Epic of Epic Epicness and is one of those rare films that actually delivers, in my opinion.

31 Day Challenge Day 22: Inspired By A Song – All Eyes by Post War Years

This was always going to be an excuse to showcase someone totally underrated. My favourite band for some time now has been Post War Years. Not just an awesome sound – a really great bunch of guys. I’ve hung around to say hi after a few gigs and they’re so lovely! They have a really exciting electronic sound – their use of multiple layers to build up an effect is amazing. I guarantee you this song will be an earworm. My choice for this challenge is…

All Eyes.

See what I did there? 😉

31 Day Challenge Day 21: Inspired By A Color – Purple Rain

I was in Tesco earlier in the week and couldn’t help looking at the make up section. I picked up three polishes at 29p each. They’re Tesco own brand All About Nails and I’ve never used them or heard of them before but come on – polish for £0.29. I’d be mad not to. One of them has the catchy name of Purple Rain, which is a lovely deep glossy deep purple shade. I could have used it for my Inspired By A Song but I already have that one lined up so I thought I’d do it for this instead. I took some liberties with my inspiration but hopefully you can see how I’ve interpreted the rain bit, right?

31 Day Challenge Day 20: Water Marble

Water marble gets a lot of bad press. When I was looking for tutorials and inspiration I found a lot of people who hate water marbling. I’d never tried it before so I was nervous. I watched a bunch of videos, got my room temperature cup of water, lined up my new Sinful Colors polishes… and totally failed. I tried it about 7 or 8 times and all I got was a mess and a load of bubbles.

So once I’d collected myself I watched the videos again for details I may have missed and then I gave it another go. And I got this: