The Dark Knight Rises!

I am a HUGE Batman fan, and I've been so excited for The Dark Knight Rises which just got out in the cinema. I'm seeing it tomorrow, so I watched The Dark Knight yesterday to refresh my memory, and then it hit me. I have to wear Batman nails! 
I wanted the design to be very clean, black, white and silver. I used a new technique that I found online, the clingfoil technique. What you do is you paint your nails a base color, and wait for it to completely dry. I was impatient and didn't wait that long, but the site recommended at least a few hours, preferably over night. Then you paint a second coat of another color, and instantly take a bit of cling wrap and touch the polish, giving it a mottled look. I started with a black french and clingfoiled with a white polish. Then I painted my whole nail with a thin silver polish with silver microglitter, added small strokes of a thick silver glitter, and then used my thin black polish over it and clingfoiled again. 
After that I painted a bat, fully in black, and finished with big glitters on my french and a 2mm rhinestone on my lunar. 

I added a bit too much glitter on the french, which is a shame because the mottled background looks amazing. I still love them though! 
Tialiq

Hippie Neon!

Oh yes, I'm doing neon hippie nails with a rasta twist. I'm so excited to show you, I'll get the pictures up now and go into geeky details later. 

Right so first picture is my right hand, with electric light. Below is my left hand in natural light. I couldn't get a picture in direct sunlight, but if I had you would've been able to see the amazing glitter that I've used. It reflexes in yellow, green and pink and even though it looks fantastic, it could've had a bit more glitter in it.

I started off with painting my nails white, it barely even covered, and then I sloppily put on a metallic neon green, and neon yellow and a neon orange. Since they were basically pushed onto the nail it created a slight gradient. It didn't really matter though, because after that I used my newly purchased neon glitters, and put them on top of the polish (which is only there to make the glitter pop). 

Then I wanted a simple, black pattern. I started off with just painting whatever came to mind, but it looked horrific and I redid two nails. However, I'd used a peace symbol in my randomness, and that gave me the wonderful idea of a hippie theme.

I put peace symbols on each nail, except on my right thumb because of lack of space. On the other nails I made trees, birds, water, flowers, marijuana leaves, animal footprints, kissing lips, hearts, dotted swirls, and I wrote both "Love" and "Flower Power" in case someone wouldn't quite get the message. 

I really need to practice writing with my left hand, if I had done the writing better on my right thumb, I would've been more satisfied with that hand, for the first time! 

Overall I'm very pleased. I just hope Seche Vite will stand me by this time, it tends to fail me when I'm wearing a lot of glitter. Time will tell!
Tialiq

Water Marble!

I did another water marble! I saw this cool video on youtube, where she does a triple dip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DcgMRD96qk&feature=plcp). I had been thinking about my last design, how it would've been cool if I had done the marble twice, but in a crossed pattern. This video made me take that step and double dip!


I've been wanting to do a design that looks like water, but I never figured out a good way. Who knew a water marble could make water? Since the layers of paint become so thin, you can easily overlap them to made shades of blue, and you can also add pretty swirly patterns. 


I started with a thin french, that you can't really see now, and then I painted my nails with a thin, light blue. It looked awful, since you could see the pink shade of shin through the nail. Then I started my marble with a thin, light blue, a strong pastel turquoise that was very green, and a light blue glitter polish. Glitter polishes usually don't marble well, but this one works fine. I used few, big circles and just ran my toothpick through it a couple of times. 
Second time I used a medium glitter polish, medium blue polish and a dark navy blue. This time I made 2 dark circles, with the other colors between each one. I secured the paint on two sides and then pulled into the middle form the sides and made a flower pattern. On the left hand it didn't quite turn into a flower, a few edges stuck, but it still looks great on the nail. 
Since I did all the layers very fast, the marble got bubbles. But with a water theme, that's just even better! But even if I'd minded, you can't really see them after the glitter. 
I used two kinds of glitter, one powdery blue that shimmers into green, and one with quite big, opaque blue glitter, that  shimmers purple. I added the glitter in the light areas, avoiding the dark blue lines, and then I put the bigger glitter along the edges of the dark blue lines.

The right hand looks a lot better than my left, it's a lot greener and looks fantastic.

I usually don't like wearing blue nails, but I just love these!
Tialiq

Sweet Pink Marble!

I've been dying to do a marble for weeks now, and since I bought two new, matching polishes this week I decided this was the time.

One polish was a sweet rosy red with a bit of shimmer, and the other was a very neutral pinkish beige. They're both light, so the marble would be very discreet. 

After applying one coat of the beige, I realized how thin it was. I removed it and sponged on a light french, and then painted the whole nail with a nail whitener to make it blend. Then I added one coat of the beige just to make it visible later. 

I decided to do stripes, because I love stripes but hate making them. A marble is an easy way to avoid frustration. I'll do anything to avoid making stripes! To make the nail look longer I put the stripes vertically. 

Here's a picture, you'll see that the colors are very light. 

It just adds that little extra wow, makes people look twice. 

Since the design was so pale, I decided to go all out with a black flower. I prefer having my art on the tips, so that's where I put it. One petal got destroyed before I top coated and I didn't see it until I took a picture.. Oh well. 

The design was still missing something, so inside the flower (where I already had dots), I added this beautiful white glitter, that shimmers in pink and turquoise. I also put on a 2mm silver rhinestone at the lunar, I just love having a single silver stone there. 

I don't usually like pink, or flowers, but this design is just so cute and summery!

Tialiq

Internet!

These aren't the greatest Internet nails in the world.. This is just a tribute.


Yes. I did Internet nails. I thought of things I liked online, and put them on my nails! 
Most of them I made as stickers, I painted a bit of the writing on my thumb by hand. 
As a base I'm using this lovely shimmery white that just doesn't show up on camera. It's a shame, but it's gorgeous in real life! I also added tiny glitter hexagons from a polish I have. 

I'm not gonna list them all!
Tialiq

Holiday Collection!

I've returned! Let's jump straight to the nails!
I'm gonna start off with toes! 
I wore a super bright neon yellow design on my toes the whole holiday. The camera didn't pick it up at all, but it was bright. I also added glitter, and on top I made a spiky pattern with black acrylic paint. 
My mother wanted something a bit less.. blinding. I gave her a soft blue manicure with dandelions (which I hadn't cleaned up when the picture was taken). 
I want to wear both these designs on my fingernails! 

Back to fingers! I wore my rainbow zebra for quite a long time, since I was on holiday I didn't have much time for nails. When I finally removed it, I went straight into a new zebra, I was so crazy about it during that week. 

 I didn't bring any purple with me so I tried making my own and gosh.. It was so difficult. I added a thin, shimmery glitter polish over it to try make it.. good at all. It kind of worked. Nevertheless, I wasn't very pleased with the design. Even worse, I couldn't remake it, cause I didn't have time! 
Luckily it grew on me a little. Removing it felt great though.
After that I had even less time, and wore only a base coat for half a day, managed to paint them white the same evening, one layer of pink next morning and then the second evening I had an opaque pink. 
The day after that, I traveled back home, and now, the day after, I'm finally wearing a pretty sweet design. I made one stroke flowers on my mum while on holiday, so I gave simple circles a fair shot on myself, and ta-da!

They're messy, but they're not that bad! It's also a great opportunity to adore Luxe and Lush (from the Hunger Games collection by China Glaze). See how it reflects the pink? It adapts to your base color! 

The design was me just playing at first, but now I kind of like it. I wanted to add glitter or something, so on the black edges there's black glitter. I thought it would have something shiny in it in the right lighting, but I was wrong. It just looks bubbly now. But that's okay! I also added a rhinestone at the worst possible place on the nail. On the thumb and ring finger it looks a bit like eyes, doesn't it?

Being abroad has really inspired me, I've seen some really cool patterns on both clothes, houses and cutlery, and I can't wait to paint it all. Inspiration, inspiration everywhere!

Tialiq