piCture pOlish Blog Fest 2013

Celebrating the year of the blogger.

Welcome to piCture pOlish blog fest 2013. It's the year of the blogger! Hey...that's me! I'm so honoured to have been chosen to participate this year. Jules and I are HUGE personal fans of piCture pOlish and own many of the colours from their amazing range. And with such a great theme this year - create your most amazing nail art -  it wasn't hard to get inspired. I thought long and hard about my style as a nail artist, and with a quick swipe back through my Instagram account it was blatantly obvious...I love a good stripe and I love piCture pOlish!

PPBF is an annual event run by piCture pOlish to showcase their exciting new shades. All across the world bloggers post on the same day at the same time about PP....so exciting! 2013 is the first year DQN has been involved in PPBF. I cant wait to go and look at everyone's posts to see all the beautiful colours PP has in their current collection used to create amazing nail art. 

piCture pOlish are Aussie indie polish makers who have shown great support for bloggers both here in Australia and overseas. They understand the power of "the nail network" and customer recommendations to spread the news about their high quality polishes. This years blog fest awards are a too good to be true prize - create a collaboration shade of nail polish to be released in 2014! Imagine having a nail polish inspired by you and your blog......ZOMG! MAJOR! So stick around to find out about the shades I got, a tutorial for how to recreate this funky striped nail art and how you can vote for Drama Queen Nails to receive an award in PPBF 2013.

This year participants received 3 nail polishes from PP to use with black or white to create unique nail art that reflected their style as a nail artist and blogger and allowed the beautiful polishes to shine through. The 3 gorgeous colours I got to play with: Sea Jewel, Whimsy and Sunset. 

Sea Jewel is a collaboration shade created with Anuika from Waki Laki. Her inspiration was sea glass and a beautiful pair of earrings. Its a luminous green metallic textured shade with silver particles. The formula is devine, the glitter spreads evenly for full coverage and opacity in 2 coats. My favourite of the bunch...its luscious!

Whimsy is another collaboration shade created with Lindsey from Neverland Nail Blog. Her inspiration was a favourite blue dress with a touch of gold bling. Whimsy is a blue creme polish with a hint of gold shimmer. I used this colour as the base for my nail art. Its a lovely vibrant sky blue. I used 2 coats for opacity and it applied well with no streaking.

The final colour is Sunset. An amazing coral orange neon jelly. It is so neon it was impossible to capture its true colour even in direct sunlight. It has a pink undertone and is an extremely striking colour. I used 3 coats on my ring finger for full opacity. The formula was again flawless. Neons can be finicky  to apply, however because this polish is sheer it doesn't streak or pull like a creme would. I really wanted to feature this colour without it taking over my design, so that's when the idea of creating custom coloured studs popped into my head....for a little pop of colour! The name sunset also really inspired this art, rays of the sun coming from a bright orange point!

Fans of DQN will know that I often use my striping brushes to create a whole range of designs but I couldn't go past converging lines to showcase my colours. To recreate my blog fest nails these are the things you will need. 3 colours; one glitter, one creme and one neon. Black and white striping polishes or a medium sized striping brush and some light coloured studs. So lets start with the stripes.

1. Place a dot in the centre of your nail down near your cuticle.  This is the anchor point for your stripes. 2. Do 2 strokes to create a black V shape by moving your striping brush from the dot outwards to the tip of your nail. 3. Add a white stripe in between the black V but place it closer to one side to allow room to add the glitter stripe. Add 2 more white stripes on the outside of the black V. 4. Add in your glitter stripes. 5. Add one or two more black and white stripes on each side. 6. Go back over your black and white stripes where they collide at the point to neaten them up. 

Now glue on the studs that you want to use to create your custom coloured stud. Use light coloured studs or you wont be able to truly match the shade you are trying to feature as the original stud colour will show through. Silver and gold studs do not work for this technique, the polish doesn't apply evenly or stick well to the surface. 

It is much easier to paint the studs when they are already attached to your nail. So add them to the striped point by sticking on with topcoat or glue.  Allow to dry then use a small brush to colour them in with your polish of choice. I painted these studs with two coats of PP sunset. I then sealed the studs by adding a layer of topcoat to the entire nail.

I hope you have enjoyed this epic blog fest post. Thanks for sticking around to the end. A HUGE thank you to PP for creating and running this great event and for supplying all the participants with 3 beautiful polishes to add to our collections. If you would like to vote for Drama Queen Nails here's how. Head to PPs Pinterest page and look for the 2013 blog fest board. Pin our picture and vote for DQNs stripy look! There are 3 awards this year: 

• 1 x Award - as voted by PP friends and fans
• 1 x Award  - as voted by all (you) participants of Blog Fest 2013
• 1 x Award - as voted by Jules & Megs of piCture pOlish

If you like the look of my three colours or any of the other colours you see during PPBF, head on over to the piCture pOlish website or any of their social media sites for more information on how you can get your hands on these polishes wherever you are in the world via the Network . PP often has great daily deals which you can find on their Everyday Deals page. If you are in Australia check out PPs Shipping information page. Here are the links for PP.

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