31 Day Nail Challenge: Week 5 - Blue Nails

I can't believe it's already week 5 of the nail challenge! It just goes to show how time flies!
I thought I was going to love this week a lot more than I actually do. I adore blue nails and have several different shades of blue in my stash. The nail art I chose though was very fiddly, but I was determined to see it through and I did manage to do what I wanted.. I just don't love it as much as I thought.. maybe it's just the pictures that I don't love, it was so hard to capture them!
(EDIT I took some better pictures and I like this nail art a whole lot more! YAY!)
Here are my nails!

I'm a bit (a lot) of a geek and a gamer.. So I chose to do World of Warcraft nails =3
There are two factions (teams) in WoW, Alliance and Horde. Horde is red, Alliance is blue so I chose to do the Alliance symbol, which is a gold lion face on a blue background. Here is the original symbol:

I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out but the design doesn't stand out against the blue as much as I would have liked. They look a whole lot better in person too, the shine from the topcoat really takes away from the design in the pictures. Also, the topcoat kind of ruined my favourite one lol never mind, I'll deal!
The technique I used for this was tricky. I painted my whole nail with No7 Pool Side Blue, then painted 10 nail shaped blobs onto a sheet of plastic (I used the shrink wrap from a CD). When this was dry I used a small paintbrush to paint out the lion design onto the blue blobs on the plastic using Barry M Gold Foil. This was tricky, it's not an easy design!! Once they were totally dry I peeled them off the plastic, trimmed them so that they would fit on my nails and stuck them down using a thin layer of blue. The whole thing was so fiddly and complicated but I never would have been able to do this design on my left hand otherwise. I sealed it all with topcoat to stop it coming loose.
Here are the designs on the plastic before I transferred them! Pretty clever huh!

Gemx decided to go for a glittery sea blue! Here's her design and what she had to say:

"I wanted to go for a 'under the sea' look for the blue challenge. I love blue polish and my favourite is Orly Halley's Comet, it's a duochrome with flecks of gold, green and blue. I used one coat of Halley's Comet and added a coat of Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe which is blue based with green and blue glitter. I really like them both together, you can still pick up the duochrome underneath Across the Universe in the light."

I had my hands on Across the Universe but put it back... needless to say I'm regretting my decision! What a gorgeous combination! I love how the glitter is totally encapsulated by the blue <3

That's it for this week, I hope you liked the blue theme! Make sure you check out Alli's design too! Next week is Violet Nails so stay tuned!

-Leishasaurus