Texture!

I've already done textured nails once, but it didn't turn out so well. I also remembered I have these glitters in tubes that would be absolutely perfect for this technique, so I started by testing them out! 

Here is how I matched the colors. I couldn't find a good purple, which is ironic since I have so many purple polishes, but oh well. I ended up grabbing another one than on the picture, it was a bit darker. 

Here's how they looked:

They were all so sparkly, especially the blue one. So I decided to use that one. 

I started off with a blue and a tan polish. The tan one was a one coater, and the blue covered pretty well too, so I only painted one coat of each and then top coated. I like to have a top coat protecting the colors, since you don't top coat at the end. 
I applied another layer of blue on the blue nails, and directly after I poured the glitter on. I had a paper underneath so I could put the glitter back in the tube afterwards. Then I pressed on it from all angles with a fan brush, for at least 10 seconds. 
For the tan nails, I applied two thin strips of tape. First apply the whole strip of tape to your skin, to remove some glue. Then cut it into slim strips. Or use nail art tape. Then I put on the blue polish where I wanted it, and poured the glitter on. I removed the strips right after, before the polish dried. 
And here they are!

I absolutely love these. They're so simple, but classy and sparkly. And I love the color combination. 
Tialiq

Infected Zombie!

Oooh yes. Halloween is coming, and so are all the creepy nail designs. This design is not inspired by Robin Moses, it's a complete rip-off off Robin Moses. Here is the video to show you how to make these. I'm going to go through it myself, but all credit goes to her.

I started off with a nude polish, and while it was still wet I applied some red and brown pearls, and black 1mm rhinestones. 

As you can see, my nude polish is quite thin, which is a problem later. 
When this had dried, I applied a coat of the same nude polish over the pearls and stones. This is a bit tricky, you have to move your brush around the stones to cover them properly. It's easiest to just use a bunch of polish, drown your nail in it, and then pull off as much excess as you can. 
Now this is when my problem emerged. You could completely see the stones through the thin polish. So what I did was, I took out my white polish and dotted it on top of all the stones, and then applied another coat of the nude polish. It looked much better. 
Then I mixed a green using white, green and brown (acrylic paint from here on). You want it to be like a green shade of your nude polish. I should've used more brown in mine. 

I applied this randomly over the nail to give it more of a zombie look. Then I mixed red and a dark brown to make blood, and painted it around the cuticle. Then I used only the red paint to go over it to make it even bloodier. 
To finish off I went over all the stones again with white paint, and then again over some of them with a yellow to make it look like pus. 

I love wearing these, they're awesome for Halloween or a Walking Dead marathon. So far they've grossed everyone out. 
Again, all credit goes to Robin Moses. 
Tialiq

Autumn!

Fall has come, and with it a lot of great colors. I love the colors in the trees, it's so inspiring. So I made this colorful, but very simple design!

I started off with a coat of white, and then sponged on two coats of a red - orange - yellow gradient. On the second coat, while the nail was still wet, I sprinkled on some golden glitter with a fan brush. Then I applied a top coat to smooth out the surface, and painted some black tree silhouettes with a black striper. On the ring finger and thumb I added some grass as well, plus an extra tree. Super easy, quick and gorgeous. 

Tialiq

September!

Oh gosh, I've been so bad at doing nail art recently. All of a sudden my life is too hectic, I don't have as much time for it as I did before. My nails are also much longer now, and they're not breaking, so I don't feel the need to overcompensate with elaborate nail art. 

To start off, I want to show my first attempt ata jelly sandwich. I'm not really that good at telling diffrent kinds of polishes apart, and I'm pretty sure I don't own a jelly polish, so I just took a really sheer polish that doesn't streak too much. 
In case you didn't know, a jelly sandwich is when you paint your nails one color, add a glitter polish and then another coat of polish on top. The end result is a subtle shimmer from the glitter, it really is gorgeous. 

I started off with a blue polish, and added a glitter with both small and big pieces. Then I added a thin purple polish and well... See for yourselves. 

Personally, I think this purple is a bit too red, which is why I applied a blue color first. I don't enjoy wearing many red shades (which is funny, because I've been wearing a lot of them lately).
Anyway, these nails were super sparkly in the light and it was really hard to capture on camera. I added some studs and wore these for a whole week. 

After that experiment, I figured I'd go ahead and try something else; textured polish! I watched this wonderful video on how to do it, and went to town. 

I started off with a red polish, and applied a top coat to make it dry super fast. Unfortunately it was the first time I used my new top coat, and the red polish still wasn't dry, so now my whole, new bottle of top coat is tinted pink. Oh well, it doesn't really show. 
When that was completely dry I cut some strips of tape and placed them on my nails. I used masking tape but I would recommend scotch tape, as long as you put it on your skin first to remove some of the glue. 
Then I applied a coat of black polish and quickly applied black glitter all over my nail. Remember to press the glitter down with the brush, I forgot and most my glitter fell off the next day. 

With these I also applied red polish on the underside of my nail. It didn't look so great so I'm not showing it, it mostly just looked like I was wearing acrylics. 
It looked awesome either way though! Wearing textured polish feels very strange at first. It scratched against my jacket when I pulled it on, and I got lint stuck on them from clothes etc. But I will definitely do this again, with more colors!


Then I dyed my hair pink. So, to match, I painted my nails pink!
I started off with a french pink, and then marked out where to paint with some lines. 

Then I painted the whole bottom area white. On my thumb and ring finger I did two coats, on the other three I added two coats of neon pink polish. Then I used the same neon pink to make some spots on my white nails. I used a black striper polish to make a leopard pattern, and then added two diffrent sized rhinestones along the line. 
I find that using a striper brush gives a more haphazard feel to the leopard print. It's a bit harder to aim and it gives it a more random look. I love it!
 

And of course my new topcoat smudged the leopard print, but I think it looks a bit cool. I don't mind. Even more pink into my topcoat!
These nails are super neon, which the camera doesn't want to capture at all. I loved wearing these, and I love my new pink hair!
Tialiq

August!

With August comes the start of the school year, so I've been too busy to do elaborate nail art. So I'm making yet another update post, because these designs are so simple. I'm also going to mention that for a couple of days I wore Stone Cold by China Glaze, only, without top coat, because I didn't have the time to do it properly. It started chipping the next day, so even if it's wonderful it requires a top coat. 

I bought a glow in the dark polish a while ago, and it was finally time to test it out! These are my glow in the dark zebra nails! 

I loved wearing these, I wore them for a week. Zebra print is so easy to make with any old striper. I did these just before a party, so I had to be quick, and zebra was the perfect choice since it looks amazing and takes barely any time at all. I'm also wearing a coat of glitter, which you can actually see when it glows in the dark! It looks kind of like this, but my polish is yellow and not green. It has to be almost completely dark for them to glow, and my phone couldn't take a picture of it. 

I fell in love with the glowing polish, so I wore it again. This time as a gradient with a neon green!

Both polishes were thin, so I had to go over it about 5-6 times with my sponge. But it was worth it! I should also mention that I'm of course wearing a white base coat, for the neon to pop.
I added another glitter this time, I call it my fairy-glitter. It's by CK and it's called hallucinate. It's absolutely gorgeous. Then I added some black stripes with different thickness, since I just cut my nails, and I feel it makes them look longer.


This month I also tried making vampire nails. It.. failed quite a bit. I removed them almost immediately, so here's a pre-cleanup pic. 

I'm not pleased with these at all, except for the gradient, which turned out awesome. Black and red never goes wrong ever. But the champange color I chose as background was too thin, and when I tried adding the little stripes to the lips to make them look more real, it just smudged it. And the vampire fangs I tried adding turned out awful. I wasn't being careful anymore at this point because I could see it would turn out horrible, and that didn't exactly help. As I said, I ended up removing them the next day. 

So, I've been mostly wearing neons for this month. I adore the glowing polish, and I'll be wearing it a lot more. I just wish it glowed a bit more often, it seems to require a very special lighting to work. 
Tialiq

Graceling!

So, I recently read the Graceling Trilogy, and it was awesome. At one point, Leck gets attacked by a midnight blue leopard with golden spots. The second I read that sentence I knew I had to do a nail art. So it's very loosely inspired by the books, but a tribute none-the-less. 

I started with my favorite french manicure polish, and sponged on a medium blue. Then I sponged on a darker blue at the tips. I added light and dark blue glitter, and topcoated. Then I added golden spots with acrylic paint. I mixed in a bit of gold with black paint and made the leopard print. Then I top coated again and added a blue stone. Super easy, and super adorable. I would've done it over my full nail, but I feel that it makes your nails look shorter. And since mine were very long at this point, I wanted to show it off. I love long nails. 
But of course, it also looks super cute on short nails. 

They are growing back, slowly but surely!

I loved the way these sparkled, the glitter hid in the polish and only shone through sometimes. It was really pretty.
Tialiq

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