Challenges, Stripers, Art Fail

I decided I was going to try my hand at the 31 Day Challenge, starting today.   I likely won't do a prompt each day, every other day or every 3 days seems more reasonable to me.  Why am I doing this?  Well, I tend to get stuck in a rut with things and I figured this would force me to step out of my comfort zone and do new things (new to me, at least).



Day 1 is Red.  I looove reds on nails.  I was just going to do a nice and simple red with a flakie top coat as in the picture below.  This is 3 coats of Color Club Berry & Bright topped with a thin coat of Color Club Snowflakes.  I tried to get a good picture of the holographic nature of Snowflakes but failed. :(

Then I decided that since this is supposed to be a challenge that I should really do something else on top of them.  With the flakies and the shiny red I thought it would be a good time to try my hand at the Monarch wing design.  I should say that nail art that does not involve stamping, dotting tools or tape really intimidates me and I avoid it.  I've never used a striper before, never really have done anything free-hand.  But I broke out the StripRite in black and attempted to draw on the wings.  To say I'm not happy with the result would be an understatement - to me it is utterly fail.  But, I shall post it anyway.

I guess it could have been worse.  Hopefully I can come up with something better for Day 2 - Orange.