piCture pOlish Blog/Insta Fest 2014

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I'm beyond excited to be sharing today's post: it's piCture pOlish's Blog/Insta Fest day, and I have the great honor of participating this year!

If you haven't heard of the Blog/Insta Fest before, it's a yearly event sponsored by Australian nail polish brand piCture pOlish where selected bloggers share swatches and nail art featuring the company's amazing products. And, this year, we're all featuring Nail Vinyls, too!

This is a long and picture-heavy post, so all the details are behind the cut. Please read on to see my contributions to this year's fest!

Purple & Orange Sparkly Striped Nail Art

I guess I need to accept that purple & orange is a color combo I'm really growing to love. I never would have guessed this could happen, given my lifelong aversion to orange, but here we are! I paired purple & orange (and teal) for my braided manicure a while ago, and now I'm back on the purple & orange train again. I just can't get enough!

Teal Butterfly Wing Nail Art

I see butterfly wing nail art everywhere and always admire it, so one day recently when I was in the mood to spend a good chunk of time on a design, I finally gave it a try. This is by no means breaking new ground here, but I did at least attempt to go with a color palette I personally hadn't seen before!

Garnished Galaxy

I really, desperately wanted to do some Guardians of the Galaxy nails before seeing the movie over the weekend. (It's amazing, by the way! Go see it!) I racked my brain for ages trying to come up with a concept that would be both a recognizable representation of the movie/characters AND doable for my skill level, but I couldn't come up with anything. I love the Guardians to bits, but they just don't have super iconic (and nail-art-friendly) logos or costumes like the Avengers & other superheroes. In the end, I went with some embellished galaxies and called it a day—I had a movie to go see, after all!

Mod is the New Black

A handful of weeks ago, I entered a giveaway on Instagram to win one of Shine & Sheen's awesome nail art kits. There were tons of entries, but amazingly, I won! (Thank you, Shine & Sheen and Life is Better Polished, for holding such a great giveaway!) I couldn't believe my luck—but even amid all the excitement of winning, I knew right away which kit I wanted to try when they contacted me: the Mad for Mod kit.