Zoo nails

Having a somewhat childish motive on my nails makes me happy. Yes, I'm easily amused, but to be sat at your computer and suddenly realizing that you've got a zoo dancing over the keyboard is pretty amazing. 

I can't remember what it was that triggered the idea of a zoo. It might have been that I wanted to do the pandas again and that I came across the idea of the giraffe somewhere. 

Which one is your favourite?

Social media & operating systems

As you might often notice, I try to get my inspiration for designs for upcoming events or trends. Especially now when I, for some reason, haven't got that much random inspiration the events become even more important and one of the bigger one in my calendar was a hackathon with work.

How do you make a design for a hackathon? The idea of using different logos related to tech has crossed my mind and now seemed like a great time. Said and done, one of the categories at the hackathon was social medial so the left hand nails were decorated with well known logos: facebook, twitter (a very fat twitter bird), reddit, a black&white instagram and Google. Yes, Google was in this case counted to social media. 

The right hand had three easy choices: the Linux penguin, the Windows flag and the Apple apple. I wasn't very keen on breaking the OS trend I had going and it took me a while before I remembered that I could use the Android alien too. Sure, the apple and the little Android-man weren't the best, but that detail on right was easier said then done. For my thumb I opted for Cisco, a hardware company which is mainly known for their routers and switches, or in dummy terms the hardware that the Internet uses.

 Main conclusion from this? If you've got time and patience you can get far in nail art with a toothpick! Yes, it's far from perfect but in most cases you can guess from the context.

Dripping colours

Bright colours, playful with a dripping effect. All details done with a toothpick, make sure to have patience for getting the shapes right!

Roses, roses, roses

Summer, I finally got summer! After some chaotic weeks in England it was finally time for my holiday back in Sweden. One of the best ways of telling myself that I now had more time was to sit down and do a proper, more detailed design since a few weeks back. However, I lacked some creativity and it look a while looking at the surrounding garden before the roses came to mind.

I've admired this design many times before, at first glance it looks rather tricky. But, looking closer, it's not that much harder than most others I've done. My biggest challenge this time was to find the right shades of pink!

To make this rose, find a base colour and make blobs for the flower. Then take a slightly darker shade and draw three lines - two along the edges (but only part-way) and then one which makes a small twist in the middle. Finally, using green paint a leaf on each side. Voila, you've got a rose!

Red/gold halfmoon design

Earlier during the summer (or, the calendar definition of summer at least, it doesn't seem like England's weather agrees) a few of us went to an event with a fairly strict dress code of  knee-long dresses and hats for the ladies and morning tails for the gentlemen. I went for the brave move of a bright red hat to go with my nougat dress, picking up the colour of the red beadles. Since as much as possible was meant to be matching, the nail design had to be well thought through. Best way of approach? Ask reddit.

I started off with lying out potential colours next to the dress to see if anything stood out. So far I'd been thinking about a half moon design or the simpler ring finger design but wasn't entirely convinced. Thanks to all of you who came with suggestions, it definitely helped!

Return of dots & entry of nail caviar

Dots, dots, dots. They're a very good fall back option when you're out of ideas and can be varied in both layout and colours, essentially giving you an unlimited number of designs. The first picture below is a combination I've used before but this time in a more stamp-like pattern. I failed completely at taking a picture of the full design, so I only had this one with my (now broken) iPod.

This second design is a bit more elaborate. I was given quite a bit of nail caviar for my birthday but I've been a little sceptic to how long it will last (especially given my current training schedule). On the the other hand, since I now had so much of it I figured I should give it a try. I couldn't find a colour from my collection which matched the caviar perfectly, so opted for three shades of blue. Luckily, the dark blue has aged enough that it's not as runny as fresh polishes are, meaning that I was able to make some smaller dots with it.

I have yet to see how long this caviar lasts, if it's good enough I may start using it more often.

Super Mario

I'm going through a phase of failing at taking pictures of my nails. I'll often do it just as I've finished, but before I've cleaned up but then forget to do it before they fall apart. You'll just have to bear with it :)

Super Mario design was something that we first came up with as an interior thing. Gema, a friend of ours and I ended up browsing the internet for how to furnish a flat in all gaming/geek related stuff and there were some brilliant Super Mario pieces. Since I don't really have the money to carry the project through, it became a nail art inspiration instead.

It's been on my to-do-list since we started planning our Avenger designs and I've occasionally browsed through what others have done. Some projects are well impressive, partly because they've got such long nails and can fit a lot more.  I loved all the mushrooms and couldn't resist including Mario & Luigi (the moustaches were surprisingly hard!). I didn't feel I had the accuracy to include the monster flowers or make a tube look pretty, so ended up with a turtle shell and the chance-box's question mark.

Unfortunately, the nude I was using didn't last for very  long. It was a shame, since I was rather pleased with the final result. Apart from the moustaches (which I now realised would be much easier with a nail art pen) there weren't too many details to fiddle with, so do give it a try!