Vincent Van Gogh paraphrase

When I finished my internship at the end of this summer my team had got together to arrange a leaving present. They had over the 6 months I spent with them noticed my interest in nail art and decided to give me some proper kit. With better tools than just toothpicks I couldn't resist trying something a little more challenging: Van Gogh paraphrasing!

The idea had crossed my mind after I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam earlier during the year but thought that a toothpick might have been pushing it. With the new pens it felt worth a shot and Google provided plenty of inspiration.

I will admit, they took a long time. Was it worth? Easily. I stuck to only dots on my right hand, but was so pleased with these that I didn't particularly mind.

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!

Dandelions

This is a design which has been in my backlog for a while. In the original inspiration they've used a very pale grey as a background and also managed to get the "leafs" (or what you call the things coming off the flowers) like normal brushstrokes. I, on the other hand, do not have that set of brushes and compensated by trying to make some of the strands slightly bluer.

It's a very calm design, both motive and colour palette. I found it a great work design (for stricter offices than mine maybe, most of my colleagues like pretty much all of my designs and have even come up with various idea). Even looking at it made me calm down a bit, which at times can be quite useful

For the white details I used a toothpick, the black was done with my nail art pen. Base is a Loreal that I've used before - I love the colour but it's still very tricky to work with (requires two layers or more and dries slowly). But as said, great for work if you're looking for something that isn't just single colour.