NOTD: Hanukkah nails! (2/?)

Hello again and happy ongoing holiday! Today I made dreidel inspired nails, I painted each of the letters of the dreidel in acrylic paint over a brown/beige watermarble that is meant to evoke the look of a wood grain.

For reference, here is a dreidel:

The letters on the dreidel are as follows:

• נ (nun)- this stands for the word נס (nes), which means "miracle"
• ג (gimmel)- this stands for the word גדול (gadol), which means "great" or "big"
• ה (heh/hey)- this stands for the word היה (hayah), which means "occured" or "happened"
• ש\פ (shin or pey) which either stand for שם (sham), which means "there" or פה (po), which means "here". The usage of ש vs פ depends on whether you are celebrating inside or outside Israel,

Together, they stand for the prase "A great miracle occured here/there"

NOTD: Abstract Kitties + Pink

There's never a bad time to have cat themed nails. Never. Wedding? Kitties. Funeral? Kitties. Presidential inauguration? KITTIES. I don't have a whole lot to say about these nails besides KITTIES. I did them over a distressed pink brushstroke manicure, and I drew them with acrylic paint.

This was also my first time trying out the Poshe fast dry top coat. It came highly recommended, and I felt like trying something new, so I picked it up along with a bottle of Duri Rejuvacote. I've always defaulted to Seche Vite and OPI Nail Envy, so I'll see how these work out for me! For the time being I don't see a huge difference between dry time/durability/application, but I'm happy with them, b/c I was happy with what I was using before. If I begin to notice a difference I'll post about it!

Disclaimer: I basically drew these kitties from my brain, however my brain is very easily influenced by outside sources. So if you see a resemblance to something you've seen online before, odds are I subconsciously copied it from there, and I'll be happy to credit them if you let me know! Unfortunately off the top of my head I have no idea where I got any of these ideas.

NOTD: Gradient and squiggles

Well, I guess I'm not finishing 31DC this year. The timing was pretty terrible for me this time around, the end fell right smack on the build up to Icon this year, so it was amazing that I even got as far as I did!

Well, now it's time to go back to a semi-regular posting schedule. Here are some random squiggles on nails, inspired by this manicure from Heynicenails on tumblr! (and instagram, but I follow them on tumblr). I decided to do the doodly white shapes over a gradient instead of colorful skittles, but it's still similar enough to credit back to them.

Polishes used:
Ga-de Blue Angel (blue)
Ga-de Pool Party (mint green)
Ga-de Kiwi Delight (green)
White acrylic paint

#31DC2015 Day 28- Inspired by a Flag

I honestly wasn't feeling this challenge so much. I haven't in previous years, either, so I guess this category just doesn't do it for me. On the other hand, this did give me the opportunity finally to sneak in some Steven Universe! The flag I chose for this challenge is Rose Quartz's battle flag. I also tried a drag marble on my pinky that's vaguely inspired by Rose's shield, but... it's kinda meh

Polishes used:
WOW cosmetics- 436 (darker pink)
Sacara- 032 (lighter pink)
Acrylic paint

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 27- Inspired by Artwork

Late post late post late post whooops!

The artwork I chose for today's challenge is that of adult coloring books, which have been all the rage lately. And having finally purchased one for myself, I definitely see why! They're gorgeous to look at when they're not filled in, and they're so gratifying to look at when you finish a piece, because you feel like you contributed to the beauty of the artwork.

For this nail art I stamped with plain black over white with BP-L002 from the Born Pretty Store, a suitably "doodle-y" looking plate, and then I filled in random bits with acrylic paint. I based it on a specific drawing from the coloring book I'm currently working on, which is sadly not Secret Garden (maybe once I fill this one I'll buy Secret Garden?). But I'm actually really happy with the art in this book, so I'm good :D

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 25- Inspired by Fashion

You know, I think this is the third time in this challenge where I freehanded something that I really should have used a stamping plate for. 2015, the year I was a complete masochist and picked out really difficult (for me) ideas for every. single. nail art challenge.

Side note: I was surprised that I didn't see a single nail art for Inside Out on day 23!! To be honest, the only reason why I didn't do Inside Out was because I thought it would be the obvious choice! Well... I'll do it next year. And with my luck, next year like half of the entries will be Inside Out :3

The fashion I was inspired by was Steampunk. You can't really tell so well under the gears, but I did a saran wrap mani of two different browns as a base, to give it a more antique and worn look. The gears were done with acrylic paint and a paintbrush, except for the clock face, which was nail polish. I tried it glossy first, but I ended up liking it WAY better matte. I'm pretty happy with this mani, but I'm SUPER pleased with how my middle finger came out!

Polishes used:

Orly- Golden Maharaja (darker brown shimmer)

L'oreal Paris- Mysterious Icon (lighter brown shimmer)

il makiage- Pearl Jam (clock face)

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 24- Inspired by a Book

Comic books count, right? Comic books totally count. Anyway, I've wanted to do Kamala Khan themed nails since basically always. So here she is! (have you noticed that my descriptions have been getting shorter? Is this what burn out feels like?)

Polishes used:
Chic- Sweetheart (well... close enough) (beige)
Chic- Must Have (red)
Color Club- French tip (white)
Ga-de- Mellow Yellow (yellow)
Borjois- In the Navy (blue)

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 23- Inspired by a Movie

This is a bit of a cheat, since I did these nails based off the TV show, not the horrible abomination they call a movie. I'm still in denial about that thing existing (THERE IS NO WAR IN BA SING SE)

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The cartoon, not the in-name-only """""""adaptation"""""""!

This post is going up suuuuper late, it was Yom Kippur today and I didn't feel comfortable posting even via a queue

Polishes used:
Pupa 745 (pinky)
Golden Rose Matte 16 (ring finger)
Lechat Majestic Green (middle finger)
Il Makiage Skinny Dipping (index finger)
Details are acrylic paint

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 22- Inspired by a song

Is it weird that I sincerely, without a trace of irony, love the song Manah Manah? Yeah? Well I don't care. Here, have Manamana nails.

Polishes used: Color Club French Tip (everything else is acrylic paint)

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 19- Galaxies

Galaxy nails are a pretty essential staple in any nail artist's lexicon. They're relatively easy, and the result is really impressive and pretty hard to mess up. I'm really happy about this, because I love that it's a style that's accessible and fun to do. But the downside is, how do you do a fresh take? There are unlimited ways you can mash together different colors and nebula patterns, but after a while they all start to look the same. I thought of maybe doing a pastel galaxy, which I thiiiiiink was fist thought up by The Nailsaurus, but even that's gotten pretty popular. I'll still probably do it at some point (nothing wrong with doing a well loved style), but here I wanted to stand out. I decided to go with red galaxies, since I don't recall seeing any like that around. Of course, the nail art world is HUGE, so someone has probably done this before somewhere, but at least it's fairly unusual!

I took a ridiculous number of photos of this mani, but I also started preparing this post late at night, and I so don't have the energy to crop and watermark and edit a bajillion photos, so I'm just posting the ones I did before I burnt out. I did try a matte topcoat, and I edited one of those photos too, but in the end I think I like it better in the original glossy finish.

I ended up using entirely Ga-de polishes for this manicure, not sure how that happened!

Polishes Used:
Ga-de- Black Ruby (base color)
Ga-de- Whitest White (nebula base)
Ga-de- Shanghai Chic (red accents)
Ga-de- Orange Poppy (lighter orange accents)
Ga-de- Sweet Candy (darker orange accents)
Ga-de- Black Cherry (burgundy accents)
Ga-de- Azure Blue (blue accents)

White acrylic paint (stars)

An InLinkz Link-up

#31DC2015 Day 14- Floral Print

Aaaahhhh I am so proud of this one. I haven't worked with acrylic paints in a while (all my old ones dried up) so I was expecting my first attempt at art in such a long time to be a hot mess. But it actually came out pretty nice! I also got a kit that didn't have purple, so I had to mix the purple to match the gradient base myself, and I think I matched them pretty well.

Polishes Used:
Chic- Show biz (off white in gradient)
Golden Rose Color Expert- 66 (lavender in gradient)

An InLinkz Link-up

31DC2014 Day 9- Rainbow

For today I attempted the bubble technique- it's reminiscent of the nimbus technique created by TheNailsaurus, but it's actually made completely differently. I first encountered this technique as used by Sprinklenails here. My 'bubbles' are a lot less even than hers, but I actually really enjoy how this came out. I got a lot of compliments about it at work, too!

An InLinkz Link-up

Catchup

Uh... whoops! I definitely didn't mean to abandon my blog for a month. That was not a planned hiatus. And now that I have a daunting number of NOTD posts built up, I don't want to find myself posting things I wore a month ago, so I'm just gonna post a bunch of them all together, right here and right now.

I have a big announcement coming up, and that's part of why I've been MIA recently... stay tuned!

Without further ado, nail art!

(inspiration)

(inspiration)

Hope to go back to posting regularly now that I've gotten that out of my system!

31DC2013 catch up- 22, 23, and 24

Welp. There's not much I can say about this. My cat and the geek convention and the holiday have really done a number on my ability to keep up with this challenge. I still managed to make nail art for the last three days though! Without much commentary, here they are:

Inspired by a song- Baba Yetu, from the soundtrack of Civilization 4- a computer game that I haven't played, but my god is the soundtrack incredible. Baba Yetu is the first track on the soundtrack. The lyrics themselves are actually the Lord's Prayer translated into Swahili, but the song represents dawn.

These are fun, but they are actually my least favorite of this entry. The next two are some of my favorite art ever, which is more the pity since this is so late, and no one will see them in the inlinkz widget.

Inspired by a movie: Wall-E. My favorite movie of all time! I tried it glossy at first, but it was hard to see the designs through the glare of the lamp light so I tried matteifying it. I like it both ways, so I added photos of both.

Inspired by a book- Fox in Socks. I've been looking for an excuse to use flocking powder for some time, and this was the perfect opening. I have this book practically memorized- I adored listening to the tongue twisters as a child, and at this point I can recite it extremely quickly.

I'm including the Inlinkz for day 24, but be sure to check out others too!