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?

Where's Waldo?

Yay! Where's Waldo nails! I painted these and then after I was done I looked up "Where's Waldo nail art" on google and realized that I probably had filed away in the back of my mind Leslie from Polish Art Addiction's version of Where's Waldo nails.

Here I made Waldo's shirt and pants, then painted his face and made him give a little wave. I accidentally put his thumb on backwards (whoops). But my favorite nail is my thumb which is the logo that is usually on the inside cover of the books, sometimes it's on the actual cover as well. I was really proud of the lettering, which if you notice how short my nails are, is really small!

Fall Leaves

These are supposed to be some cute fall leaves. It's a pretty simple design, but I think that the overall look is polished and cute. I used Sally Hansen's Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed as a base and painted on the leaves with acrylic paints. 

Halloween Skulls

Man, I sure am getting bored of a lot of my nails lately. I re-tried this design in order to make a tutorial for it which can be seen here. When I make tutorials, my nails always come out worse because I'm trying to get a close up of my nails without knocking my camera over with my paint brush. My first attempt at these nails can be seen here. They are (obviously) way better than these ones. Hope you guys like them! And if anyone tries them out, I'd love to see it!

Icicles

Everyone who knows me knows that I hate the cold. I am so cold-adverse that if it gets below 80 degrees Fahrenheit I will probably put on a sweater. Yes, I know, I'm insane. The other thing that people always think I'm crazy for is, you know when you turn on your heater in your car on FULL BLAST and if you have an older car jets of extremely dry horrible feeling heat shots out at you? Well, I love that feeling. I love it so much that I usually open my eyes really wide and put them right in front of the vent so that they dry out and I get all warm and toasty. Mmmm... warmth. So I painted these icicles when it turned into "winter." I use the word winter to refer to "the end of extremely hot days." So I think that I painted these on September 1st. Which, I'm guessing most people don't think is winter. But it is to me! The ring finger has a slight accent. 

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).

Plaid

My friend Erika has an affinity for plaid. I know a lot of other people share this  love of plaid with her, but I am not one of them. However, I am one who loves a good nail art challenge, and plaid never seemed easy to me. The difficulty is that you have to be able to do incredibly straight parallel lines which is really difficult when YOU HAVE A TREMOR (like me). But I had to chop off all my nails and when I have short nails I have like nothing to work with (I have really short nail beds, so I just have little itty bitty nails) and I thought plaid might be a good design to try out. Well, I ended up really liking these. I think  plaid looks great on all nail types! But it is definitely not the easiest design. It took me quite a lot of patience to do these (especially on my dominant hand), but I think they were well worth it!

Left Foot Yellow...

That's right, Twister nails! When I was a kid, I was amazing at Twister, I was all flexible and competitive. Now I'm a little bit less of both of those things. But it's still a super fun game. Since I've grown up (a little) I think that Twister was probably made for adults: Kids are small, flexible, and patient while adults are bumbling fools a lot of the time. So now my plan is to find some friends who will play Twister with me! 

Moses' Marbleizing

These are done with Robin Moses' marbling without water technique. I had tried marbling without water before and it never turned out. After watching Robin's video I tried using a small paint brush instead of the toothpick that I was previously using. It made all the difference! Now I use an old brush so I don't have to worry if it gets a little gooey.  

More Marbles

More marbleizing. The first time I did this, I used shades of green, but this time I decided to use nudes and browns. Also featured in this picture is the beautiful nail polish ring made by Dannibean13. It's a Clarins 230 ring... Which is officially the closest I will ever get to owning Unicorn Pee. 

Basket Weave

Ta Da! A more colorful basket weave pattern. I used a lime green and on my thumb and ring finger I did accents in yellow.  I adore this pattern, but man does it take me a long time to do!

Lime and Black Experiment

I use the term "experiment" when I don't go in with a plan. These nails are quite possibly my favorite experiment ever. I think they look a little bit tribal, but not too much. They are block-y and fun. Usually my experimentation stems from a the "oh my god I'm in love with this color and I need to put it on my nails now" feeling. I guess I do this because I don't really swatch nail polishes, so if I want to see how they look, I have to come up with something fast. So these nails are me playing around with Sally Hansen's Lickety Split Lime because sometimes I just love lime. 

Hello Kitty

Hello Kitty nails were requested by Ron's mom Susie. I was never a huge fan of Helly Kitty, but I do like a lot of the other  Sanrio characters (like Keroppi). I got inspiration from Simply Rins' design which is both beautiful and simplistic. It didn't photograph well, but if you look closely you can see that there is actually holographic glitter on top of the green. It's actually a holographic acrylic paint... I was trying  to find a cheaper alternative to amazing holo nail polishes, but it kind of failed in that it wasn't very striking. Oh well!

Marbleized

I think some of the most popular and successful nail art designs are  marbled. Water marbling and the technique of marbling without water always turn out the most beautiful nails. I have tried water marbling, and it turns out I'm not so good at it, plus it's just too messy. I have tried marbling on my nails without water (if you're wondering about this, check out Robin Moses's video tutorial here), and I enjoy it, but I don't think it's *that* spectacular. So I decided to attempt a faux marble design of my own. And these are what I came up with!
Since this was a bit of an experiment, it didn't come out perfectly, and after trying it a few more times I think I've perfected my technique. What do you think of the design?

Guest Nail Art by Ron

As I have said on many occasions, my boyfriend Ron is amazing. However, as you can see here, he is not so amazing at nail art. But I can forgive him for that because it is so amazing that he would take enough of an interest in my hobby of nail art to attempt to paint these nails on me. They are little faces and each one is different. Now,  to give him a little more credit, I let him choose the polish colors and he happened to choose a really old bottle of polish, so he actually did a pretty good job with the red base coat.

So I guess the moral of these nails is that amazing boyfriends try hard but kind of suck at nail art.
I love you, Ron!

Galaxy Toes

In my never ending quest to make awesome galaxy nails, these are one of my newest creations. I posted some tips about galaxy nails here, so I won't bore you with that again. But I think you can see where I have corrected my mistakes... I use a light hand, and I put a TON of stars everywhere.

Sorry that (1) this is a crappy picture and (2) my feet are kinda gross here

The Blues

Here's another day where I was bored and experimenting. The basket weave pattern has turned into one of my favorite to do (there are at least two sets of pictures coming up featuring just the basket weave). I also really loved the ring finger. I told myself that I would try to tweak this design a bit and put it on all my nails, but I never did. Do you have an suggestions for how to make it not so boring?

Fun Balls

So I got really tempted to title this post "Robin Moses' balls" and then I giggled like a ten year old for about 15 minutes. Yes, I am that immature sometimes. This cute ball design was inspired by Robin Moses, one of the all time best nail artists ever. If you have not seen her work before then GET OFF MY BLOG and go find her! I'll even make it easy for you, just click right here. Do it. Now.

hahah balls.

M.C. Escher Cubes

Here are some M.C. Escher inspired cubes. I decided to splash some color onto the cubes from his Metamorphosis I, which is both less colorful and more complex than these nails. My friend Mike pointed out to me that these are also the cubes from the game Q*bert, so when I redo these again at some point, I'll probably make a little Q*bert and Coily (the snake).

Regardless of what they look like, they just look good (at least in my opinion)!

I'm Off to See the Wizard

Here are The Wizard of Oz nails. From thumb to pinky:
The yellow brick road
Dorothy's dress
Emerald City
The Wicked Witch of the East's stockings
Ruby slippers

The Emerald City was inspired by a YouTube video that I can no longer find and I don't recall who made it. I used these sparkles that I got from Michael's and when I top-coated them all the color like seeped off, so I ended up with silver sparkles. Whoops.