Seven Nation Army

Hey everyone! ... it's been a few weeks, I know. I haven't forgotten about you guys or my blog, but I guess you could say I was taking a little break. I promise I will try to make my posts more consistent, haha. :P

So today I want to show you a manicure I did a while back. It was done for the Reddit nail challenge, which I decided I won't be taking part in every week anymore. I just have not been doing my nails as often, and when I do, I want to do my own thing, and not be limited to that week's theme, or by my horrible art skills. So I'll do a manicure for the themes whenever I feel like it and have an idea I can use.

This week the theme was a manicure inspired by a song. And for me, it wasn't very hard to pick a song to use as my inspiration. I went for 'Seven Nation Army' by The White Stripes. It's an awesome song, that I have liked since I was a lot younger, and it has one of my most favourite music videos ever, which was the main thing that inspired me. I tried to translate the red/white/black shapes to my nails.

Also, I am sorry for the shape my cuticles are in. I ran out of Lemony Flutter and can't afford a new pot yet, and nothing else works well enough for weather like this. 

All the polishes I used for this are by NYC, and I did the manicure as follows:

First, I painted my nails with two coats of I <3 NY, a red creme that I seem to use pretty often for nail art. After this was completely dry I taped off a chevron shape and painted one coat of Platinum Card. I chose silver instead of white because I felt it fit the manicure better. Then, when that was dry as well, I taped off a smaller chevron and used City Blackout for the tips.

I enjoyed making this manicure and I thought it looked really nice on my nails, so I must say this is probably one of my favourites that I have done so far. I hope you like it as well, let me know what you think! 

Reddit Challenge - Week 6: Games

Hey guys! No, I didn't actually miss a challenge. I did do week 5, but I wasn't happy with the manicure at all. I did post it on Reddit however, so if you can find me there, you can have a looksie at what I did last week.

So I was pretty excited about this week's theme, which is 'Inspired by a game'. I'm not a hardcore gamer but gaming is one of my hobbies and you can often find me playing World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Pokémon games, or random games on my iPhone. I wanted to dedicate a nail art to one of these games, but I went for the most obvious choice for me: Pokémon.

Pokémon has always been one of my favourite things. I got Pokémon Yellow over 10 years ago and never really stopped loving it! I've finished most of the handheld games save for some of the newer ones. I admit, I have been a bit out of the loop, but that doesn't mean I don't like it anymore.

To portray this theme I decided to paint little Pokéballs on my nails. This isn't the most original nail art, but hey, it works. The original plan was to do a different Pokéball on each nail but I don't have the right colours for it. It's something I will definitely do in the future, though.

So here's how I did this: I started out by painting all my nails with two coats of Essie Blanc, a simple white creme. I applied a quick drying topcoat and let it dry for a while before taping half of my nail and adding a coat of NYC I <3 NY, for the upper red half of the Pokéballs. I taped it because I am really, really horrible at freehanding with regular polish brushes, haha. Then I added black lines with my black striper, and after that I used my dotting tools to add the black and white buttons in the middle.

One of my Poochyena figurines wanted to make a little guest appearance. :) I don't usually use props for pictures but I figured it would be cute for this one. Poochyena is one of my favourite Pokémon, by the way.

These nails were pretty simple to do but I think they turned out really cute. I love having little Pokéballs on my nails. I hope you like them too!

Reddit Challenge - Week 4: Gradient

I suck. I missed last week's challenge. I was busy with a bunch of other things and just never got to it. :( Seeing as I'm way too late to catch up with it I decided to just continue with the next challenge, even though it's quite late in the week already. :P

So this week's challenge was Gradient or Ombre. I still haven't gotten the hang of making gradients and I don't own enough similar colours to make an ombre manicure with. So I decided to do a glitter gradient with one of my newest glitter polishes.

And this is the result! The base colour is Catrice Welcome To Roosywood, which is a very elegant sort of dusty deep pink colour. I'm not very good at describing colours, and this one is pretty hard to describe! It is very pretty though. I was wearing this one on my nails for a day already which is why there is some visible tipwear.

So then I went through my stash to find a combination when I picked up Essie As Gold As It Gets and figured it might look very good with Welcome To Roosywood. Seeing as I was about to remove that from my nails anyway I decided to try it out. And it actually did look very nice! :) I ended up using it for the challenge and wearing it on my nails, haha.

I really love As Gold As It Gets. It consists of very tiny gold flakes and it's very pretty. It does seem to dry a bit slow for me, but that was nothing a fast drying topcoat couldn't fix.

Wish me luck for next week's challenge because the theme will be orange - my least favourite colour!

Reddit Challenge - Week 2: Blue

It's a bit late into the week, but oh well! Here's this week's post for the Reddit challenge I am doing. I did this one on monday, and the theme was 'Blue'.

This theme was nice and easy, and I wanted to keep it simple but I didn't want to simply wear a blue colour, so I painted them a pretty blue colour and took out my striping tape once again.

And this is the result! Simple, easy, but very nice looking,if I do say so myself. :) The blue is Catrice Blue's Brother which is very shimmery and flashes to green in real life, but I couldn't capture it on camera.

Then after it was dry I used my silver striping tape to apply some diagonal lines across the nail, and I think it looks really cute. Application of the striping tape went much better this time, because I got very tiny scissors to help me with cutting the strips.

Here is the colour all by itself. Like I said, shimmery! I don't have a lot of blues but I do love this colour, even if I don't wear it very often.

Next week's challenge will be a bit more challenging for a nail art noobie, wish me luck!

Reddit Challenge - Week 1: Taping

Hi guys! As some of you may know I am a frequent Redditor. :) Yesterday I found out that the laqueristas on there are hosting a 52 week challenge. That's right, fifty two weeks, each with a different theme. And it seems very doable, even for a nail art noob like myself, so I decided to have a shot at it. I will try my best to come up with a manicure for each week, so hopefully every week I will have a challenge post for you!

The theme for week 1 is taping, which just happens to be my favourite technique for nail art. I often use scotch tape to spice up some manicures, but this time I decided to try out my striping tape. So far I have only used my striping tape as accents on my nails, but this time I used them for masking.

And this is my manicure for the first week! I started out with Essie Turquoise And Caicos as my base coat. Once that was dry I applied a lot of small strips of striping tape on my nails. This was such a hassle to do and it took me quite a long time. Anyway, once I was done applying the tape I went over it with a coat of Essence You Belong To Me and then quickly removed the tape while the polish was still wet.

I personally like the outcome a lot, even if it's sloppy in some places. Overall though, I think I did a good job, especially for a first attempt at using my striping tape like this! I also love the colour combination.

Here's a picture of Turquoise And Caicos by itself. It's a very pretty creme and for me it was opaque in three thin coats. You could probably get away with two coats if you have shorter nails, though.