Double-Hand Design

Hey all! So, I wanted to share a design with you that got an amazing response on my dA account. After doing the sheep, I felt adventurous; I wanted to do more designs that created a picture when I put my two hands together. One of my friends wanted me to do converse on my nails again, but I wanted to do something that I hadn't seen done before. I took that opportunity to create another picture design using both of my hands.

When I tried describing this to my friend, she was so confused. She loved it, though, when she finally saw it. I used a mixture of Sally Hansen, Pure Ice, and OPI nail polish to do this design. The laces and the tips of the shoes were done using Pure Ice Super Star, and the black details were done using Pure Ice Black Rage. The red converse shoe on my thumb was done with Sally Hansen Diamond Strength: Honeymoon Red. The pink converse was done using OPI Charged Up Cherry. The yellow converse was done using Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear: Mellow Yellow. The purple converse was done using Sally Hansen Insta-Dri: Lively Lilac.

I started out by doing the basic converse design of just the tip of the shoe and some laces on my left hand. After that, I took a drop of nail polish and made a V shape on my nails on my right hand. Then I made an arc connecting the sides of the V's to be the "tongue" of the shoe. Next I sort of eyeballed where the tongue would match up and finished creating the detail and the laces. I'm really proud of how this design turned out; it was so far off from the simple converse design that mostly everyone does. I'm glad I was able to create something different than the standard. So many people loved it! I even received one of the best comments I've ever gotten on my nail art after I posted this design, "Wow, your nail art is amazing. Go put the nail salon ripoffs out of work!"


Thanks for reading!

Autism Awareness

Hey everyone!
So I'm sure you've heard from somewhere or someone by now that April is Autism Awareness Month! My sister-in-law has a nephew who's autistic; he's one of the cutest kids I've ever known! I know it's not much, but to raise awareness I decided to do a nail design. To understand this a little more, you'd need to know that the symbol for autism is a puzzle piece.

For this design I used:

• Pure Ice: French Kiss (the darker blue)
• Pure Ice: A List (the silver-like blue)
• Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear: Mellow Yellow
• Sally Hansen Diamond Strength: Honeymoon Red
• Pure Ice: Super Star (for the words)
• Pure Ice: Black Rage (to outline the puzzle pieces)

Just a quick little entry to raise some awareness. Thank you for taking the time to look at this!

Severed Sheep

Hey all! I know what you're thinking, and no, they aren't actually severed sheep. However, I did decide to put a creative twist on this animal! This design was inspired by the cartoon short Shaun the Sheep.

Left hand first:

I started with the heads of the sheep. First I painted white half-ovals on the tips of my nails. Then, taking a droplet of black nail polish and a needle, I outlined the sheep and created the head (somewhat based off of Shaun the Sheep). I didn't completely make the full head. Instead, I left the bottom half of the jaw off.

This is why:

The bottom half of the jaw continued onto my right nails, opposite the left hand. To make the bodies of the sheep, I took the same types of steps as I did for the heads. I painted the white half-ovals and outlined them with black. Then I drew the four legs. The part after got a little tricky. I had to wait a bit for the nail polish to dry, then I sort of estimated where the heads were on my left hand and created the jaw so that the two would line up when the nails were put together.

Finished product:

People seemed to really enjoy this design, and I absolutely love how it turned out! It was one of my more creative designs, and I was so happy that the jaws lined up almost perfectly with the heads on the opposite hand after eyeballing where they should be placed.

Thanks so much for reading!

Animals On Nails

Hey everyone! I wanted to share a couple of my animal creations with you. I've done a few so far, and I'm hoping to do so many more!

Let's start with the bees! I had tried this design once before when I was just starting out; it consisted of each nail being a full-bodied bee, and the head was at the tip of the nail. I recently decided to expand on some of my older designs, and remembering those bees, I came up with this. I was quite pleased how these turned out. I painted the yellow bodies first using Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lightning. Then, using a needle, I painted the white wings outlining the bodies and proceeded by using the same needle to do the eyes and the stripes on the bees. The crossed lines on the wings took a little extra time, seeing as I was being cautious so I didn't make them too thick. In case you're wondering, I put a drop of nail polish on a piece of paper or cardboard and then dip the needle in it. A majority of my designs are now done this way; I find that it expands your range of colors and designs you can do.

Then there's turtles. I did this design for one of my friends (her favorite animal is a turtle). It actually took me a few months to find just the right way to create them; I hadn't seen many turtle designs being done and I wanted to make sure I did them in a fun way. It took a lot of thinking, but I'd say they turned out okay. This design was done entirely with Pure Ice brand nail polish. I'd have to say my favorite part of this design was their mouths.

Lastly we have the raccoon! This design also took a bit of consideration and time. I had to wait a bit for my nails to be the desired length I had for this design. In order to do this, I actually had to look at a picture of a raccoon. I used Pure Ice Black Rage and Pure Ice Super Star to do this. In order to get the grey shades, I had to mix the colors on the paper before applying them to my nail with the needle. I even ended up mixing either more white or more black into the design once it was on my nail to try and get it the "right" shade. This design was time consuming once I started, but this is one of the designs that I miss the most.

I recently did some sheep as well, but those will be in a new post (a set of three photos!). I'm excited for you guys to see them; a lot of people gave me positive feedback on them. However, it seems that whenever I try to do animal designs, I can't think of an animal to do. So, if one pops in your head, send me a request! I'm happy to do them. :)

Thanks!

Gamer Nails: Pac Man and Space Invaders

Hey all! So, I'm new to blogspot, not entirely sure what I'm doing yet. However, I assure you that as I explore more and become more experienced at this, my posts will become better! Anyways, I wanted to share my gamer nails with you today!

A friend of mine suggested to me once that I should try doing Pac Man themed nails, and this is what I came up with. It was quite fun, actually. I had never thought to try doing the actual layout for a game; this was probably the design that sent my confidence in my nails through the roof. I picked up a trick from one of my fellow artists, Nina, that made the lines a lot easier to create. I had to use a picture in order to get the layout how I wanted it, but all in all it worked fine. The colors turned out quite well, and this design earned quite a bit of feedback from both friends and strangers! I used Claire's brand and Sally Hansen brand nail polish to create this (though, I'm not entirely sure of the exact nail polishes anymore..).

As for Space Invaders, I wanted to do to another videogame related design opposite Pac Man. I couldn't quite figure out at first how to do this design. It seemed fit to do another layout, and I had the idea in my head to make it small so that I would be able to fit all the rows of invaders on my four fingers. However, when I started creating the design, it came out like this. I was actually quite pleased with it, even though it seemed somewhat basic compared to the Pac Man layout I did.

Anyways, thanks for taking the time to read this! Any requests? Feel free to e-mail me!