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!!

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!!