NAILgasm - The most important post you will read today!

Some of you might have heard about this new documentary project called NAILgasm, but some of you might not have. In case you haven't, it's a documentary about what we all love the most: nail art! As the creator puts it, NAILgasm, "explores [sic] how nail art has evolved from the streets to high fashion." This is of particular interest to me, because not only do I love nail art, but I love documentaries. I think it would be so amazing to sit down and watch a documentary about one of my favorite things in the world. But NAILgasm needs your help. In order to be completed, the director has set up a Kickstarter to help get some extra funds so that she can interview more awesome nail artists from across the world. In case you don't know Kickstarter is essentially a fundraising site that allows anyone to donate to a project. The project has a set goal that it needs reach in order for the "backers" to have to pay. (So basically, if not enough people pledge to donate, NAILgasm will get no money and might never be made!) I just pledged to donate $25. With my donation, if the project gets backed, I will get stickers, buttons and my name in the credits as a perk for donating! You can donate as little as $1. And let's be honest, I don't think there is a single person that reads my blog who wouldn't be willing to pay $1 to see an awesome documentary about nail art. But if you don't have the money, at least spread the word. 

Right now, NAILgasm still needs about $2,000 in order to be funded. They still need 25% of their goal. And there is only 32 hours left for them to achieve this goal (it ends 3/20 at 8:35EDT). Please, go donate over at Kickstarter here and spread the word to anyone you know who loves nail art and wants to see nail art move further into the mainstream, learn where it came from, and see what the nail artists you idolize have to say about the field. 

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Yay! More nails that were done for my collaboration with Leslie from Polish Art Addiction for our Peculiar Polish series. These nails were actually my FIRST attempt ever at doing a picture tutorial! Check it out on Leslie's blog here. 

The Silence of the Lambs

Thumb - Moth
Index - View from night vision goggles
Middle - Hannibal's mask
Ring - Size 14 clothing tag
Pinky - Sewing pattern on fabric

A long while ago, LittleMonsterx14 of Claws Up suggested some Silence of the Lambs nails. I had two reactions to this: First, I was like, "oh yeah, I can definitely get those done soon" (boy, was I wrong); and second I was like "oh man, I'm gonna do hilarious Silence of the Lambs nails and do things like little fluffy lambs and lotion in a basket." But then, I decided to re-watch the movie to see if I could draw some inspiration. Re-watching The Silence of the Lambs made me completely change my design because at times that movie can be sooo creepy. So instead of funny nails, I took a more serious approach.

If you haven't seen The Silence of the Lambs, I may be about to give some spoilers, and you should probably just go watch it right now anyways. The moth on my thumb is the iconic image of the movie posters. It has a skull on its back (or... it's supposed to, I don't really like how the moth turned out) because it is a Death-Head moth. The night vision goggles on my index finger were included because of the scene at the end of the film where Agent Starling is invading Buffalo Bill's house alone and after he cuts the power he eerily stalks her using the night vision goggles. To me, this is one of the most memorable scenes in the movie. My middle finger has Hannibal's mask because it is so iconic to see Anthony Hopkins in that mask. My ring finger has a size 14 clothing tag. This actually as an aspect of the movie that I didn't really remember, but I found totally chilling. When Buffalo Bill abducts the girl, he knocks her out and says, "You're about a size 14?" He then checks the tag on her clothes and she is in fact a size 14. His familiarity with the female form is striking. Finally on my pinky, I included a dress pattern because when Starling is investigating it is seeing a dress pattern that helps her to realize that Buffalo Bill is trying to sew a suit out of human flesh. 

Trick r' Treat

Here are some more old Halloween nails. I know, you're totally bored of Halloween nails, right? Well when you start getting bored of Christmas/holiday nails in a few days, you'll be happy I'm so behind on my posting! These are my Trick 'r Treat nails. Trick 'r Treat is a pretty awesome horror movie. It is separated into four parts, each of which tells a different Halloween-related horror story. Bringing the four parts together is Sam, who is featured on the movie poster below, and who wears a burlap sack over his bulbous head. I tried to paint him on my thumbs but it was such a gigantic fail that I didn't even take pictures of it. Everything I painted just looked like a circle with an orange stick figure body. I guess I still need some work on my shading! I hope you like these and that I'm not boring everyone too much with Halloween themes!

Frankenstein

I'm a huge movie fan, so here I tried to make some Bride of Frankenstein nails!  I decided to go with black and white because the original 1935 movie was (I know, shocker) in black and white. I did a simple lightening design on most of my fingers and for accents I tried to do the hair of Frankenstein's monster and his bride. The ring finger is the top of the monsters head, you can see some shading that I tried to do to give him a more weathered look. The thumb is his bride's hair, which has the iconic white stripes in it.

Do you have a favorite old movie?

The Omen

Again, I share with you my insanely belated Halloween nail art. The Omen was one of my favorite movies when I was growing up. It both terrified and interested me. If you haven't seen the original, I would highly recommend it. If you aren't a horror movie fan, you might enjoy it anyway because it stars the AMAZING Gregory Peck! Without spoiling anything I'll tell you that it is about a family who discover that their son (aptly named Damien) is evil. I'm also a firm believer that all of the sequels (so The Omen I through The Omen IV) are incredible.

There are a number of horrible things that happened in conjunction with the filming of these movies that the cast and crew referred to as bad "omens." Some felt that the nature of the movies was causing these bad things to happen. So that I don't make this blog post too ominous, I'll just point you to this site which lists many of the happenings. 

Fantastic Fest

Fantastic Fest is a genre film festival held in Austin, Texas at the infamous Alamo Drafthouse annually.  But of course, every year, for one reason or another, I can't attend! So, Ron leaves me behind and when he went this past year, I decided that if I couldn't be there, at least I could get excited by painting the logo on my nails!

I ended up not really like these nails and taking them off pretty quickly after I painted them, but apparently some people at the fest saw them and thought they were pretty cool! 

Welcome to Prime Time, B****!

These are my take on Freddy Krueger nails! First of all, entire series of the Nightmare of Elm Street movies  is amazing, which I know some people would argue with me about, but more importantly, can we just talk about the awesomeness of Wes Craven, who directed the first movie. He is one of my favorite directors, mostly because of the beauty of The Last House on the Left which includes the saddest moments of reflection I've ever seen.

But I digress, Freddy Krueger is quite possibly the scariest concept ever for a child because you can't escape the horror! Not even in your sleep! And Robert Englund, who portrays Freddy, is bone-chilling. He adds just the right amount of humor to make anyone squirm!

These nails were kind of a fail... The thumb and middle fingers are meant to be Freddy's burnt skin, but instead they look kind of pretty and definitely not skin-like. I'm pretty unhappy with my line work for Freddy's trademark red and green sweater. And my blood splatter looks more like... umm... well... not splatter-y... more like a glob. Oh well, you can't win 'em all!

FUN (and personal) FACT: The Simpsons knock off of Nightmare on Elm Street in the Treehouse of Horrors VI episode scared me WAY more than the film actually did. 

Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park - The movie that changed how I feel when I go to the bathroom in public places. I love this movie! I think it's super fun, terrifying, hilarious, and exciting all wrapped into one! And amazingly, the effects have held up for almost 20 years! Wow... it's been 18 years since Jurassic Park came out. Can you believe that? I based this design on the jeeps that are driven around the park (picture below). If I could go back and do it again, I would make the green near my cuticles a bit darker. 

Fun fact about the jeeps: They are supposed to be going around the island on tracks, but that was too expensive to actually make happen, so to make it look like the jeep was just driving itself they rigged this awesome idea. They put a guy with a remote control that controlled the car hidden in the backseat and he steered the car via a video monitor! Super cool idea! 

Godzilla

Left hand

Right Hand

It's my last semester in college, and one of the awesome classes that I am taking is a Godzilla film class. I decided to make these nails as a tribute to the original Godzilla film, usually referred to as Gojira. I hadn't realized before taking this class how tragic the Gojira was. It is nothing like the stereotype that Godzilla films usually get of being cheesy and a B-movie. It's directed by Ishiro Honda, who famously worked on many of the Japanese monster movies. But more interestingly, he worked with Akira Kurosawa a lot. Some of my favorite collaborations of the two include: Stray Dog, Kagemusha, and Ran. I think probably my favorite work of Honda's on a Kurosawa film is The Tunnel sequence in Dreams (one of Kurosawa's more recent films). It is haunting in many of the same ways that Gojira is.

Anyways, enough of the film talk. On these nails is the famous scene from Gojira in which Godzilla breaks down a bunch of power lines, which everyone is hopeful will kill him so that he stops his reign of destruction. If you look closely you can see his radioactive breathe (he didn't get fire breathe until later). On my thumb was a distinctive bridge that, let's say, doesn't survive. My right hand was the logo for Gojira and, in Japanese characters, it says (obviously) Gojira. Yay.

Sunday the 25th...

... As opposed to Friday the 13th, which is one of my favorite slasher films (which is saying a lot, being that 1980's slasher films are probably my favorite genre). These nails were inspired by Robin Moses who does amazing video tutorials to supplement her amazing nail art. It is my assumption that everyone knows of this goddess of nail design, but if you don't, you should definitely check her out here. She is the entire reason that I have the ability to add any type of depth to my nail art. I'm not naturally a good artist (you should see what happens when I try to draw a nail design before painting it), so her ability to break down the steps completely inspired me to keep trying. I guess you could say, I owe it (almost) all to her! Also, while you're checking stuff out, definitely watch Friday the 13th. But don't watch Robin's videos at the same time as you're watching the movie... that would just be confusing.

Redo!

I'm re-posting these Attack the Block nails because this is the order in which they actually occurred. I recommend reading about my nails here, but a better idea would be to just go see the movie!

The Evil Dead

I love horror films (if I were exaggerating -- like I tend to do -- I would say "more than anything"). Almost all of my favorite horror films come from the 1980's, and although my favorite genre is the slasher film, The Evil Dead is way at the top of my favorites list. So for these nails I did two different logos from the film, The Book of the Dead, and Ash's face. This was my first attempt at portraiture, and as you can tell, I am still learning. But I think that these nails were the turning point in my artistic abilities because I challenged myself with Ash's face and with lettering (another hard skill). Whenever I am asked about my nail art, I always say that these are the first set of nails I painted that made me feel like an artist. And I think that every time I've painted my nails since these has been exponentially better that anything I did before them. I was so happy when I did these that I finally hit my stride -- and I couldn't be happier that it happened with something as cool as The Evil Dead!