Hunger Games!

Yes! Tomorrow I'm seeing the Hunger Games, and I'm sooo excited. That also means I was super excited to make this nail design, special events call for special nails! Now, I try to wear at least slightly complicated designs all the time, and I didn't want to add stones or glitter to this one, but I used a lot of different techniques which is what made it extra special. Here we go! 

This is also the first time I'm displaying my right hand, which is the lower picture.

Since I'm so excited about this design I'm gonna ramble about how it's made. 

I started yesterday by making the mocking jay pins using the plastic bag method, I wanted both to be the same size so I made one for each hand, not just my right one. Then I practiced a method I don't recall the name of, but it's how I made my fires. It took a while to get it right and still only 2/4 fires turned out okay today. I've decided that fires never are perfect and I'm leaving it (even though I re-painted one). 

I started my design with two coats of black, 1 hour drying time cause I had the time. Then I started with the writing on my thumb, and for once I did both hands simultaneously, I usually do one hand and then the other to avoid mess. This time I knew it was going to take long so I just did both. Anyway. I wrote on my thumbs, and then I stuck my stickers onto my ring fingers. After that I added the orange to my letters, and then I sponged on a yellow on my index finger, waited a bit and then sponged on gold. Before I closed the bottle I painted the tips of my ring finger. Then I painted the 12 going white - orange - black. I didn't want to use red simply because my red polish isn't very new and I got a new orange one today, but afterwards I was really quite pleased with how the orange was a bit softer and blended better with the other colors on the other nails. 

After finishing both 12's I took my black crackle polish and covered the tips of the index and ring fingers. Then came the dreaded flames. Uhhhh it was really annoying, they're so hard to get right. The method is that you basically cover your whole nail with clear / (in this case) black polish, and then you draw thick lines/dots on the tip of the nail with colors of your choice, and then you take a needle or a thin toothpick and swipe through the polish to make a fiery pattern. On my first middle finger I was using Seche Vite as the background, totally forgetting it's fast drying. That's very bad for this method, so on the other nails I used my black polish. This method also puts a very thick layer of polish on your nail, after 2 hours I accidentally scratched it and realized it was still very wet. I applied my top coat after fixing the scratch and it's starting to feel hard now (another almost 2 hours after the accident). It's really annoying me how my pinkies got better flames than my middle fingers, who are much larger, but oh well.

I really enjoyed making this design, and even though I used many methods, I didn't use that many colors, which always feels good when I'm not making the same design on every nail (again, remembering that horrible Valentines idea spam that was completely incoherent). 

Happy Hunger Games!

Tialiq