Inspired by a Tutorial

I went to my pinterest board for nail inspiration to look up a tutorial that I could do. Most of my pins are just pictures, but I do have a few tutorials. I decided to go with the dandelion puff design seen here.

The colours that I chose are No Room for the Blues by OPI, Snow Me White by Sinful Colors, and my unknown black.

I started with a background of No Room for the Blues.

 I started with the black lines and then added the white ones on the other nails.

I quickly did the black dots on the bottom of the white parts. I wanted to do it quick so that the black blob that I put on my plastic baggie wouldn't dry first. I'm running low.

I finished off with some white lines for the puff. It didn't quite work out like I had hoped, but I still like it.

An InLinkz Link-up

Supernatural

This one may seem quite strange. I totally understand that it's not what most people think of when they hear supernatural. But I was at a loss for what to do, so I went to good ol' google images. Of course googling supernatural just gave me things for the show with that name. That wasn't helpful so my husband suggested arcane. I still didn't have any inspiration. However there did seem to be some things for My Little Pony on there. After some discussions with my husband about what it really meant to be supernatural, I decided that Twilight Sparkle really did fit the bill. She's an anthropomorphic pony that has magical powers through her unicorn horn and later she gets wings.

So that's where my idea of Twilight Sparkle came into play. I also just like doing cartoon characters and she's my favourite from My Little Pony. I'm a bit of a Pegasister, although I haven't seen any episodes for a couple of years.

The colours that I used are my unknown black, Plugged-in Plum by OPI, Koala Bear-y by OPI, Snow Me White by Sinful Colors, Lavender Soap by Revlon Parfumerie, and the dark from Pinstripe by Revlon nail art mixed with my top coat from Nicole by OPI.

Twilight Sparkle is a light purple and I really only had one light purple, which is my lavender soap. It's not very purpley and more of a pearl colour, so I had to apply more coats that usual to have the purple show up. It also doesn't show up well in the lighting, so I have a picture with and without flash. But trust me, it looks more purpley is real life.

I decided that I would do her mane on my middle finger and her tail on my pinkie. I was at a loss for what to do about the dark blue parts of her hair. I didn't really have a creme polish that matched. I was about to use a shimmer when I realised that I should try mixing my matte polish from pinstripe with my clear top coat. I got this idea because I've seen online that you can just add some cornstarch to make a regular polish into matte. I figured I might as well try it the other way. And it worked! Her mane and tail also have streaks of purple and pink.

Following the general order of a pony's body, I added her cutie mark on my ring finger. Her cutie mark actually also includes some white stars all around the pink one, but I didn't have room. I just added some dots at the four "corners" of my nails. My ring finger was going to be her eye.

She has purple eyes, so the iris came next.

I followed that with the black for her pupil as well as the top eyelid and eyelashes on the bottom.

I finished it off with some shine marks on her eye and cleaned up the rest of the nails.I really loved how the eye turned out. Although it sadly didn't last long because I went to do the dishes after dinner and the purple and black from the eye was completely gone. I'm not sure how that happened because it wasn't smeared or anything. It was just gone!

An InLinkz Link-up

Inspired by a Flag

Being the Public Health nerd that I am, I chose to use the World Health Organization's flag for my inspiration. The flag is sometimes seen with the snake and pole as yellow instead of white. I chose to go with the yellow for ease of painting, but this picture was better quality than any of the yellow ones that I saw.

I chose No Room for the Blues by OPI, Snow Me White by Sinful Colors and Bananarama by Kmart.

After adding the base colour, I started adding the white circles that represented the latitude lines on the globe. There were five of them. Then I added the laurel. I did this with two dots and then joining them down. It's similar to how you do hearts, such as in my wedding nails post.

I added some blobs where the countries went next. It's hard to have that much detail in such a small area.

The yellow pole was next.

Followed by the snake. This is when I realised that the yellow was a bit transparent and I tried to mix in a bit of white with it to make it opaque.

I added the eye next and thought that I should try outlining the snake and pole. I'm not sure if that was a good thing or not. I felt like it kind of looked like a mess. In the end, it didn't really matter because it all got messed up in less than an hour after since I had to wash the dishes from dinner.

The finished product!

An InLinkz Link-up

Artwork

I've seen pictures of nails inspired by famous works of art before and I thought that they were just beautiful. I decided to look up paintings a while back and pinned one on pinterest. Then I realised that it's an Autumn painting and since I live in the Southern Hemisphere, Spring has just started. The picture that I originally pinned was a Monet, so I looked up his work. I decided to go with Irises In Monets Garden.

The colours that I chose are Con-fused? by China Glaze Magnetix, Coach Ella by Fresh Paint, Envious by Kmart, Bananarama by Kmart, Glowstick by Wet n Wild Fergie, A-piers to be Tan by OPI, Snow Me White by Sinful Colours, Lavender Soap by Revlon Parfumerie, my unknown black, Summer Rose by boe, Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint, and two Chi Chi Magnetic polishes that don't have names.

I started off with painting my nails Coach Ella. I wanted to have a base colour before I put in the details to make sure that all of the base coat was covered. The reason that I chose this colour was because it was neutral and light enough that it wouldn't matter if it was seen where it shouldn't be and it was easy enough to cover up.

The next step that I did was to create the path. I figured that this way it wouldn't matter if the grass went a little out of control. I started doing the path by putting down some black. The brown went on top of that. I then decided that it needed some lighter colours and so I mixed some yellow and brown.

I did the grass next. I started with using a small brush and Glowstick. I realised that it wasn't showing up well, so when I started adding Envious, I did it with a dotting tool.

I decided that the dotting tool looked weird and went back to the small brush. It ended up giving me the strokes that I wanted to be seen and I really liked how it looked with the different shades of green. I also mixed the different polishes a bit to make more shades.

I finally added a bunch of spots with the small brush to represent the flowers. Monet's style lends well to nail art, at least with my tools, because of the strokes and blurriness, for lack of a better term. I chose to use a small brush to show that the flower shapes weren't perfect. I put the polishes of similar colours, ie the purple and lavendar together and the summer rose and pink together, and had them at the brush at the same time. I like how this added depth to the flower groups since one colour didn't end up drying before adding the other.

I was very pleased with the overall manicure, but I wasn't able to capture that in a picture very well. Some manicures just don't want to photograph well! Here are a few pictures to try to capture the essence of this mani.

An InLinkz Link-up

Pattern

This one was a challenge to think of what to do. I really couldn't think of a pattern. I looked up ideas on google images and nothing took my fancy. I decided to be the goofball that I am and do a pattern like the kind that you use when you want to sew. I actually just looked up images of McCalls patterns and did some lines that would show where you cut or bend. I'm so silly, but it also reminded me of time spent with my mom, especially when I was little.

I used my unknown black and Coach Ella from Fresh Paint.

An InLinkz Link-up

Fashion

Last time I did a prompt for fashion, I chose to do one of my purses. That was the easier one but I wanted to do another one of my purses. I'm not very fashionable, so they were the best things that I could think of doing. The purse that I chose to do is a Vera Bradley bag. Her prints are very intricate, so I chose to really zoom in to get the details.

The colours that I chose were No Room for the Blues by OPI, Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint, the dark end of Pinstripe by Revlon Nail Art, Glowstick by Wet n Wild Fergie, Con-fused? by China Glaze magnetix, and Snow Me White by Sinful Colours.

I wasn't sure exactly what parts of the bag that I wanted to do, so I did a bunch of colours that worked as background colours for different areas of the bag.

I decided which part of the bag I wanted to do on a nail by nail basis which meant that I ended up not using one of the colours that I had initially planned and I didn't think about that fact that I had two white and dark blue nails next to each other. But I still like how it turned out overall. I only wish that I had a better colour to use for my dark blue. I thought that it would be lighter than it was, especially when I added the top coat since it's matte. 

An InLinkz Link-up

Inspired by a Book

My favourite books are the Harry Potter books, but I didn't want to do another Harry Potter manicure because challenges are about challenging yourself and adding to your repertoire. I decided to go for my next favourite book, which has been so since about fifth grade when I first read it.

That book is The Giver by Lois Lowry. It has recently been made into a movie, but I haven't seen it yet. I'm waiting until it's out on DVD. But since it was just made, it helped me come up with ideas because of all the promotional things.

I decided to go with a black and white gradient because their community is in black and white. I painted a red apple on an accent nail because that's the first colour that he sees in the book.

The colours I chose are Snow Me White by Sinful Colors, my unknown black, Red Red by Wet n Wild, A-piers to be Tan by OPI, and Envious by Kmart.

I really do love how the gradient turned out. I don't normally do top coat, but I added it here so that I had a smooth canvas on which to paint my apple. I also loved how the apple turned out. Not only is The Giver one of my favourite books, but this was also one of my favourite manicures that I've done.

An InLinkz Link-up

Inspired by a Movie

I thought for a while about what I favourite animated movie was. I wanted to do something animated because I love painting characters. My favourite is Beauty and the Beast, but I did that earlier this month, so I decided to go with Finding Nemo.

I used a lot of colours for this manicure. Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint, Radiant Violet by Three Beauties, No Room for the Blues by OPI, Frostbite by China Glaze, Bananarama by Kmart, Shark Attack by Sephora, Summer Rose by boe, Snow Me White by Sinful Colours, Jailbait by Spoiled, A-Piers to be Tan by OPI, Low Tide by Spa Ritual, and my unknown black.

I started off with a sponge manicure for the background colour. The ocean has so many different shades of blue that I wanted to incorporate that. I started with Bonna Blue and sponged on No Room for the Blues, Frostbite, and a bit of Radiant Violet.

I actually LOVED how these turned out (after I added the top coat so that they had a shine and it was easier to paint on top of). I almost didn't want to paint characters over them! But I knew that it wasn't really Finding Nemo inspired without them! I used my small dotting tool as the only tool to paint the characters.

The first character that I painted was Bruce. I actually remembered to take step by step pictures of painting him, but then I forgot when I did the others. The first step I did was to make the outline. Then I used Shark Attack to colour him in.

Shark Attack ended up being too close to the background colour and Bruce is actually lighter, so I ended up putting bits of No Room for the Blues in there. I also added white for the teeth and the gums were no longer really visible unless you look REALLY closely, but they were Summer Rose.

The next step was the eyes.

I painted Marlin next. Or it could be Nemo. Who knows, it's just a clownfish as you can't see if he has a little fin or not. I started with making the orange blob form for his body.

The next step was to add the stripes and eyes. For the stripes, I painted thicker black stripes and then a white stripe in the middle of the black so just a little black showed on either side.

Next up was Dory. She was pretty easy. I made a blue form for her body. Then I added the black and finished off with the yellow for her tail and fin.

Squirt is the one that I'm most proud of. I think he's adorable! I didn't have a colour that matched the green of his skin, so I did some mixing. I took a dab of the Low Tide polish and mixed in a small dot of A-piers to be Tan that was on the tip of my dotting tool. That worked perfectly. The rest of him is pretty self explanatory.

An InLinkz Link-up