The Last of Us!

Yes, I love this game. I even liked the ending. The second I saw the Firefly logo on a wall in the background I knew I had to create a nailart with it, so here it is, finally. 

I'm.. Very happy with them. 
I decided to make bricks because of the run down landscape of the "outside". For some color you could add leaves and vines, but I like the plain grey. It gives a nice feeling of... Death and nothingness.

I started off with my pink french polish, one coat is all it takes. Then I painted on an uneven grey french. 

Except the ring finger, which I painted grey. Then I thinned black acrylic paint so it was basically water, and started making bricks. The most important part about making bricks it rounding the corners. Before I did that it just looked like a pattern, but rounding off the corners makes it look like bricks. I used this amazing tutorial.

To make the logo I made 6 dots.

The top four are where the wings will come out, and the bottom two are where the body will start.

Then I added even more water to my black paint and went over the black lines to add depth. I thinned white paint and added highlights. I made a dark grey and let my hand shake like crazy to get fine shatters in the stone. And that was it. Actually simple, but it does take a little bit of time and patient. I'm not a very patient person (who would've thought!) and I could've made the brick lines a lot thinner if I had moved slower. I still love these though!

And here is the final result, on my right hand this time. 

As you can see I've broken the same two nails, again. I think they're just not meant to be long. Oh well. That means I can show every design on short nails too! 

Tialiq

July!

So during July I've been travelling a lot. I've basically been living out of a suitcase this whole month. This means that I didn't make very complicated designs, so I'm just making another update post.

I bought new polishes at the start of the month, and they are fantastic. 

The Sally polishes are absolutely amazing. They wear perfectly for a week without any chipping or lifting. The Maybelline french polish is also amazing. You only need 1 thin coat, which spreads evenly, for a perfect french manicure base. The CK glitter is fantastic, it makes every color look girly and sparkly. The purple one was the only not-as-good-one. It's very thin and streaks easily, and the color is a red purple instead of a blue purple, which it looks like in the bottle. So I might not be using it a lot. 

Anyway, onto the designs! 

First I wore both the new Sally polishes, I painted my nails with the beige and did a little on nail marble. The beige dried a bit too quickly so it didn't turn out as great as I would've liked, but from a bit of distance they looked amazing. 

Then I wore something very girly. 

I didn't have much time so I made a simple french and glitter design. I think it would've looked better if I had worn my Maybelline french polish as well, but I didn't bring it. 


Then I set off on a long trip, and since the Sally polishes wore so well I used them again! 

I started with the beige and used the swipe method that I came up with a while ago. I think my nails look kind of like bacon. In real life, from a distance, the nails simply looked like a nice pink shade. But when you come up close, you can see all the detal. Love it! I worse these for 8 days and they didn't chip at all. The stones even stayed on, I lost one on day 7 after a tickle fight but otherwise it was perfect. 


Then, I wore something purple. I made a V-french and tried to make hearts with rhinestones. It didn't turn out so great. 

But I got to try out the CK glitter and it looked fantastic! Also a very girly design, with lots of bling. 

So yeah, as I said, things weren't very complicated this month since I was very limited to the few polishes i brought with me. I didn't bring acrylic paint either. So it was just basic stuff. But it was pretty, and it was nail art, so I'm happy!
Tialiq

Remember Me!

It's no secret that I watch Let's Plays, and I've been looking forward to Remember Me! Now that it's out and completed by my favorite player on YouTube, I've watched it and it was so good I had to make a tribute. 

In the game they have something called a Sensen, which looks like the round logo (except that it has a few layers and it's always moving, and it's a bit blue too). So I decided to make a clean design with the logo! 

I painted my nails orange (Again? What's wrong? Why aren't all my nails blue any more?), except my ring finger. Then I spent some time recreating the logo with orange acrylic paint. I finished with a layer of the polish to get the exact shade (except over the shaded parts of the cube) and then I outlined it with black. Here's my right hand for comparison.

As you can see, my damaged nails are slowly coming back! Yay!

I don't know why my top coat decided to bubble on these. I've switched from Seche Vite, which was giving my issues with lifting, to Essies "No chips ahead", mostly because I was so annoyed with the chipping and lifting from Seche. I'm not sure if I love or hate it. 
I love it because man, my polish lasts forever! If I top coat when I'm finished with my design, and once more the day after, they stay without chipping or lifting for a whole week, and it probably stays decent for nearly two. I switch too often for that though. It's also shiny. Not extremely but definitely enough.
I dislike it because it's not fast drying. Many times I've painted my nails in the evening and gone to bed about an hour later, and woken up with fabric imprints in the polish. It also bubbles sometimes. I think it's when I'm too impatient and top coat a bit too quickly, before the polish underneath is completely dry. Seche never gave me that issue. But still, No chips ahead is a good top coat, and I will use it until I run out! Then I'm gonna try get my hands on Insta-Dri by Sally. I've heard good things about it. 
/end rant
Tialiq

Midsummer!

In Sweden we celebrate Midsommar, midsummer, when the night is the shortest of the whole year. We traditionally dance around a big pole, a Midsommarstång, that looks like a big **** (which I think is hilarious). So of course I painted one on my nails! 

I started with a sky blue base, and made a gradient with white. I did this so I could paint on a white surface, to make the colors brighter. It's vital, trust me. 

Then I started adding grass with a dark green polish. I swiped off as much polish as possible off the brush and then stroked lightly from the tips in towards the nail. I did the same with a light green on top, but heavier. The darker green disappeared and gave it depth. Then I painted a few strans of grass with green acrylic paint, but not all the way to the tips. Having polish around your edges makes it last longer! 

Then I painted classic midsummer flowers: Cow parsley (Hundkäx), Wood cranesbill (Midsommarblomster) and Oxeye (Prästkrage).

On the ring finger I crated the traditional midsommarstång shape, and covered it with colored dots to represent flowers. I finished with a layer of glitter. 

Tialiq

Delirium!

So, I love to read, and I recently read the Delirium trilogy. It's amazing. So I decided to make a tribute. This is what the cover looks like in Sweden :

And here are my nails touching the book. The cover is actually kind of metallic and shiny!

I started with blue, and then I sponged on a kind of turquoise color. 

It made it more of the color of the cover. Then I added Luxe and Lush, a flaky glitter. I painted tendrils with black acrylic paint, and added thorns. Then I made three small thorns for petals at the cuticle, and put a red rhinestone there to symbolize the rose on the cover. I also added smaller stones on the sides. I'm still not sure if that was a good idea! But they looked amazing. I think the index finger turned out best.

Sending Internet love! <3
Tialiq

Anivia! + New Technique?

So I've started watching LoL streams recently, and I was catching up on the Spring Playoffs, and saw Froggens amazing Anivia play. I thought it was so cool, and had to do a nail art. 

 

I sponged on white on 3/4 of my nail on all nails except the ring finger, and then a few layers of a light blue. I covered it with glitter, and painted diffrent kinds of snowflakes with white. On my ring finger I painted it all white and sponged on blue. Added glitter and tried to make feathers with very thin black paint. But since Anivia has kind of icicle-looking feathers, they turned out like scales which is not what I was aiming for at all. But it still looked cool! I added a bit of dimension on the tips of the featheres with white paint, and sealed it up.

Then, I felt like wearing orange. Me! 
 

I had this idea in my mind of orange and dark blue going fantastically together. So my first idea was to add fishnet, sponge on the blue, and get a cool scale-y design. But that didn't work. So when I sat there with an orange nail covered in dark blue, I panicked and wiped it off with my finger. And it looks gorgeous. 

 This is what my fingers ended up looking like!

I added silver star studs, and holy crap it looks epic. It is super simple, and I will definitely do it again! It looks sort of like a streaky crackle polish, or weathered paint. You can do it with clashing colors like me, or similar colors for a cool background! 
Someone has probably done it before, but I just randomly did it and saw how awesome it turned out and just had to share! After all, that's what this blog is for!
Tialiq

May!

I've worn a lot of simple designs after my acidic nails, so I thought I'd do a big post for them. 

I got a heap of new polishes as a late birthday gift, and they were all blue and purple. So I painted a V shaped purple french, put on a shimmery purple on top and some glitter flakes.

Then I made some dots and a little lace, going into a ribbon at the bottom. I added a little rhinestone as well for the knot. 

Also looks adorable on short nails. Just skip the ribbon!


Then I wanted to wear something blue, and I got this fantastic metallic blue polish as part of the gift, that I really wanted to wear on its own for a while. 

Then I put on a little piece of tape and did a sharp half-moon!

In retrospect it would've looked better with the silver as the top part and the blue covering most of the nail, since the blue was such a fantastic color, but since I wanted to wear it on its own at first this is how they came out. 



Then I tried another purple, this one had golden flakes in it! It's absolutely gorgeous. I made french tips again, and covered up the edge with golden acrylic paint. Unfortunately my gold paint if thin, so I had to do layers, and the lines ended up a bit thicker than I would've liked to, but it's okay. 

Then I added white flowers, and a bit of gold in the middle. Tipped it off with some gold glitter as the centre, and a purple rhinestone at the lunar. 


I'm gonna keep using these new polishes, because I just love purple and especially blue!
Tialiq