French Wolverine

Another superhero inspired french tip. I like that this one is vague enough that not everyone would get it right away. ;)

Tutorial, anyone?

 

Freehand some blue french tips, here I used Sinful Colors Rainstorm.

Then add a yellow stripe to the bottom. I used yellow acrylic paint and a skinny striper brush.

Then add 3 parallel lines coming from the corner. Make sure the middle line is slightly longer than the other 2. I used Kiss Nail Art Striper in silver glitter. Add a thick layer of topcoat!



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French Spiderman

Another superhero inspired french, I'll try to keep coming up with designs and make this a mini series. I'm enjoying it!

 

Spiderman

 

Tutorial:

1. Tape off your tips and paint them a dark red. I used Color Club Red-ical Gypsy.

 

2. Stamp the spiderwebs from BM13 along the french. It's ok if it extends onto the nail bed, spiderwebs are naturally messy. I used China Glaze Millennium to stamp.

3. Stamp the spider from MASH38 onto an accent nail.

I used Konad Special polish in black to stamp.

4. Apply a thick coat of Seche Vite topcoat and while it's still wet, attach some royal blue rhinestones.

 

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French Batman

My Disney Princess French Tip nail art series has proved to be quite popular, especially on Pinterest. (Ariel, Aurora, Jasmine, Cinderella, Snow White, Pocahontas)

 

After my most recent Superheroes nail art I was inspired to try the same thing, but with comic book characters. So first up is a Batman inspired french nail art design.

 

 

 

Tutorial anyone?

 

1. (Should probably apply a base coat and let it dry, which I didn't do here.)

Tape off your tips and paint them with yellow polish. I used Barielle Lemondrops.

 

2. Freehand a small black line along the bottom of the french. I used Kiss Nail Art Striper in black.

 

3. You could be daring a freehand the Batman symbol on an accent nail, but I chose to take the easy route and stamp the bats from the BM13 plate. (I double stamped one of the guys)

 

4. My guys didn't transfer terribly well... probably because it was on my naked nail, so I took my same striper polish in black and darkened them up a bit.

 

5. Allow enough time for your black polish to dry before applying a thick coat of Seche Vite. (Otherwise you'll potentially drag in some places like mine did)

 

What do you think?

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Superheroes

This is another set of false nails to potentially be my art piece.

I took inspiration from this awesome pinterest find.

The superman S was ridiculously difficult to get just right, but I think it turned out the best!

I think just 5 nails is too few to put in a shadowbox... what are 5 more I could add to this set?

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31 Day Challenge - Day 7 - Black & White

Spy Vs. Spy! 

Spy Vs Spy is a black and white comic strip that appeared in MAD Magazine. These 2 spies are virtually identical except one wears black and the other wears white. The were constantly at war and attempting to booby-trap one another.

 My left hand has Sinful Colors Black topped with China Glaze Crackle Lightening Bolt. Accent spy nail is done with acrylic paint on top of Sinful Colors Black.

My right hand has Sinful Colors Snow Me White topped with OPI Black Shatter. Accent spy nail is done with acrylic paint on top of Sinful Colors Snow Me White.

I even took a chance and wore this to work! It got a little attention, but most people didn't notice the spies. They just thought it was crackle polish on all my nails. I can't decide if that's a good or a bad thing.... Lol

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31 Day Challenge - Day 2 - Orange

I remember the animated show "Marsupilami" from my childhood. I always liked watching it on the Disney Channel. I didn't realize it had such an international history though! Apparently it started in 1952 in a Belgian comic magazine. Then translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, & Portugese.

According to Wikipedia - "The marsupilami is a black-spotted yellow monkey-like creature. Male marsupilamis have an incredibly long, strong, flexible and prehensile tail which can be used for almost anything. Female marsupilamis have a much shorter tail, but still long compared to real animals. Unlike the males, the females also walk on the tips of their toes. When the animal rebounds, he makes a funny noise: "Boing". Males also have eyes that are not completely separate while females have two separate eyes. Female marsupilamis also have a totally different voice than the males. Males say "houba" most of the time, while females say "houbii", which means the same thing as houba, but sounds more feminine. According to the L'Encyclopédie du Marsupilami, they are monotremes like the platypus and echidna, which explains why they lay eggs while having mammalian features."

I chose to feature Marsupilami himself and his long tail across 2 nails. On my pinky and thumb I just did an all over pattern from his fur. It's a lot like cheetah or leopard, but more sparse.

I started with a pale orange Essence Cute as Hell - Bad Girl and topped it with Sinful Colors Let's Meet. It's a sheer yellow glitter polish that gave it just the right tone of orange.

Here I used black acrylic paint.

A mix of acrylic paint.

A generous helping of Seche Vite topcoat.

Do you remember this cartoon? Any of you international ladies ever seen this guy?

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Peculiar Polish Series - She-Ra

It's another Thursday and time for more Peculiar Polish! Nev from Nevorpurify's Nail Art  is helping me out by designing looks that are from different cartoons that I've not been able to get to. If you have a suggestion for her, just fill out the embedded form at the bottom of the page!

Jo from the UK (and Sara) requested these She-Ra nails and I was so excited to do them! I painted these nails about two weeks ago because I couldn't wait to get to them! To my surprise, when I was perusing other nail blogs I happened to notice that Michelle from Sonoma Nail Art posted some She-Ra nails this week! What a crazy coincidence! Hers are amazing and you can see them here. While Michelle went with a pretty straight forward (and beautiful) approach to She-Ra nails, I decided to go a little more complicated.




I can't think of She-Ra without thinking of He-Man so I decided to make this mani a bit of She-Ra and a bit of He-Man. I did portraits of their faces on my index and ring fingers. For my middle and pinky finger I did the print on He-Man's tiger Cringer. On my thumb I decided to do She-Ra's Sword of Protection which gives her the ability to change from Princess Adora into She-Ra.




I finished off the manicure with a matte top coat because whenever I think of cartoons, I think of a more matte appearance. Hope you enjoy and see you next Thursday!

Great job once again Nev! Thanks so much!

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Peculiar Polish Series - X-Men

It's another Thursday and time for more Peculiar Polish! Nev from Nevorpurify's Nail Art  is helping me out by designing looks that are from different cartoons that I've not been able to get to. If you have a suggestion for her, just fill out the embedded form at the bottom of the page!

Here's Nev's Nails!

Giedre requested the X-Men cartoon nails and I have to say, these are some of the hardest nails I've ever done. I don't know what it is with the style of the X-Men, but I can not for the life of my paint them! I tried sooo many times and failed every single time. At the very bottom of this post is a photograph of the failed attempt at the faces of Cyclops (who is the lead of the X-Men and has to wear a visor over his eyes because he has uncontrollable laser vision), Rogue (the southern belle type who absorbs mutant powers by touch and can also kill with her touch. Pretty cool power if you ask me), and Wolverine (who has a metal skeleton and claws. He and Cyclops are like opposites, Wolverine is the bad boy and Cyclops is the goody goody). I painted the X-Men's logo on my thumb and pinky. The X stands for extra, as in their extra abilities. It's also a reference to their mentor, Professor X.

When I couldn't make these nails look cool I decided to do the classic logo, which turned out WAY better. I ended up doing "X-Men" with a slight orange to yellow gradient, blue shadows, and on my thumb I did the Marvel logo (Marvel is the publishing company that made X-Men, Spiderman, Thor, Iron Man, The Hulk). I love how this look turned out! I hope Giedre isn't too disappointed that I kind of failed at these nails, I figure that two sets of nails should make up for my failure!

Thanks for contributing Nev! You did such a great job and I completely understand that about some cartoon styles being nearly impossible to mimic. :)

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Peculiar Polish Series - Tank Girl

It's another Dark Thursday and time for an episode of Peculiar Polish! Nev from Nevorpurify's Nail Art  is helping me out by designing looks that might be on the darker side of the cartoon/comic spectrum. If you have a dark suggestion for her, just fill out the embedded form at the bottom of the page!

Here's Nev!

I'll be the first to admit that I really didn't know very much about Tank Girl before an anonymous person requested these nails. As far as I can tell, Tank Girl is a sexually charged, crime fighting, anarchist who dates a kangaroo named Booga. I know, sounds pretty awesome, right? Since Anon specified that she wanted Tank Girl the comic nails, I figured I would make these black and white.

On my middle finger is the infamous Tank Girl, who, lets be honest, looks a little funny (on my nails, not in the comic). But she does have the telltale features of Tank Girl: A Band-Aid above her right eyebrow, a cross earring, and a mischievous look. My index finger features Booga's ear. I honestly couldn't figure out how to paint him, so I thought I'd use one of Leslie's awesome techniques which is cropping an image to make it work with your nail! I think it looks really awesome for these nails because it kind of implies that the rest of Booga is in between fingers doing something explicit to Tank Girl (that I'm totally not gonna paint, haha). Then I did some checker boards which really represent a lot of the style that the art in Tank Girl exhibits. And of course, the Tank Girl logo!  

I know that nail art isn't really a contest, but if it was, Suemomo Does Nails kicked my butt with her awesome Tank Girl nails that can be seen here.

And here is someone else's drawing of Tank Girl for you to reference.

Nev, thank you so much for collaborating on this series. Look forward to additional Dark Thursdays in the future!

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