Cake (and grief counselling) will be available at the end of the challenge period (OMD day 31: recreate your favourite)

Dear readers,

Wow, look at me slacking as soon as the challenge is over! Technically it's not even over since the linkies stay open till tomorrow, so here is my final offering - the recreation of a favourite by someone else. That was difficult, let me tell you! There were so many gorgeous ones, but in the end I decided to pick Craftynail's cupcake mani from day 1 (pink), which showed me right from the beginning that this 31 day challenge would have great nail art!

Since I didn't actually do a day 1 mani, it seemed even more appropriate. And of course it doesn't hurt to remind people once in a while that the cake is a lie. Cupcakes are where it's at. Anyway, this cupcake is great.

I was late with this because I couldn't bear to take down the Calvin & Hobbes mani until Friday (that's nearly five days of wear with no chipping!) and because I've been spending all day swimming and when I get home there isn't enough natural light for good nail art photos. You can already notice the days getting shorter. I wonder what I'll do in winter when the mornings and evenings are dark - I can't very well reschedule my nail art sessions for midday! I don't want to go back to last winter's crappy pictures. Maybe I'll look into a lightbox and/or a daylight lamp... but enough of that, it's summer now. Yeah yeah, winter is coming, but in like, five books, maybe.

Revenge is Suede (and slightly glittery)

So anyway! Cake! Cupcake, that is! The only real changes I made to the mani were the blue wrapper (due to a lack of good brown polishes) and the positioning of the cupcake on my freakishly long nail art nail. Okay, not freakishly long, more like the length I'd like my others to be, which is why I'm keeping it at that length as an incentive to the other nails. Also, the cherry on top looks more like a raspberry. Yum. Like Craftynail I used lots of different polishes, so if you want to know more about any of them, let me know. I will tell you though that only the pink Boulevard de Beauté is "old", the others I purchased in the last couple of months, so I also achieved my personal goal of using only new and/or indie polishes throughout the challenge. The top coats are essence gel look (not pictured - beautiful look but takes forever to dry and even then is soft to the touch) and Lucky 13 Lacquer Revenge is Suede (far right - it adds the matte, glittery look).

This is what I need all my polishes for.

And now for a little recap of the Oh Mon Dieu Rather Awesome 31 Day Challenge, organized by international dream team Brijit's Digits, Craftynail and Eeeek! Nail Polish!: Ladies, you did a fantastic job. The themes were fun and called for a lot of creativity, everything was so well organized, and there was so much beautiful and inspiring nail art from you and so many other participants.

I had so much fun coming up with manis and the nearly daily posting was definitely a challenge as well. Out of 31 days, I missed 6, which is a lot better than I expected. I thought I'd run out of steam after a week or two but the relaxed and fun atmosphere kept me going. Thanks for organising this! Or, in GLaDOS' words: 'This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.' I'm sad to see it end but I'm looking forward to new challenges and to reading the great blogs I discovered through this challenge.

Essence gel look top coat (over Revenge is Suede on the thumb) - delicious but moist

I also see that a few new people started following me during this challenge, which makes me very happy! What can you expect in the next months? Well, probably no daily posting, but my goal is to post 2-3 times a week. I still have a bunch of new indies I haven't shown you yet (some of them I've even already swatched or worked into nail art), so you'll be seeing more geeky and generally strange and unusual nail art (Doctor Who, Sherlock, Firefly), some actual swatch posts (crazy, I know!) and reviews of beauty boxes, which I neglected in July. I hope you'll stick around!

See the other tribute manis below and go to the reference page for all the linkies. Manis are still being added to older ones so it's worth a second look!

31. Recreate your Favourite (by someone else) :

Thanks for a rather awesome challenge, everyone!

The nail newbie (look at me still talking when there's nail art to do)

You just keep on trying till you run out of cake..