New Year's Eve Design

A while ago, I came across a tutorial on how to make explosion designs using tape. I had seen similar designs before, but not dared to try them, it required higher accuracy than I could achieve. But the tape version could work! 

As you can see below it did, but a finger of warning should probably be raised. It is time consuming, and not the easiest thing. Line up two films to watch in the meantime (especially when waiting for layers to dry). Usually the second and third layer of a nail design can be done whilst the previous layer is as good as try, but if you're putting tape on you need to make sure it's properly finished. In addition to this, you need to cut the tape pieces to good sizes and then arrange them (which proved harder than I thought). 

If you look at the picture below, the one to the far left is slightly different to the others. Rather than trying to keep the underlying colour as the centre of the explosion, I tried placing the tape in such a way that it was only the smaller area that was painted. It was a little easier, and I think it turned out better too. For the thumb I'd given up on designing explosions, and went for a zick-zack pattern which was later copied for the left hand.

Explosions for New Year's Eve instead of fireworks

Zick-zack 1

Zick-Zack

Happy New Year everyone!

God Jul!

I've already done two Christmas designs (you can see them here) to celebrate it during last week of term, but now when Christmas is really approaching, and my fingers were covered in a more generic design, it was time to do a new one.

The little Santa you can see to the right has become a given one, and I also suspect that my Grandpa will love it. It's not too hard to make, apart from the belt with the buckle. All the details were done with a cocktail stick (as usual).

Now, I couldn't have Santa on all nails, so I decided to opt for white and golden pattern. On three of the remaining 8 nails I made an attempt for big snowflakes. They're not as good as the ones Gema did, but they turned out better than my previous attempt. On the other nails I went for various patterns of golden dots, which had varying result. If I did it again I would probably opt for a golden and silver snowfall, similar to the winter design linked previously.

I've got some plans for New Years Eve, so I will be back once those are done. Until then, Merry Christmas!

Feliz Navidad ^_^

Charlotte has done a fantastic range of christmassy nails!

So the pressure was on to try my hand (no pun intended) at christmas designs. 

-Snowflakes-

I received some christmas presents early and someone who loves me very much bought me some amazing holographic nail polishes. They are incredible.

On my sister I used a holographic blue polish as the background/base coat and then added a snow flake design on top of it. Am happy with the overall effect that is given and love the glimmers of hologram that peek through the snowflakes.

On myself  I liked the idea of christmas lights, so I used a holographic nude/golden polish as the background/base coat and then added the christmas lights in neon green, yellow and red.

-Christmas Lights-

Hope you have a Merry Christmas! ^_^

mi tesoro | my precious

Being quite a big JRR Tolkien fan, I was over the moon about the production of this movie and the fact of it being split into three instalments. Some of you may have grumbled about it getting dragged out and  the money making aspect, however I am excited about the idea of relevant appendices, mini-stories being injected and a high level of detail.

While awaiting for the release I decided to do a hobbit theme nail design and therefore went ahead with the one ring design. Written in Elvish but of Mordor Language is

"One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

 One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

Which I thought was highly appropriate with the ring being firstly discovered in this movie.

-One Ring-

Used a metallic gold for the base/background colour and a combination of a black nail art pen and permanent black marker to write the elvish across my nails. It was a tricky challenge but definitely worth it!

I was also able to write my name in elvish on my little fingers (pinkies) since I had some space left over and even threw in Tolkiens logo. Was rather happy with the outcome and was rather satisfied with the movie. The script writer had done a decent job and even kept some of the rhymes which added some charm.

Looking forward to watching the next instalment next year and trying my hand at a hobbit nail art design then too ^_^

Christmas

As the Swede I am, I really missed a proper winter in the December London. Solution? Create winter on your nails. I found the snowman design online, but it then had a silver background. I used silver for one hand, but think that dark blue turned out better. In order to make the snow I used mainly white but then added a few flakes where I'd mixed silver and white for a softer touch.

Approaching end of term, and hence a number of Christmas events, I started elaborating with holiday designs. I went through two - one a bit more subtle than the other. Picking a favourite is up to you!

Mixed Designs part 2

De Stijl - Design from WAH! Nails

Joining in on Movember

Celebrating the Hobbit

Mixed designs part 1

Bonfire night & Halloween

The good thing about holidays and celebrations is that they give inspiration to what you can paint. For bonfire night we both attempted fireworks (where Gema's turned out better, especially with the "caviar" addition). When doing fireworks, it can be really tricky to make it look like something is happening, and all the tiny middle steps and colour swapping can be quite tedious. Using glitter polishes also helps, even if they're a lot harder to remove later.

For Halloween we had very similar designs again, at least for Frankenstein and spider webs. Charlotte attempted a skull and some chains whilst Gema went for dripping pattern and a Dracula.

It's all about the animals

I went through an animal phase, I never knew there would be that many simple designs for animals! I think pandas and maybe penguins are personal favourites, and they're not too hard either. For all the small details I've used cocktail sticks, but for the panda's ears, feet and arms I used a tops instead to get a more even and rounder effect.

Early on

Above are some of the earlier designs. On the very top is the Union Jack, celebrating the Diamond Jubilee  followed by the Swedish flag, made for the European Championships in football. Below that you can find Power rangers and one of the many PACMAN versions Charlotte ended up doing.

Who are we?

The start of a blog requires an introduction. Hello visitor! I'm glad you made it here! We're two girls, studying at Imperial who, along side our fairly technical studies, share the hobbies fencing and nail art.

So why create a blog? The Internet is already crowded with blogs of this type anyhow. Simple, we want to see what we've done. In other words, let the fun begin! We'll start by putting up some of our old designs, so we've got somewhere to start.