Halloween eyes

Halloween! Last year we both did zombie type nails with spiderwebs but somehow this year the day crept up on me. I've planned to do this design for a while and it seemed well suited to the holiday. The original inspiration, from Wah! Nails, used a darkish blue for the iris, but I felt the green one gave a better contrast. In hindsight, I think it would have been cooler to stick to green but that will have to be a note for next time!

Happy Halloween folks!

Easter Nails

Easter is approaching, and how can I possibly resist doing a holiday themed design? Add to it that I've been stuck with coursework for a long time and hence hasn't done anything exciting in design way.

Originally, I was planning on doing a few Easter Eggs and a chicken, however I went through some other designs and I couldn't resist falling for all these spring colours. Sweden is currently offering a lovely spring sun (unlike London, from what I've heard) so it fits well. For details about the different designs read the picture captions; my right hand is a mirror of the left with some shuffling around of the colours.

Background: 'Blue Ice' from Gina Tricot, white is from Natural Collection, black eyes are drawn with a Sharpie whilst the pink details are done with a toothpick and a mix of the white and Barry M's Pink.

Turquoise from Technic (in a set that was given to me), pale purple is Shade no 11 from 2true, yellow from Barry M and coral is 'Tropic Island' from Lasting Fix. Details on the egg (ie the edges) were done with a toothpick, dots were made with a pin and tiny details on the chicken with a Sharpie.

Happy Easter everyone!

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! ^_^

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!

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.