Red Shirt inspired nails

Not the red shirt from Star Trek, my nails survived being painted.  I just bought this shirt and really liked the colour and pattern.  I thought it would make a nice nail art design.  I used my favourite polish Bungle Jungle by Essie which really looks nice with the black.  After doing the stripes (with a cat whisker) and the dots with a dotting tool) I decided I'd do tiger stripes on my dominant hand.  Very happy with the way they turned out.  Such a nice contrast with the colours.  I have a few bottles of the bungle jungle polish.

Avengers Assemble Nails

So we saw the movie when it came out and it was really funny, extra character development and all around entertaining so I decided it was worth giving a try at Avenger nails.  The only one that really daunted me was Captain America's shield, but even that went really well.  After my initial design I went back and touched up the Avenger's symbol as it was missing the little arrow on the cross bar.  I liked it much better after fixing it up.

Tissue Paper inspired nails

I love how pretty the tissue boxes have become recently.  I took inspiration for my nails from one box in particular.  I started with OPI Alpine Snow and then used a cosmetic sponge to apply both Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow 360 and Sun Kissed 150.  These two combined formed the base of my design.  After it dried I used my acrylic paint to make my design in red over top of the polish leaving the original colour on my nail where I want the picture to pop out.  I started with my pinkie and tried to duplicate the designs on the tissue box but soon realized I really had the ability to paint whatever I wanted and by the thumb I had a beautiful sunset design going.  I did a yin yang on my dominant hand and then wussed out and used my stampers for the rest of the designs, but they still turned out great.

Tea Bag Nails

So my friend at work gave me some kosher teas and I fell in love with the tea bag holder.  I decided to bring it home, cut it up and paste it onto my nails.  I was really happy with how they turned out but it took me until the thumbs to get a good result.  I really coated on the polish to make it stick.  As you can see from the first pinkie it didn't stick very well, after that one I curved the bits of paper so they would conform to my nail better.  They are pretty even if the end result is not the "cleanest".

St Patrick's Day

I started with my pinkie and made my way across to the thumb.  I wish I had done the thumb first as it looks really great and would have been nice on all the nails.

Basketweave Nails

I got Chris to pick my colour after letting him know what I had in mind.  He chose Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 270 Lacey Lilac.  I then took a few tries to get it right and still not the happiest with the end result it's good enough to wear in public so I left it alone.  It's hard to the get lines just right and I tried to use previous lines to keep them in order, but it just didn't work out perfectly, but hopefully the idea made it's way across that these are supposed to be the weave you would find on a basket.

Rainbow Butterflies

My friend's mom wants me to do butterflies on her nails so I experimented with a few designs and then decided I wanted them on my nails too.  I've always loved rainbows across my nails so I went with different coloured wings.  My base was Pure Ice First Love 828CP and then I used acrylic polishes and applied the wings and whatever I messed up in the middle I just went over with black and pulled out my handy cat whisker and put in the antennae.  I love this idea to much and it has really been working for me.