Robson et al., 2012

Sophy Robson for Houses of Holland

Sophy Robson, the queen of nails and monarch of manicures, have a silly amount of impressive nail designs on her conscience. One of the many manis are my all time favourite multi-coloured design she did for Daphne Guinness, which you by all means should check out here.

Anyhow, earlier this fall miss Robson made an intriguing neon tie-dye design for Houses of Holland. And to continue with the good news, she released a video tutorial for it! You can see it here.

So, for this mani, I tried following her tutorial. After a few hours with that mani, I could resist to add some glitter in the form of dots and an accent nail.

Products used:
China Glaze Pool Party

Nails Inc Chelsea Embankment

Nails Inc Chelsea Square

Nubar Hot Yellow 
Depend #035

Dior Blue Denim
China Glaze For Audrey

Froggy (I)

Poison Frog

Lately, I've been thinking about frogs. It started out when I accidentally made a few dots on a green polish base, which made me think about poison frogs, which naturally in turn made me google "poison frogs". One of the first picture results that came up was the frog seen below: Zimmermann’s poison frog (Ranitomeya variabilis). How great is that for manicure inspiration?

So, I decided to try. For this gradient I used a blue base (Isadora Wondernail Bel Air Blue) and a neon yellow (Depend #35) on top. I love using neon yellows on top of blues instead of using neon greens - I find it makes more electrifying neon greens and smoother gradients.

This gradient was done using a piece of a kitchen sponge, and was sponged 4 times before a smoothing top coat was applied. The black dots (Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris) was done with a tooth pick, but any kind of dotting tool or pointy thing found around the house would suffice.

Products used:
Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris
Depend #35
Isadora Wondernail Bel Air Blue

Stripes (I)

Gloopy stripes

Inspiration: this video tutorial

Just a quick picture post, as I'm currently getting ready for a five week trip to Greenland, where I will have no internet access and officially no polish access either due to limited baggage weight. But the weight of a single, tiny polish bottle has never crashed any helicopters as far as I know... Now to the problem of choosing which one can come with me. Possibly the dark grey Paddington depicted below:

I kind of jelly sandwiched a few of the stripes to add some depth. So, first a base of Paddington, some stripes, My Pointe Exactly, more stripes... I'd love to try this in even more steps when I have some more spare time.

Products used:

Nails Inc. Paddington

Depend Art Liner in white  

OPI My Pointe Exactly

Nails Inc. Chelsea Square

Thunder

Electrostatic Discharge

Inspired by: this post by geebsterlove on redditlaqueristas, this youtube tutorial, and this picture I googled forth. 

Thunder! Lightning! TheamountoftimeIputintomanicuresisfrightning. You better knock, knock, knock on wood, baby.

Products used:
OPI Royal Navy
Dior Blue Denim
Nails Inc. Electric Lane
Depend Art Liner in white
OPI Don't Touch My Tutu
OPI I Have a Herring Problem
China Glaze Ride the Waves

Abstract (III)

Two quick tutorials

Inspiration: tutorial requested by reddit user FreeBird69

Again, this is a spin-off of the mani shown below. Tutorial for the ring finger design can be found here. This post will show how to do the middle and pinkie designs.  

Original blogpost

  

Middle finger: Lollipop dots

Start with your base colour. I choose a neon (China Glaze Pool Party), so I painted my nails white first to make the colour pop. Sidenote: as you can see, I'm not ready to part from my ring finger blob design just yet.

Slap some french tips on. I used China Glaze Liquid Leather. There's tons of tricks for making french tips (including but not restricted to taping with hole reinforcements or tape cut to fit, or even stamping). However, I recommend freehand. It's easy enough and practice makes perfect!

Then, I randomly applied some white dots. I used the big end of a regular pin needle and China Glaze White on White which is nicely opaque.

Then use the other end of a pin needle to make tiny black dots in the centre of the white ones. I'm holding my home made dotting tool, but a regular needle of course works just as well.

Use a striper polish or brush to make small tails on the white dots as pictured. I used Depend Art Liner in white. If you like, you can wait until after this step to do the french tips, but as they are more prone and unforgiving to fuckups than the dotting and striping, I prefer it in this order.

Pinkie: geometric design

Start with a white base. I have two coats of ChG White on White.

When the white is completely dry, put a piece of tape vertically down the middle.

Paint black (I have ChG Liquid Leather) and remove the tape. Some like to wait until the polish is a bit dry, some do it at once. I've never had trouble either way so I don't have a preference.

You will end up with a nice geometric design like this (if not, you can easily use stripers to fix it, or hide it in the next step). Let's risk messing this design up in the next step!

I totally gif:ed this for you. If you're using the white striper, start in the white, close to the black, and drag over into the black - and vice versa for the black striper. That way you get nice pinch outs of the lines.

Here's the result.

And Bam!, that's it.

Just to conclude this weekend of 7 manis: in the end I went back to that blobalicious ring finger as the accent:

How McQueenish of me.

Products used:

China Glaze Pool Party

China Glaze Liquid Leather

China Glaze White on White

Depend Art Liner in black and White
China Glaze Pelican Grey
Isadora Wonder Nail 651: Silver Sparkles
Isadora Wonder Nail 65: Smoky Grey

Abstract (II)

Radiating gloopiness

Inspiration: I found this video helpful for the technique

I really liked the ring finger design of my last mani, so I scrapped the others and tried it out as an accent nail:  

I love this mani! The silver (Isadora 651) is gorgeous but hard to show off in pictures.

Quite a few of my fellow redditlaqueristas also had this design as their favorite, so by popular demand and withouth further ado, here's a quick tutorial:  
  

Here's my set up. The needle is a regular pin needle in home made fimo clay casing, but you can use a tooth pick or any other dotting tool. If you want, you can tape your finger beforehand for easy clean up.

Put blobs of polish as pictured. I messed up one of my blobs, but it couldn't matter less for this design.

Wait until your polish blob is a gloopy, stringy mess. I only have two hands, so I had to take this picture on the side.

Now go from blob number one via blob number two and out to the sides and back again. Pick up a gloopy string every time you cross one of your blobs, and continue until you like the design.

Add another blob of polish and a  rhinestone to your focal point. Here, I experimented a bit more with the pinkie and it came out quite arachnoid. My favourite is still the ring finger as the highly contrasting colours show off even the thinnest lines.

A few additional things:

1. Be careful with the clean up process, as the lines can hang freely in the air between the highest point of your nail and cuticle or skin on the side. Make sure they are attached to the nail if you don't want to risk shifting your whole design. You can easily do that by pressing them very gently down, or "cut" them of with acetone to make them fall down.
2. I used an art liner because it is very gloopy in itself, but any polish works if you wait the right amount of time. Experiment!
3. This video (same as linked under inspiration, but I don't want you to miss it!) is helpful.

Products used:

Isadora Wonder Nail 651: Silver Sparkles

China Glaze White on White

Depend Art Liner in black

Abstract (I)

  B/W + neon

Inspiration: oogling Disco Nails and the Illustrated Nail

Five different abstract designs using black, white, neon pink and rhinestones:

Tutorial for ringfinger here, and for middle and pinkie here.

Products used:

China Glaze Liquid Leather

China Glaze White on White

China Glaze Pool Party

Barry M Croc Nail Effect

Depend Art Liner in black and white