OMD Rather Awesome Challenge: Day 2 Blue- Dotted Blue Frenchie

Welcome to day 2 of the Oh Mon Dieu! It’s the Rather Awesome 31 Day Challenge Giveaway!!  The theme of day 2 is BLUE. 😀

First off I’d like to sincerely thank everyone for all the birthday wishes yesterday!  I had such a great day and all your warm comments really helped make the day feel special for me.  So thank you!  Nail bloggers are some of the sweetest and most encouraging people I’ve ever met!  You all are great… thank you for being a part of my life!

 Now that all the mushiness is out of the way 😀 let’s get to my blue design!  I started with one thick coat of a baby blue cream called Take Me To Your Chateau by Color Club.  When that was dry I taped off my tips using painters tape and I applied some dark blue using AVON Forget-Me-Not Blue.  I slowly removed the tape and was pretty impressed with my light and dark blue french mani!  But why stop there?  I then embellished the design with a dotting tool to create more interest.  I really like the monochromatic effect of the two blues in this frenchie- it’s pretty simple but also fun and retro.  I hope you like it. 😀

 I’m geared up to see the other blue manis now!  I really get a kick out of checking the inlinkz for updates!  You can view them here:

 2. Blue :

Porcelain-Look Nails

Hi y’all!  Did anyone watch the finale of The Office last night?  It made me laugh and cry- what a great finish to an awesome series!  I can’t believe it’s over!  Now I might have to track down some prior seasons of the British series to make sure I get my Office fix!

I painted my nails while watching the finale and I used one of my new favorite polishes from AVON- Forget-Me-Not Blue.  This shade is amazing!  It’s a one-coater and dries pretty fast.  From far away it looks like navy blue, but up close you see some teal shimmer.  The formula is thick and opaque and it’s also perfect for nail art.  In fact, I’ve been very impressed with all my recent avon nail polishes lately.  I’ll be putting an order in with my avon lady soon for some of their new holographic polishes from a line called ‘cosmic’ .  Can’t wait for those babies to arrive!

Some of my other recent purchases include a 26- plate set of Cheeky Stamping Plates.  Cheeky is rumored to have some of the largest designs on the market which is ideal for ladies with long or wide nails.  I love my cheeky set but deciding on a design is so much harder now that I have a good selection of plates to choose from lol!  I decided to go with this floral design using CH44.  I used Konad special polish in white and I like how it looks like porcelain when paired with the blue.  Stamping- I love you!  What did us nail fanatics do before stamps came out???

Petal Impressions Gradient

Hey nail lovers!  I have a gradient manicure to share with you for Day 26 of the Nail Art Challenge! I did this mani in a hotel room, late at night, without proper tools… so hopefully it’s still craftynail-blog-worthy!

Last month I bought a bunch of AVON Nailwear Pro+ polishes from their recent Petal Impressions collection.  So I tried a gradient with with the blue, green and nude colors from this shimmery collection.  The polishes are called:

Forget-Me-Not-Blue (blue)

Garden Green (green)

Sweet Pea Dreams (nude)

  Even though these polishes look great paired together- the champagne color is a lot lighter than the blue and green.  I figured it could be a challenge to get Sweet Pea to blend in naturally.  So I decided to make my gradient heavier with the Sweet Pea polish just to throw off the balance of the three colors.  I only reveal a bit of the blue and green and I like the way they pop!  It looks cool in real life! Too bad my cuticles are a wreck though!  I have been moisturizing a lot while out of town this week for work- but they have still gotten really rough and dry!  In my luggage I packed my normal lotion and my rarely used tube of Onsen Cuticle Conditioner.   I bought this Onsen stuff in Las Vegas from a high pressure sales rep in 2011.  It was pretty expensive but it came with a buffer, a file, and a makeup bag so I thought WHY NOT.  Well, I never really ended up using it religiously.  Until this week.  And I found out– it kinda sucks!  It’s too watery, it doesn’t feel very moisturizing, it just rubs right in and seems to evaporate and disappear.  My cuticles are in worse shape than they’ve been in months.  In these pics I’m trying to cover up a hangnail- but it hurts!  I just typed up a negative review on their website.  I’m curious to see if they approve and publish it cuz they haven’t yet!  Now that I’m back at home- I’m going back to my oil and LUSH cuticle butter!  I guess I will slather some good stuff on my cuticles tonite and try to enjoy my pretty gradient.  Hopefully I’ll be back to normal soon lol!

Rainbow Nails

The theme today is RAINBOWS!  It’s day 7 of the 30 Day Nail Challenge for April and I’m happy to use a bunch of polishes all at once!  My AVON order just came in this week so I’m psyched to try out my new yellow, green and blue!  Here’s what I used for this nail art:

Zoya ♥ Carmen

AVON ♥ Orange Creamsicle

AVON ♥ Inspire

AVON ♥ Garden Green

AVON ♥ Forget-Me-Not Blue

OPI ♥ Dutch ‘Ya Just Love OPI?

NYC ♥ Black Lace (and a striper brush to apply the accents)

Hope you’re all having a great weekend!  My weekend has officially plateaued- now that my nails are done I really need to start preparing my federal taxes.  What a downer!