Marimekko (III)

Inspired by Marimekko

I recently purchased OPI Alpine Snow, which is the first ever decent white polish I've owned. This one actually goes on smooth and is opaque in two layers (one, if you spread it on thick, which personally I try not to do). I used to feel a resistance against designs with a white base, but that's over now. Hooray for OPI!

Here's an accent nail design that is loosely inspired by a Marimekko bag. I say loosely as I didn't have a picture of the bag in front of me while painting this. It's freehand with a bag in the back of my mind.

Products used:
OPI Alpine Snow
Nubar Hot Yellow
Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris
Deborah Lippmann Addicted to Speed Top Coat

Abstract + Caviar

Abstract greyscale with caviar beads

The last couple of weeks, my computer has been breaking down every time I'm trying to update this blog. It's been a shitty computer from the beginning, Minecraft has never run properly, for example. That's ok. You need a monster computer for that anyways. But, a year ago, I was not able to play Minecraft at all anymore. I was ok with that, and moved back to playing Heroes of Might and Magic III, possibly the greatest game ever made. Then, all of a sudden, I could not even play that. It's from 1998, darn it. It should be ok, I would think. But no. Oh, well. And now, here I am, hoping that I will be able to get through a blog post before my poor computer cracks under the pressure.

Here's hoping, because I've got a neat caviar manicure to show you:

This is a really quick and simple thing to do. Black background, freehand random white stripes, smudge them with your finger, fill in some grey, black and white after a fashion. Add blobs of caviar beads. Done!

Products used:
Deborah Lippmann Fade to Black
OPI Alpine Snow
(Grey is a mix of the two above)
Ciaté Headturner Caviar Beads
Deborah Lippmann Addicted to Speed Topcoat

UPDATE:

As requested, here's a step by step tutorial.

Please excuse the badly focused pictures - you need to be a bit quick for this to work,

and taking pictures between the steps is neither recommended for the quality of the pictures nor for the quality of the manicure...   

Abstract (VI)

Black and White and Pink

For me, meditation could be defined as "to without aim or goal paint nails randomly while watching Game of Thrones for the fourth time". Of course, third, fourth or fifth time doesn't really matter, as long as I don't have to pay attention very closely. The scenes at the Wall are the best for this - it's all just snow and men in black garbs anyway, nothing much that changes between the cuts. Perhaps the white snow covers and black crows still managed to nestle their way into my head for this mani, because black and white was what I ended up with:

 

I couldn't resist embellishing he Robert Motherwellesque abstract background with some pink rhinestones. I really enjoy the contrast between the raw and random black and white pattern with the pink jewels - a thing that otherwise would be too cute for me to stomach.

  

Products used:

China Glaze White on White

Wet n Wild Ebony hates Chris

Rhinestones from Claudia Nail Decorations

Inspired by a textile

The Fox and the Grapes

This freehanded accent nail manicure is inspired by one of my favourite textiles: "Surt sa räven" designed by Kerstin Boulogner and produced by Swedish textile company Almedahls. The Swedish proverb "Surt ,sa räven" ("Sour, said the fox") refer to the fable about the fox and the grapes, though the grapes have been translated into rowan berries in the Swedish version. So, there you have it, tiny foxes and beige rowan berries:

 

Lower left picture courtesy of Almedahls

Products used:

Essie Case Study

China Glaze White on White

Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris

Chanel Holiday

Water Marble (I)

Yellow & Black Water Marble

I've been staying inside the whole weekend due to a flu, and what's better to do if your sitting still anyways than a time consuming water marble? I don't do marbles very often as the clean up is so tedious. Even with scotch tape all around your fingers before dunking them into the marble I find you need a lot of time to clean up the skin closest to the nails. Maybe I just don't have very good taping skills? Anyway, I'm glad I took the time to do these. The dots are made with a needle after a layer of top coat. I always seem to smudge dots like these if I do them before.

The observant reader will notice that the index and little finger designs are slightly different in this picture...

...comparing to this. I accidentally got some paper stuck on those when blowing my nose, and, eew, had to re-do them promptly.

Products used:

Nubar Hot Yellow

Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris

Depend Quick and Shine Top Coat

Glitter Bonanza (I)

High grade ore Nails

Inspiration: once again, CND's Tarnished Metal Nails

This is something as unusual as a mani I've worn for two days straight. It did, however evolve a bit on the road:

First, it was simply a black base with some leaf metal in gold, silver and bronze...

...then Nails Inc. Chelsea Square happened.

 And then, the sparkly goodness that is Nails Inc. Burlington Arcade swept me off my feet. The holo hexes and shredded glitter in this polish (from the Nail Jewellery collection) made my mani go from "mildly interesting ore grade" to "close all the other mines, we've got all the metals we need right here". And why, yes, I do probably need dynamite and a staffed drill rig to get this of my nails. 
 
Which version do you prefer?

Holy sparkles, Batman!

Products used: 
Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris 
FIMO Leaf Metal
Nails Inc. Chelsea Square
Nails Inc. Burlington Arcade

Fossil

Rawr.

Inspiration: Carr et al. (2005) (no, not really - more like Spielberg et al. (1993))

Again with the bedazzled pinkie? Yup, that one is staying on until it chips. But at least I have a fossil T-Rex and a ladybug to show you, along with some sparkly Nails Inc. goodness.

One of these days I'll make a ladybug tutorial and take some better pics.

Products used:  

China Glaze White on White

China Glaze Liquid Leather

China Glaze Pool Party

Nails Inc. Bloomsbury Square

Nails Inc. New Burlington Place

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

Leather

Studded leather nails

Inspiration: This post by girlinboots + studded leather

A week ago reddit user girlinboots asked r/redditlaqueristas for inspiration for a heavy metal-esque look. My idea for her was a leather-like texture with silver dots in a halo:

When my nails are already painted, my spoons gets what they deserve

So, today I thought I'd try it out on my nails instead, because even if that was a tiny spoon, it's still three times the size of a nail, and might or might not translate well to a manicure. Here's the result:

And here's a quick tutorial I threw together. Sorry that it's a bit small - this blog is not cooperating with me for the moment.

There's nothing complicated going on there, just a few simple steps:

1. You'll need a toothpick or other dotting tool, and three polishes:

• Black polish (I used China Glaze Liquid Leather - how fitting!)
• Black shatter (I used Isadora Black Tag)
• Silver [glitter] polish (I used H&M Silver Glitter)

2. Start out with a full coat of black polish. It should not be a matte.

3. Add a coat of black shatter. This dries a matte, which together with the shiny black underneath gives an interesting texture and leather-like reflections.

4. Add silver dots around the nail, using a toothpick or other dotting tool.

And that's it! If you use a topcoat, the leather-like structure becomes less pronounced as the shatter and base colour will have the same shine, be it matte or glossy.

My only regret is my choice of silver polish - it floated out into big blobby dots while drying. A denser silver with somewhat larger glitter would probably look a bit better. Oh, well.

Indie Polish (I)

 Spottie Dottie from All That Glitters

Inspiration: gradients á la Layniefingers

Last week I purchased my first ever indie polish - Spottie Dottie Dark from All That Glitters, an all black glitter with small and large hexagons and bars. I love it on top of everything I've tried so far - but the gradient is by far my favourite. My only regret is not getting the white version as well!

On top of gradient and flakies (Essie Chinchilly -> Chanel Holiday + Sephora purple jewelry)

On top of taping (Essie Case Study and China Glaze For Audrey)

On top of french tipped manicure (Nubar Hot Yellow and China Glaze Liquid Leather)