Valentine's Day / Halloween Skull manicure!

Since it's October and skulls and skeletons are appearing more frequently on nails this month, I thought I'd share the nails I did this past Valentine's Day (of 2013). It featured tons of skeletons and bones, and was just so creepy and lovely. I think this manicure could easily be appropriate for Halloween as well!

My 2013 Valentine's Day nails:

Thumb: Skeleton's embracing in front of a glittery heart, Pointer: skeleton hand, Middle: Ribs with a glittery heart, Ring: Skull, Pinky: Glittery heart

This was one of my earlier manicures, hence the shaky cell phone image quality. I wish I had taken a better image, but this was the best I could find of the bunch I took. I think you can still see most of the details of the nails. What you can't see is the matte polish I put on top of the bone areas to give them more of a textured and realistic tone. Oh well :/ 

In case you were wondering, my other hand had the exact same design on it, just reversed on each nail. 

What inspired this manicure:

For Valentine's Day, I wanted to try and do a manicure that was different from the usual cutesy subject of Valentine's Day nails -- I didn't want to do lips and I love you's; I wanted to do something more grotesque, that also told a story. 

I remembered a picture I'd seen of an archaeological dig site in Italy, from around 2007. They had uncovered a pair of skeletons curled up holding each other. I thought the image was beautiful and said just as much about love as any other romantic image. 

Inspiration Image. Credit: AP Photo

The closeness with which they hold each other and the obvious passage of time really tugs at my heart. My imagination wanders through what their lives and romance could have been... It was perfect for what I wanted to do.

The Layout:

When I do a really involved manicure, I have gotten into the habit of mapping out the layout on any available piece of scratch paper. This manicure was the beginning of that habit! 

My messy layout and notes on color!

As you can see, the end result did not differ that much from my original layout, save for some minor differences in color placement (see the thumb?). 

Making a layout really helps me decide on placement and color scheme of the whole design. I even swatch colors together on the paper to see if they'd go well together. I recommend this tip to anyone trying to decide how they want to do their designs!

How I did it (sorry, no pictures of this process...Maybe in the future I'll do some tutorials?):

Once I had my layout, I painted all the nails a tan / taupe base color. When that dried, I used a makeup sponge to sponge on a darker brown. 

NOTE: I had entertained the thought of using a texture polish when those types of nail polishes were first beginning to get popular...But I didn't want to go out and buy another nail polish just to do this design. So I improvised as best I could. 

Next, I mixed a custom pink color to create a rose gold for the hearts. I painted this on with a dotting tool, and finished them with a coat of glitter. 

The bones and skeletons started with a base of a very light grey. When that dried, I used white to highlight the high areas, and a darker grey for shadowing. Using the colors in this order helps to give the bones more dimension and shape. I added black for the eye sockets and nose holes. I finished them off with a coat of matte polish, making sure not to cover the black areas, so they retained their glossiness. Doing this helped to add further dimension and to differentiate the different planes of the skull. It also helped to punch out the heart on the nail with ribs! A very useful and fun technique -- I kept rubbing my nails with the bottoms of my fingertips, to feel the texture differences. 

Final thoughts:

This was really fun to do, and the reactions of the people I showed them to were widely varied and sometimes funny. Some quirked their brows, wondering at my sanity, others loved them, and a select few thought that they were really creepy and didn't want to look at my hands until I had something different on them. Hehe.

Thank you for reading!!

Long-awaited Princess Mononoke nails!

Sorry for the long delay between posts -- I was determined to have my next post be Princess Mononoke nails, and I kept getting hung up on how I would layout the design on my nails. Luckily I finally figured it out!

I took inspiration from some of my favorite moments in the movie, and some inspiration came from cover art. As per usual, these took an insane amount of time to paint! But I think the time spent was worth it for these awesome pictures to be on my nails!

Left Hand: Nighttime Forest Spirit (thumb), Daytime Forest Spirit (pointer, middle, ring), and a glow in the dark Kodama (pinky)

Since the subject of the nails on my left hand are different but related to one another, I tried to create a sense of uniformity throughout the nails by having the background colors run in to each other -- The thumb's color bleeds in to the pointer, and the ring finger bleeds in to the pinky.

Side note: The Kodama on my pinky glows in the dark (if you didn't read the caption)!! I couldn't take a good picture of this effect with my camera, but trust me, he glows! I love him <3 p="">

Left Hand: Thumb close up

I was really happy with how the thumb came out on the left hand -- I've been wanting to do the Nighttime Forest Spirit for a long time, and I think this pays respect to the original design. The image was too small to do the swirls inside his body; if I had put them in, you'd lose the detail of the Spirit's body. So I chose to leave them out.

Right Hand: Ashitaka's curse (pinky), angry Ashitaka with his pulsating cursed arm (ring), 'Mononoke' hirigana (middle), 'Hime / Princess' kanji (pointer), San and her wolf brother (thumb)

For the right hand, I tried to be a bit more ambitious with the detail work. The ring finger is probably my favorite out of all the nails I did. Though Ashitaka's face is a little rudimentary looking, all the major details are there, and I think you still get a good idea of the scene this is taken from. The middle and pointer fingers, well... My hirigana and kanji are terrible, but I really like the title screen in the movie, and wanted to include it with this design. So please excuse their terrible brushstrokes! The thumb -- oh man. I tried you guys! Hahaha!

Right Hand: Thumb close up

I'm kind of embarrassed by how the thumb turned out. Granted I think fans of the film will recognize the reference photo, but man, I should have stopped a few blood spatters and line work from where I stopped! I'm still happy that I was able to get the image somewhat decently on to my nail -- What do you all think?

Overall, I am happy with the way these came out -- I got to paint everything I wanted to, and they all turned out pretty decent looking. In the future, I may revisit this theme and try some other layout. We shall see!

Thank you for reading!! :)

Ponyo Nails

I am a HUGE Hayao Miyazaki fan. Whenever I am feeling down or uninspired, I watch one of his movies and feel instantly rejuvenated.

I am also hugely (weirdly?) infatuated with mermaids -- I have been since I was 4 years old and saw 'The Little Mermaid' in theaters. Seeing that movie is also what seriously started me wanting to become an animator.

'Ponyo' is the culmination of these interests for me. Ponyo doesn't have a 'traditional' mermaid form with a scaly tail and fins, but the difference between her human and mermaid form is still very apparent. Ponyo is not my favorite Studio Ghibli movie (that is reserved for Princess Mononoke!), but it is so incredibly sweet and endearing. The energy of the animation and the vibrancy of the colors is breathtaking to watch!!

But enough of my spiel -- On to the nails!

I had a lot of fun doing these. I did a lot of prepping and deciding on what would go on each and every nail -- the result hopefully maintains a little of the movie's energy!  This was also the second manicure where I used a pen to make detailed outlines (see my Astronaut nails). I figured out that putting a matte coat on the nail before I use the pen helps to prevent the ink from bleeding into other parts of the design -- kind of like watercolor. Very interesting phenomenon, but incredibly annoying for precision line work!

Right hand: Each nail features some of my favorite moments from the movie.

The pointer finger turned out a little derpy, but the rest came out exactly how I'd hoped! You can't tell from this angle, but I put matte top coat on each Ponyo where she is out of water -- even on the pinky to show Ponyo's head sticking out of the water! Oh well.

Left Hand: Ponyo's school of sisters!

I am left-handed; I am in no way ambidextrous (though I can write my name with my right hand without it looking horrid). So how did I do my non-dominant hand with so few mistakes? Homemade nail decals.

I took one of those plastic sheet protectors and put a layer of clear nail polish on it and waited for it to dry. I did my design from there; I painted the sisters, waiting for each layer of color to dry, before going on to the next color detail. To do the line work, I painted on a fast drying top coat (Seche Vite) so I had a hard surface to work from. When that was dry, I put on a layer of matte top coat. I used my pen to make the lines, using little strokes, in case the ink still wanted to bleed. When the ink dried, I put on another layer of clear, and let that dry completely. When they are done drying, I peeled them from the plastic sheet protector and trimmed the excess clear polish from the edges.

I told you it was a long process! Hopefully that explanation was clear.

This manicure took forever to do, and had a lot of prep, but the results were sooooo worth it!. The left hand glittered so beautifully, and I couldn't stop staring at the details in the right hand!

After I completed these, I decided that I am going to do a Studio Ghibli / Hayao Miyazaki themed manicure series. This was first of that series. Next up: Princess Mononoke!!

Astronaut / Space Nails

This was my submission for Sally Hansen's 'I Heart Nail Art' contest for May 2013 (which I didn't win, dang it!). That month's theme had been 'street art'.

I was inspired by the street artist Bansky when I did this. Previous to starting this mani, I had looked up 'street art' to get a better idea of the art style, and fell in love with his style and the humor in his art pieces.

This mani doesn't outwardly come off as 'humorous', but looking at it made me smile :) My boyfriend thought that it was one of my best designs! That made me smile even wider.

'Dead Astronaut' May 2013 

How I did this:

To start, I applied a light gray polish as a base, then layered a thin coat of white crackle polish.

With a dotting tool, I applied black in a cloud shape across all the nails. Then I created a galaxy/nebula design over the black by sponging on white, bright pink, yellow and dark blue around it's border. Then I applied a coat of glitter polish for 'stars'.

Next, I blocked out the astronaut in white. I went around the edges of this with black, then added in his head. I decided to add a little United State flag on his sleeve and used some black crackle for more feathery strokes. To get the fine lines around his hand and fingers, I used my secret detail weapon: a gel pen!

The profile of the girl was thrown on at the very end to make it more 'street art-like'. The mole above her lip is an homage to me, since I have one in that same spot on my face. Silly details, I know ;)

Because of the angle, you can barely see his legs and feet -- it's hard posing for these pictures!!

I was really proud of this; I would thrust my hands into the faces of everyone that looked even slightly interested in my hands, haha!

I wish I had taken more pictures of this!!

New beginnings, long over due

Today is the official kick-off of my nail art blog!

I have been meaning to get a blog started for forever -- years even! I didn't want to put anything up until I had everything perfect. Well, if I try to make everything perfect, I'll never post anything... So I'm going to make do with my crappy camera phone pictures until all my old stuff gets posted (maybe I should just do a gallery??). I have a ton of old art to show!

And (baring with me as I fumble through figuring out formatting, etc.) the coming months will (hopefully!) be chalk full of new stuff and awesome pictures!

On to the nails!

Since today is Sunday, and the final season of Breaking Bad is airing (and because I freaking love this show!!), I thought I'd share the nails I did for the season premiere:

Right hand: Jesse Pinkman's favorite expletive (pinky), 'blood money' (ring), Gus Fring with half a face (middle), Heisenberg sketch (pointer), and Walter White in his hazmat suit (thumb).

Left hand: Bromine element (thumb), Barium element (pointer), burned bear floating in a swimming pool (middle), 'Blue Sky' (ring), D.E.A. badge (pinky).

Both hands took an exceptionally long time -- I'm too embarrassed to even say it! Let's just say...more than an hour and less than a day. Yup, just about there ;p

I am really happy with these. I got most of the ideas I had down, and down well  (I think). Though Fring's face and the D.E.A. badge did have some unfortunate smooshing accidents when I applied some lotion after I finished...sigh. The others still look good though!

These pictures don't capture all of the details...You can barely see the gold stamping on my right ring finger! Oi. Next time!!

Hopefully this is a good enough beginning!

Here's to more posts soon to come!