I'm not mean, I'm a 1000 years old..

And I just lost track of my moral code.

Marceline, the Vampire Queen

Needed nails to suit a cosplay of Adventure Time's Marceline, and chose to do a  colour variant of the French manicure.

Colours used:

NYC - 003 Prey of Grey (base)
Herôme W.I.C. - Oslo 124 (top grey)
Herôme W.I.C. - London 95

I used some old Hema French manicure stickers in the attempt to get a smooth curve, but they never quite seem to work out the way I hope, and then I end up repainting the edge myself anyway. Ah well.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from this pumpkin carved by my brother!

Another Halloween nail art from me! I had been wanting to do a second one, but couldn't quite decide until a friend gave me O.P.I.'s 'Shatter the Scales', a crackle polish from the Amazing Spider-Man Collection and I knew I had to incorporate it somehow.
On a more negative note, my computer is currently out of order so I have no access to Photoshop and am forced to use pixlr.com to edit my pictures. Which.. isn't great, but that's why things don't look as they usually do.

Boo!

It came back to me on the other hand.

This adorable ghost is on a base of Max Factor's '16 Emerald' and the ghost itself is a Hema polish.
The orange is again Herôme W.I.C.'s 'Zagora 150' and the crackle I mentioned above. You can tell it had been some time since I'd used a crackle - I forgot you had to spread them thicker if you wanted bigger cracks.



On my thumb you will find the little ghost's slightly larger friend.

With a weird border around the text? I miss Photoshop.

I know that I definitely enjoyed seeing a lot of Halloween themed nail art this year, and I'm sad to see it go. Next year, however, our time will come again!

For now, I will just wish you...

A HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Gone Batty.

I'm one of those people for who the entire month 'October' is synonymous with 'Halloween'. And I finally managed to whip up some Halloween-themed nail art I'm proud to show off!

I mean, sure, I did do this stripey-gradienty style not too long ago.. I'm basically just a one trick pony, but the one trick looks good.
The orange is Herôme W.I.C.'s 'Zagora 150'. I wonder which Zagora it's supposed to refer to.. Morocco, Greece? Anyway. Black is YSL 'No56'.

Back to the 'Falls.

A part two to my other Gravity Falls nails. This being my non-dominant hand, so I tend to wimp out and not bother with quite such detailed things. I have pretty steady hands, but alas, I am not full-on ambidextrous.

I wanted something simple based on the colour scheme of the logo (well, the greens) so I went for sponging. I used a slightly 'bluer' side of the green family than the logo because, to be quite honest, no other reason than that they were still standing around on my desk.
They are, in order from lightest to darkest -
Hema - Long Lasting 82
Essence - 54 Trust in Fashion
Essence - 03 Back to Paradise

Gravity Falls.

Gravity Falls is a children's cartoon on the Disney Channel, and I wanted to do some nail art of just the character Bill Cipher initially, but ended up doing most of the main cast as well. If you're unfamiliar with Gravity Falls - I described it as similar to Eerie Indiana, or a Twin Peaks for kids. A friend chose 'like Scooby Doo, or The X-Files for kids'. Sounds good, right? Right.

Bill Cipher, Mabel & Dipper Pines, Soos, Grunkle Stan.

Something I did here that I haven't really done much anymore when it comes to nail art is that most of this is actually nail polish. I tend to default to acrylic paints, because the thicker structure and rougher nail polish remover isn't very good for my brushes, which - as an artist - I use for more than just my nails.
You definitely notice a difference in outcome though, nail polish blends into each other much more subtly.
I'm pretty pleased with the results!

I used a fair amount of nail polish for this and I'll list them per character.

Bill Cipher:
H&M - Summer Sunrise, Essence - 03 My Boyfriend's Jeans, Hema - 809 (white), acrylic paint (black)

Mabel:
Essence - 01 High Waist Pink, H&M - Summer Sunrise, H&M - Pale Violet, Hema - 82, Max - Neon Orange


Dipper:
Safari - No 56, acrylic paint (light blue)

Soos:
Essence - 54 Trust in Fashion, Essence - 03 Back to Paradise

Grunkle Stan:
Rimmel - 035 Wine Not, YSL - 140 Pink Gold

Creature of Habit.

I'm a creature of habit, because I fall back easily to comfortable nail art styles and colours. It feels like a bit of a cop out when I see others do magnificently varied things.. but this works for me. I just really love me some gradients, okay?

Anyway - I got a few rolls of striping tape off eBay not too long ago and was itching to try it out. It took a little patience to position the tape exactly the way I wanted it finger after finger, but I think the result is pretty much as I envisioned it.

White is Safari's 'No 56', lighter purple is Catrice '120 Plum Play with Me', and the darker is the older Catrice by the name of 'C03 Deep Purple'.

Hello Autumn.

01  Beauti-fall Red

Essence's current LE is 'Hello Autumn' and I got one of the thermo effect polishes. Colour changing polishes are nothing new, and I've had a few less than stellar experiences with them so I was a little skeptical. It looks like a nice shade of red at any rate, and they had a 1 + 1 free sale for all things nails at Kruidvat so there was really nothing to lose as I needed a new top coat anyway.

There is a gradient effect present, but it's quite subtle. Prior to taking these pictures I held my hand under warm water (it's pretty chilly and it would have made for especially bland photos otherwise) to let the thermal effect do its thing.
I'm pleased with the quality of the polish itself, in my experience colour changing nail polishes tend to be sheer and since this was a jelly as well I was really happy to see it covered very well in only two coats!

Best I could do in terms of capturing the gradient.

Despite only wanting a single colour for my nails, I like the aesthetic of this entire LE a lot. I like the autumnal colours and one of the powders in the line has a really nice leaf pattern going - a definite thumbs up to Essence from me.

I did get crafty within the autumn theme in an area unrelated to nails...

My mother is all about the autumn decorations and I found this tutorial on how to make a lovely little leaf bowl and thought 'why not'? With some synthetic leaves provided by Xenos I got to work and made one!