Tiger Stripes

It's Thursday and that means you should pop over to Polish Art Addiction to see my latest Peculiar Polish (I did Family Guy nails this week)!

In line with my new love for animal prints I thought I would do some tiger stripes. I've seen these gradient tiger stripes before and figured I'd try them out myself! Every time I looked down at these nails I was reminded of one of my favorite childhood books: How the Tiger Got Its Stripes. The book is originally a Viatnamese folk tale and I'm not sure which version I used to read, so I can't tell you an author. Another great book in the series was How the Peacock Got Its Feathers. Anyways, I loved these simple nails and wore them for ages. I used a special top coat on them which I'll be posting about soon. It is a special hardening top coat that doesn't need to cure under a UV light but acts like typical gel top coats. 

Here's the nails before I added the stripes. You can see that I put a holographic coat over the gradient to really make them pop!

Animal Prints

I've never been a huge animal print kind of gal, but I'm totally in love with these nails. Does that sound a little conceited?  Oh well, that's how much I like these nails -- enough that bragging about them outweighs any fears of seeming too into myself! I wanted to make a sort of organic overlay of both leopard and zebra prints and this is what came out. I think the design looks really cool, but if I were to go back and do it again I would probably use different colors for the leopard print. I would have used the lighter color as a background and the medium shade as the center of the spots. Anyways! This was my first attempt at zebra print and I think it was a success. I always get worried about print type things because if you try to hard to be random, you create patterns and then the art looks fake. Another thing I love about these nails: the matte finish. I love mattes + animal prints. Yay, these were some super happy nails!

Creepy Kitties

Okay so I was trying to do some cute little kittens and I ended up with this! They look sooo creepy, they almost have a Cheshire cat vibe. But I love them. In fact, I think they're better than if they had been adorable kitties. I added some paw prints to my pinky and thumb. On my thumb I also put the word, "meow" in cursive because I was a little worried that it wasn't obvious that they were cats.

If I were to do it again I would keep the eyes the same but maybe change the smiles. Unless it was Halloween! 

Dolphins

This is how I know a design is not so great: I'm too bored of it to think of anything interesting to say about it.

I originally painted these dolphins when Ron's mom suggested I do some dolphins or the ocean. I got the idea from  a small thumbnail of a dolphin in the waves that I can no longer find (obviously.... Why would I save stuff). Then I made a tutorial of how to do these which can be seen here. It was my first tutorial, so it is far from perfect. Anyways, that's my dolphin nails. The end. (boring).

Keroppi

Lots of people do Hello Kitty nails, but I've only seen a few Keroppi designs. So I figured I'd add my flair to the adorable little frog. I decided to put his face on my fingers and do his entire body on my thumb. On my ring finger I used holographic polishes (by Milani) to get a little more "pop." They ended up being really adorable and were WAY easier than the Hello Kitty nails I did a while after these.

My first tutorial!

Check out my first ever video tutorial here. It is a tutorial teaching you how to paint dolphins splashing in some waves. Do bear with me though, I'm still working on how to get the correct lighting and not put my hands in the way of the camera. And it turns out my microphone makes it sound like I have a huge lisp. But all of that is okay because I had fun making this, so I'm sure there are more to come! In fact, I may go make one right now!

NYC

This was the summer of family and one of my favorite family vacations was when my boyfriend, his parents, one of his sisters, and I went to NYC. Ron and I go there often, so it isn't very exciting for us, but none of his family had been before. We got to take them to the Empire State building, the Statue of Liberty, and eat tons of food! At the end of the vacation I decided that I should do some nails to commemorate the trip. So these are my NYC nails! My right hand said "I *heart* NY" but I can't find a picture of it. Here's the story behind each nail:
Thumb: This was for Ron's mom, Susie. She loves playing Monopoly on facebook, so the "Go" from Monopoly reminds me of her
Index: This was for Ron's father, Vern. He is devout in his Christianity so I couldn't think of anything better to represent him than a cross
Middle: A kitty cat for Ron's sister Bonnye. Every time I ever see anything with a cat on it my reaction is always, "Oh my god, Bonnye would love that!"
Ring: Well, if you're read my blogs a bunch you can probably guess that the hamburger is for Ron. He loves hamburgers. A lot.
Pinky: And of course, I got the hand with painted nails... because let's be honest... I kind of like painting my nails.

Goats and Pizza

For Ron's actual birthday I put the things he loves most (or at least 2 of the 3... I didn't do hamburgers) on my nails. First I did a pizza with a candle on my thumb. Next I had to decide what to do for the rest of the nails so I used the fact that Ron really wants to own goats. He thinks they are the best animal that exist and is perpetually trying to convince me that a goat would be a great pet. I, however, am not an idiot and I know that a goat would eat all of our stuff, poop everywhere, and climb on everything. These are of course significant facts since he wants an indoors goat. So this, Ron, is the closest you will ever get to being a goat owner while I'm around... At least until you convince me otherwise.

Dolphins

Silhouette of a dolphin at sunset

Two dolphins splashing around

These dolphin nails were inspired by Ron's mom, Susan. She said that I should do some pretty ocean nails so I decided on doing waves and dolphins. As you can see, I also did a whale on my right ring finger, but it turned out so blahhh that I don't even like to talk about it. The dolphin thumbs and ring finger turned out just as I wanted them to and these nails have definitely been a source of pride for me over the months.

Mark's birthday

Every year for my friend Mark's birthday, he changes his profile picture on facebook to a photograph of a red panda that is "wearing" a photoshopped party hat. So for his birthday nails, I decided to run with that theme. I painted candles on my pinkys and middle fingers, red pandas on my ring fingers, and party hats on my pointer fingers.

And of course, on my thumbs I painted some yummy looking cakes. Mark is an awesome baker, so usually when he makes cake it tastes way better than these look, but hey, I can't be perfect.

 

This is me pretending to blow out Mark's candles. I think I had too much time on my hands.

This is the red panda actually *wearing* the party hat.

Here is the actual panda with the party hat!

A Not So Early Easter

Easter 2011 was the first time that I ever really got to celebrate all the Easter-y goodness. Growing up as a Jewish child in a largely Jewish town, it wasn't in my cards to hide painted eggs, eat excessive chocolate, or get visited by a gigantic bunny that probably would have made me cry. This year Ron and I went over to our friends Mike and Lisa's house and celebrated with their two kids. We made the kids Easter baskets that would make any parent cringe and spent the day making Easter eggs. It turns out I totally suck really really bad at making Easter eggs. That is like the hardest thing ever.

So for these nails, I just did eggs in some grass on my left hand and turned each individual nail into an egg for the right hand. The thumbs had a bunny and a chick. I may not be able to paint a real egg, but at least I can paint eggs on my nails!

An Early Easter

As per my usual M.O., I did super early Easter nail art. These were probably done between the 17th and 19th of April (Easter was the 24th in 2011). These were some little chicks hatching from eggs. I was trying to make them more abstract and wisp-y, but I think they just turned out a little sloppy. There will be a much better set of Easter nails coming up soon!

Raccoons

I always see the most adorable animal nails but I've never seen raccoons. I tried to find some but I haven't seen anyone else do them! I found an image of a raccoon's face and then I decided to do tails on my ring fingers and thumbs. I have always thought that these are some of the cutest nails I've ever done.

Counting Sheep

I don't sleep well, I never have. I did these sheep in hopes that they might help me sleep for a while, but of course they didn't. I still think they're pretty cute though!

Monarch Butterfly

It seems like these have become some of the most popular nails on the internet -- unsurprisingly. They are so beautiful! I wish I knew who originated them.

A Cow - Sort Of

This is a cow that looks like a pig. I don't know why this happened.

Ladybug French Tips

Ladybugs! I wanted to do something cute and summery (even though when I did this, it was totally not summer time). Animal french tips are some of my favorite nails to do, I always think they turn out really cute. I didn't realize how horrible these pictures were, so I'm sorry if they're kind of hard to see.

Panda Bears

These are all over the internet, I have no idea who created them.

The thumb was a small addition to an otherwise repeated trend.