Pac-Man!

I asked a nerdy friend of mine for inspiration for a nerdy nail design, and he instantly replied "Pac-Man!". Pac-Man was one of the first nail designs I wanted to do, but I decided to wait with it until I got better at painting, to do it justice. Doing it now was very easy, I probably could've done it sooner. 
I did research on the different items used, and pondered making the maze in the background, adding the fruits or painting the logo, but I decided to keep it simple. I also didn't use Seche Vite, so I'll do another top coat later on, that's why you can see some dents in the design still. 
My left hand is the same but mirrored. 

Clyde ended up being a bit too brown and not enough orange, but I really didn't have a choice, because when I opened the paint tube called Yellow Ochre, it was yet again not the color I expected. I mixed it with yellow to make it lighter though.This was the pallet I used, I got to mix a lot of colors which was really fun. It looked really cool when I poured water over it to clean it, so I took a picture. 

Tialiq

Seche Vite!

I bought Seche Vite, a very popular top coat, almost 2 months ago. The bottle is half full (or half empty, that's up to you) by now and it's very sticky and hard to apply. I don't have a nail polish thinner yet - I'm feverishly trying to find one in a local store - so I can't try applying that. I know that when you use a polish a lot it will get sticky quicker, but I've also experiences other issues with Seche Vite. 
I painted my nails 3 days ago, and yesterday little bits of my top coat started to come off. Not the polish or the acrylic paint, but only the top coat. Today this happened: 

Seche Vite is expensive and I assumed therefore it would be good. It is true that it dries very fast, but I would honestly rather have a slightly slower to dry top coat that sticks to your nail, than have one falling off. I always top coat the edge of my nail to try prevent them from breaking, now when they're getting long, and that fell off just the day after I'd applied it.
This has happened before as well, but it's worse now that when the polish is getting dry. I'm really disappointed in Seche Vite and next time I'm going to buy the Sally Hansen diamond top coat. It's not as expensive and I've heard a lot of great things about it. On the other hand, I'd never heard anything bad about Seche Vite either...
Tialiq

Honey and Clover!

Another favorite anime of mine, Honey and Clover. I watched the drama the other day and got reminded why I've seen the anime and film several times. I think the biggest reason I love Honey and Clover so much is how different it is from other animes. It's really tragic, triangle and squared love dramas, a man with such bad luck you wont even believe it who's trying to find his path in life, hospitals and shit being involved, but after watching it you have this warm, fuzzy feeling inside you. You want more of the characters, more of the story, but not that desperate need you feel when watching US tv shows, but more like a pleasant yearning that I've never felt before. 

These nails were super easy to create. I had lots of fun mixing my greens. I'm using four different shades that I built up slowly. I should've added the glitter before the clovers, but I didn't see that it was missing until I'd made the clovers. Oh well! 
This is also the new yellow I bought, very similar to my old light yellow, but with a lot less shimmer which I like a lot. I think this is a pretty worthy tribute to H&C!
Tialiq

Blue Roses!

My mums birthday is coming up this week, so I gave her an elegant rose design in her favorite color. Since she prefers it simple I only painted roses on the ring fingers, and on the rest I made dots between the leaves, where I would've used rhinestones if it was me. Nah, who am I kidding, I'd do roses on all my fingers! 

The picture isn't perfect but at least you can see the roses. I saw a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Mj5ORKrHQ) on how to make these roses on YouTube, so I wanted to give it a try. As I was pulling out my acrylics I remembered I could give one stroke a chance as well, but since I don't have any flat brushes it didn't turn out too well. I just made roses instead, and it was so much fun! 

So yeah that's me playing with paint and patterns! In the third picture you can see a little nail, the size of my index finger nail, I was trying to see how many roses I'd fit. As you can see, I fit four, which I also did on mums ring fingers. I'm not sure if I'll ever wear this design myself, since I don't really like wearing floral patterns, but I'd love to paint it more on others. 

Tialiq

Hillside!

I bought 3 new polishes this week, a mint green, light blue and soft yellow, all pastels. They're absolutely gorgeous, pastels are my favorites. The green was the best one so I decided to do mint green newspaper nails. A friend of mine was in Japan last year and bought me a Christmas present that she wrapped in Japanese newspaper, so I figured having Kanji on my nails, even though it's backwards, would be cool. 

Here's the green on its own, it needed 3 coats to get this opaque, I probably could've done with two but my coats were a bit messy. I'm not very good with thin polishes. After this I tried applying my Japanese nail art, but it was complete chaos. Apparently they use another kind of ink in Japan or something, because it either didn't stick at all, and when I held it on for longer the paper stuck to it. I tried having it in the alcohol for different amounts of time, I also tried dabbing on extra while it was on the nail, and I tried dipping my nails instead. Nothing worked! I tried once with one of my newspapers and it stuck just fine. I'm really disappointed. 
Needless to say my nails were ruined, I had to get it all off and start again. This time I did a tilted half moon in blue, and added random dots to hide the line. 

Ah, I wish I hadn't made those dots, because after that I had no idea what to create. So I figured, what the heck, it can't get worse than it was before, I'll just play with it. So I played, and this was the final result:

At first I thought it was a complete failure, but the more I look at it, the more it looks like a hill with the sky in the background. My failed dots became some sort of mountain side, almost. I probably could've added houses or animals on the hill, but I thought maybe it'd be too much. Either way, not being able to take my eyes off them is a good sign. The design wasn't even hard to make either. So in the end I really like it. Funny how things work out, eh? 

Tialiq

Pikachu!

Ever since I was little, Pokémon has been one of my favorite shows, and a couple of years ago I watched the first 10 seasons (now all the Pokémons are bullshit). Therefor, I was really excited to make Pokémon nails, but I wasn't sure how to make them and not have it be too complicated. 
I started with the hat idea, but it was very simple so I didn't want it on all my nails. I wanted a Pikachu, because then it's like Ash and Pikachu. But what to do on the rest of the nails? 

Obviously PokéBalls! I actually wore it without the PokéBalls for a whole day, because I ran out of both black and red polish. Instead of buying more polish, though, I bought acrylic paint! Got a great deal with 18 different colors, I'm really excited to start using them. as you can see I was a lot more detailed on the PokéBalls than I was on Pikachu and the hat, because there I used polish. 
Nevertheless, I really like this design, it looks simple but was complex, it's clean, cute and most important, nerdy! Pika-chuu!
Tialiq

Turquoise with Black Lace!

Yeah I had no other way to describe these nails. They're turquoise and gold with a black lace. Today I'm also including a step-by-step tutorial to show you how incredibly easy it is to have beautiful nails. 

Start with a base coat. Always, always, always use base coat. Then paint 1/3 of your nails in really whichever color you'd like, I chose turquoise. If you're not that bothered with layering just paint all of it. 

Then start a line far in one corner, curve it and end it at a higher point. Add 3 big circles of gold, one in the middle and one on each side of it, with a dotting tool. Don't put them on top of the line unless you want really big lace. I put mine bang on in the middle.

Again with gold, paint one thick, straight line from each of the circles. 

Take a liner and make a black curved line just under the gold one you made earlier. This should cover up the bottom of the gold circles.

Draw big C's around the gold circles, just as the very edge of them. Meet up the C's between the dots, make it go all the way down to the black line.

Take a very small dotting tool or a toothpick and make little dots on your lace. If your lines weren't perfectly smooth this covers it nicely. Then paint the whole bottom black.

Add glitter! I put 3 black hexagons inside the lace, on the gold, one in each corner, and one at the top. Sometimes on the pinky fingers you can't fit 3, just put in one in each corner, or if your lace is really tiny, one at the top.

Add gold hexagons where your C's meet, and then finish with two in between (in picture below). I fit 3 in between on my thumbs, and only 1 on my pinky fingers. 

And here's the finished result on my own nails, with top coat. I didn't quite have this planned out as I made it so I went through a lot of unnecessary steps, but I really liked the finished result. I'll be using a lot of hexagon glitters these upcoming weeks I think, I just got a big multipack of them today, 12 big containers! I'm so happy. Glitter makes my day!

Tialiq

EDIT

I've been wearing this design for a couple of days now, and since I'm going to remove it soon I figured I'd do a little comparison, trying to add a matte coat and trying it in a different color. Since I originally thought of this design in pink, that's the color I tried. Honestly, I'm glad I chose turquoise, it's a bit more suited as a background, this strong pink is really a bit overpowering. The fact I added it over a blue tone also made it a bit purple, which only made it stronger. 

The matte coat was mostly to see if the hexagon glitter would lose its spark, but I was really surprised to see that they actually became more visible, especially over the black. The black glitter however, just looks like polish now. Here's a picture of it.

Soot Sprites!

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of Japanese anime, and among the many animated films, Spirited Away is my absolute favorite. I recently watched it and got really inspired by the absolutely adorable Soot Sprites. Conveniently enough, they eat multicolored stars, which I happen to have as glitter, and so I started making my design.

I glued on the stars they're holding, and painted the falling ones. In hindsight it might have been better if I'd used a bleaker background, like a white fading into grey or something, but I love this none the less. It just makes me think of the cute little Soot Sprites, hopping about, and it makes me really happy. Isn't anime amazing?
Tialiq

Easter!

Ohh Easter, I love Easter. It's so fun and colorful, the flowers are appearing in the forests and gardens, and you have a great excuse to stuff yourself with sweets. Therefore I made this design as sparkly,colorful and fun as I could.
The basic idea was that I wanted my nails to look like Easter eggs painted by children, but a bit more.. polished (pun unintended). So I had the great idea of doing an Aztec-inspired pattern but with more color. Looking through these patterns, though, I slowly realized how messy it'd look, with all those tiny lines that I'd really want for an Aztec design. I went back to my original idea, but tilted it slightly, only because I prefer it. 

The picture is a bit yellow, my lighting wasn't the best, I'll try get a sunlight picture up as well so you can see the lovely glitter. Playing with colors is just so much fun!

Tialiq

Shooting Stars!

I really wanted to give the Effie sponged look a try the second I saw it in the Hunger Games. I decided to use this amazing purple instead of a fuchsia, but I kept the gold sponge. When I made it, however, I thought it looked far too plain, and the gold wasn't vibrant enough, so I added a star and some small gold flakes for that extra sparkly touch. It ended up making the whole design!

This is taken in direct sunlight, I hope you can see that lovely microglitter in the purple! 
Next time I'm definitely doing Easter nails, I can't wait! 
Tialiq