Sponsored by China Glaze, Nailene, and wowsocool.com

I am so excited and beyond happy to announce the Beautopia Nail Art Contest! Hopefully in time we'll consider this the First Annual Nail Art Contest, but for now I am just thrilled to officially get started. I originally planned for it to start on April 1, but it's obviously starting a little early. I am so happy to offer some great prizes from amazing sponsors. Prize packs for the Grand Prize, and 1st and 2nd Runners-Up are below the rules.

If you're a fellow blogger, a regular reader, or you just happened upon this page, we welcome you to enter. Below is an outline of the how to enter:

• This contest will run until midnight Friday, April 30th.
• You may enter as many designs as you like
• Send entries to BeautopiaNailArtContest@gmail.com with photo of your nail art and the list of products used to create it. Make sure to put "Nail Art Contest" in the subject line.
• Please name your design and include it in the email.
• Contest is open internationally unless your country prohibits shipments from the US
• By submitting your nail art design to the contest, you're giving your permission for us to post it on Beautopia (with credit to you of course)

When you submit your designs, feel free to include a tutorial and we might post it here on Beautopia. I know that a lot of you have blogs and do tutorials already, so if you want to share it with us that would be great. Keep in mind that you can do the nail art on others, maybe a friend or family member, and it will count. Also, you may choose to make your designs on a set of false nails and this is also acceptable. The main thing is that we want to see how creative you can be, and how you can inspire others with your designs. So many of you, I know, already are doing nail art, or getting more into it, and I hope that this contest will inspire us all to be even more creative.

Prizes below may be added to while the contest is going on, so check back for any updates!! I'm going on vacation and who knows what kinds of fun things I might find to add to the pot!

Good luck to ALL who enter, I can't wait to see what you all can do! Also remember to check out the sites of the amazing sponsors who made the prizes unbelievable! China Glaze, Nailene, and wowsocool.com!! I am so happy to be able to have prizes from companies whose products I use myself and recommend to you.

GRAND PRIZE:
Full set (12) of China Glaze Up & Away Collection
Full set (6) of China Glaze Khrome Collection
$50 Gift Certificate to WowSoCool.com (not pictured)
China Glaze Ink Nail Decals 
Nailene French Manicure Tip Pen
Body by Brigitte Body Wax Kit 
Nail Art Carousel
Loose Glitter in Emerald
Package of gold metal studs
Package of square gold glitter

1st Runner Up :
China Glaze Spontaneous
China Glaze Code Orange
China Glaze Passion
China Glaze Ink Decals
China Glaze No-Chip Topcoat 
China Glaze Calcium Gel Fortifier
Nailene So Real and Couture Nails
Gold striping tape
Loose Glitter in Multi Color
Assorted rhinestones
Assorted decals by That's It? and Nailene
Gold Nuggeting Foil
Body by Brigitte Body Wax Kit

2nd Runner Up:
China Glaze It's Poppin'
China Glaze Ravishing, Dahling
China Glaze Platinum Pearl
China Glaze Ridge Filler
China Glaze Non-Yellowing Topcoat
China Glaze Ink Decals
Nailene So Natural Nails
Decals by Thats It?
Assorted Laser Striping
Emerald Rhinestones
Body By Brigitte Body Wax Kit

China Glaze Millennium is the absolute BEST silver polish to use for Konad, in my humble opinion. While the China Glaze Romantiques frosty finish is amazing for Konad, the two polishes I've got out of the Khromes collection are even better. They cure without a brush-mark to be seen and are highly reflective. When used as a stamp, they make such a crisp and dramatic line. I applied the houndstooth pattern from Konad plate m63 using Millennium over China Glaze Recycle, which is a slightly warm-toned grey. In most lights there wasn't much contrast, but in indoor low lighting the silver design was very prominent. While outside, the grey base appears a bit lighter and the only real contrast is in the finishes.

Click for more photos!

For vacation, I had originally recreated the French mani with pink and white hibiscus flowers that I did earlier this month , but in the cleaning frenzy that usually leads up to a vacation for me, I totally ruined them :( So I decided to do something more travel-friendly, and more, well... me! So I took China Glaze 2NITE from the OMG collection and used Konad plate m79 to stamp metallic silver China Glaze Millennium clouds over it. The result of the chrome on holo is amazing in person. The silver clouds seem to be 3D. The almost float on the blue holographic background and as I move my hands the clouds seem sort of like they're moving against the background.

Click for another photo

Our hometown WVU Mountaineer basketball team are in the Elite Eight, so I had to celebrate and support the boys for their game tomorrow night. So I used China Glaze Passion as a base and then used OPI DS Fantasy and Konad plate m78 to make this design . The blue is a bit more navy in person, which works out lovely. I also thought the stamp looked sort of like the WV "logo" with the W sitting on the V.

Click for another photo

I went into Sally Beauty on Wednesday night to get a backup of China Glaze Millenium, my go-to silver polish for Konad-ing. I was also hoping to find 2030 still on the shelves, but no luck. I did, however, find Metallic Muse which is a minty green sort of metallic polish from the same Khrome collection as Millenium. I brought it home and tried to figure out what I wanted to do with it first, and I started to imagine it over Essie Mint Candy Apple, so that's what you see here. Three coats of the Essie and then Konad plate m63 with China Glaze Metallic Muse made this simple design. What I like about matching a shiny metallic over a similarly colored creme polish base is that while in some lights, the contrast in finish is very dramatic, in others it's very subtle and you can't even tell there is a design. It's very evident in these flash photos, but in person it's quite a chameleon.

These gold studs are available for $1 for about 33 pieces at dollarnailart.com. I applied them off center in a line down each nail to the black Color Club polish while it was still tacky, and than as always sealed it with Seche Vite topcoat. I had originally tried using the studs as an almost French-tip type thing but my nail curves far too much and they didn't really work because these are quite flat. I didn't have any luck bending them either. But either way, I dig the gold studs on patent leather look.

What say you lot? Would you try metal studs on your nails? Click for another pic

One week from today, the Beautopia Nail Art Contest will officially begin receiving entries. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen a few tweets about this but I've not let the cat completely out of the bag... Until now.

Starting on April 1st, and running all month long, you can submit photos of your nail art to be entered to win some awesome prizes. You can enter as many designs as you like and it will be open to international friends. You don't have to have a blog, the only requirement is creativity! Use whatever sorts of products you like.

The Grand Prize alone will be worth nearly $200 and include amazing prizes from China Glaze, WowSoCool.com, Nailene and more, plus some fun things I've picked out for you. So get your creative juices flowing because the contest officially begins in one week, on April 1! All details, rules, and prizes will be posted then. I am so excited to see what everyone comes up with!

For basically a first attempt, this didn't turn out so badly. I used Gold Crush foil from dollarnailart.com for this manicure. I put a coat of China Glaze Passion on first, then applied an even coat of the foil adhesive over it and let it dry. Then taking small nail-sized pieces of the foil, I applied the film to the nails. Some still had bald spots, and this is where the base coat of similarly-colored polish comes in handy, but I took a part of the foil that still had some film on it and applied it to the bald spots and the adhesive picked it up for a better finish. Then I used a coat of Orly Glosser over it. Using a fast dry topcoat will make it wrinkle up (which in some cases is kind of cute) so a simple slow-drying topcoat is perfect. It will still shrink and wrinkle just a bit, but as it dries it will relax back out.

The gold isn't the most flattering shade on me, but the flimsy nature of this foil seemed like it would be the easiest to start with. It definitely was easier than some of the other foils I tested out before this manicure.

I wanted to try this as an alternative to Minx manicures since I don't really know of a salon very close that does it. I'm sure it doesn't compare, Minx supposedly has a completely smooth finish and lasts a lot longer than foils. These foils don't last as long as a traditional manicure, but you get 5 feet of foil from dollarnailart for, well, $1. Not bad. Plus if you have patience, you really can make it look nice. Either way it's a far cry from traditional nail enamel manicures.

So what do you think of foils? Have you tried them before? Are you interested in trying them?

DollarNailArt.com haul

Recently, I've gotten more into nail art, so I placed a dollarnailart.com order to try out a few new things. In the photo above the items you see cost about $40 shipped. I ordered everything from foils to rhinestones, metal studs to pearls, gold nuggeting foil to glitter. I love it all, and in fact there's some stuff in there for the winners of next month's nail art contest!

I'll show you some of the items and tell you a bit about them, but I'll describe them all in more detail when I start posting my manicures with them.

Click to see more!