Pokemon Challenge Week 3: Water

I can't believe it's week three already. This week we're doing water Pokemon and I've chosen Poliwag.



Sure there are cooler water Pokemon like the fearsome Magikarp or the adorable Vaporeon, but I was suckered in by Poliwag's magical belly swirl. According to the Pokedex the swirl is acutally his intestines which you can see because his skin is transluscent. How could I go wrong with that?



Here's the Poliwag that inspired my design.

What I used:

A dotting tool and small paintbrush

White- Finger Paints, Paper Mache

Blue- China Glaze, Shower Together

Black- Wet n Wild, Black Creme

Here's a closeup of Poliwag. For some reason I can't remember now I thought it would be best to paint a white base on each nail and then paint on the blue edges with a small brush. As you can see the results are a bit patchy.

Check back next week for Bug type Pokemon.

Week 3: Water



Purple & Stripes

Hello everyone! I'm really excited to show you what I have on my nails right now. This manicure was inspired by pretty much copied from my favorite blogger, The Nailasaurus. Her amazing version can be seen here. I've switched up the colors a bit and I really like how this came out.

 

 

Striping tape is a new technique for me and I think I did pretty well for my first time. I had a little trouble with forgetting which bits of tape I put down first and tried to pull them up in the wrong order on a few fingers. Other than that it was a really easy technique. I can't wait to try it again with different color combinations.

 

 

More pictures after the jump.

Pokemon Challenge Week 2: Rapidash

 Week two of the challenge is fire Pokemon. I chose Rapidash because I thought it would be fun to try his fiery mane as a gradient.

 

 

I started with two coats of Sally Hansen, Expres-so Yellow and then sponged on Wet n Wild, Sunny Side up and Spoiled, Hit the Breaks onto the tips. I'm not super impressed with my gradients yet, but I feel like I keep improving each time so hopefully someday I'll be a pro.

 

 

I painted my tiny Rapidash using a small nail art brush and Finger Paints, Don't Make A Scene.

 

 

Here's a shot of my right hand. It seems to be a trend these past couple weeks- my "wrong" hand is turning out almost better than my good one. I was in a hurry to finish up and not paying attention to blend the gradient smoothly. I think this hand ended up looking much more like flames than the other.

 

 



Here's one more close up of Rapidash.

 

Here are links to everyone else's fire Pokemon:

 

 



Pokemon Challenge Week 1: Bulbasaur

Week one of the Pokemon challenge is grass type Pokemon. I had to pick Bulbasaur.

 

 

I first fell in love with Bulbasaur as a sophomore in high school (back in '99- I hope you all are as bad at math as me so you won't notice how dreadfully old I'm getting these days). My family took a trip to Japan that year and my youngest sister's birthday fell during the flight right as we were crossing over the date line. She'll never let us forget how she got cheated out of her birthday that year. She got to open her presents on the plane and one was Pokemon Blue. As soon as she fell asleep I stole her Game Boy and I was hooked. I chose Bulbasaur as my starting Pokemon and he'll always have a special place in my heart.

 

 This week I have guest nails. I was visiting my mom this weekend and she was nice enough to let me paint her nails crazy colors. Unfortunately the pictures don't quite do it justice. The lighting was really low and I didn't realize until I got home that most of my pictures were pretty much unusable.

 

 

I painted the ring finger to look like the flower on Venusaur's back and the others are Bulbasaur's vine whip.

 

For the flower I used a base coat of Finger Paints, Pretty As A Portrait. The lighter shade on top is China Glaze, Purple Panic and the pink spots are Sinful Colors, Easy Going. The vine fingers started off with 2 coats of Sinful Colors, Mint Apple. I used a sponge to dab on random patches of Spoiled, Distant Memory (teal) and Sally Hansen's Ion (grey) then painted the vines on using a small brush. They're a mixture of some unnamed shade of light green from L.A. Colors mixed with China Glaze, Holly-Day.

 

 

Here's one more slightly fuzzy picture of Bulbasaur. His body is Sinful Colors, Mint Apple, the bulb is that unnamed green from L.A. Colors and the spots are Spoiled, Distant Memory. Shading was done with China Glaze, Recycle.

 

Here is everyone else's grass type Pokemon nails. There are some really cute ones this week.

 

 

Nerdy for Nails: Pokeballs

I'm officially joining my first nail challenge! Staying true to my blog name, it's probably the nerdiest challenge possible: The Blahg's Gotta Paint 'em All Pokemon Nail Challenge. The first post is due this Sunday, but I'll probably be posting my grass type nails on Monday since I'll be out of town for the weekend.

In honor of the upcoming challenge I'm starting with pokeball themed nails. Hopefully it's not too hard to tell what's going on here. It's meant to look like Ash throwing his pokeball. I painted all the details on freehand with a tiny brush.

Here's a closer shot of Ash on my thumb nail.

I made tiny pokeballs on my right hand by dabbing the brush from the bottle of white polish to make the larger dots. I colored in the red and black parts using my tiny brush and the dots were made with a dotting tool. It's a little sloppy because I'm not very good at drawing with my left hand (yet?).



Here are both hands. I love how the 3 different sizes of pokeballs look next to each other.

I've used so many different colors here, especially for Ash, so I'm only going to list the main ones.

White- Finger Paints, Paper Mache

Blue- China Glaze, Shower Together

Grey- China Glaze, Recycle

Red- Spoiled, Hit The Breaks

Check out what everyone else is doing:

Anna Karenina

I started reading Anna Karenina around Christmas time and despite reading pretty regularly since then I'm still only 30% through the book. It's really long! Near the beginning of the story Anna and her new friend Kitty both attend a ball and the descriptions of their dresses inspired these nails. Hopefully by the time I'm done reading the movie will be out on video so I can see if they look like I've imagined them.

 

 

The pink nails are for Kitty: "At this moment she walked into the ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip as easily and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all the minute details of her attire, had not cost her or her family a moment's attention, as though she had been bore in tulle and lace." On my pointer finger I've tried to recreate her black velvet locket. From a distance it almost looks like a tiny cameo.

 

 

The black nails represent Anna: "Her black dress with its sumptuous lace was not noticeable on her; it was only the frame, and all that was seen was she."

 

 

What I used:

Pink nails- Sinful Colors, Easy Going (2 coats)

Rosettes- China Glaze, Purple Panic- disclaimer: something happened to this color since I bought it. It used to be a neon purple, but it's now most definitely a bright pink. The roses were hand painted with a small nail art brush and the details were painted on with the lighter base shade of pink.

Black nails- Wet n Wild, Black Creme (only 1 coat. this polish has great coverage). The white lace was painted on with a small brush in Finger Paints, Paper Mache.

The Locket- I used my small brush to draw on the black line with the Black Creme, then after my top coat I went over it with Matte Me Crazy top coat by NYC to give it more of a velvet look. The gold locket was dotted on with a small dotting tool, and the black dot was added to the center with a larger dotting tool. I used the small brush to add the white cameo detail to the center.

 

 

 

 



Crosshatch

Today's nails are bright and springy even though we're definitely still in the middle of winter. I just got this turquoise shade and I knew that I had to pair it up with my coral polish at some point and I think they look really cute together.

White- Finger Paints, Paper Mache

Blue- Wet n Wild, I Need a Refresh-Mint

Coral- Sinful Colors, Boogie Nights

Here I have two coats of white for the base. I used a small nail art brush to add the little crosshatches and then I used my largest dotting tool to create the ruffle border and fill in the tip of the nail. I topped it all off with a coat of Seche Vite.



Rainbow Leopard

I wanted to show you these fun rainbow leopard nails and let you know that I now have a corresponding page on Facebook. I'll post updates there as I make new blog posts so you can like my page as another way to stay connected and see the new nail art I'm posting.
Click here to see my new FB page.

 

 

I think this may be one of my favorite manicures of all time. I love anything rainbows and these remind me of the Lisa Frank school supplies I used to have in elementary school which were, of course, the coolest ever. I really like how these came out with the bare nails underneath.

 

 

For the spots I used:

Dark purple- Savvy, Deep Amethyst

Lighter purple- Love & Beauty, The label is peeled off, but it's a medium purple with a slight gold shimmer

Teal- Spoiled, Distant Memory

Green- Spoiled, Permission to Proceed

Yellow- Spoiled, Did I Dye It Too Blonde?

Orange- Wet n Wild, Sunny Side Up

Pink- Spoiled, Plastic Flamingo

Black- Savvy, Ebony Black Nail Art

Top coat- Seche Vite

 

 

Despite the fact that the black color I used claims to be for nail art, it's actually quite thin and translucent as you can see in some of the pictures. If I were to recreate this look I'd definitely use something a little more opaque for the outlines. I also added rhinestones to the centers of the spots on my accent finger.

 

 

Happy New Year!

 Last night I celebrated by watching movies in my pajamas and going to bed at 11:30. It might sound boring, but it was actually pretty great. Every dream I had last night somehow involved manicures. Either I've been reading too many nail blogs or it's a sign of all the blogging to come. Anyway, happy New Year!  

 

 I've got on a shimmery color by Love and Beauty from Forever 21 called Blue/Green. In the bottle it looks teal with purplish pink shimmer at certain angles. It didn't really show up well in the pictures though. Here I have a black base coat which really makes a difference in the color. I've placed little glitters from the Born Pretty store using one of my dotting tools to make the numbers and also the gradient on the thumb.

 

 

 

On my right hand I didn't use the black base coat so you can get an idea of what this polish looks like on its own. I've got on two coats of Blue/Green along with one coat of Teal, a teal, green and silver glitter from Milani and one coat of Sally Hansen's In the Spotlight which is a sparkly bar glitter.