Assassin's Creed Nails

Hey, look- I'm actually doing nerdy nails again. I used this manicure in my new header, but hadn't gotten around to posting it yet. It's about time too. Assassin's Creed is one of my favorite series. I played the first one soon after it came out and I was hooked. The second one took all the good parts, chucked most of the bad and got me even more addicted. I'm almost done with Brotherhood (the 3rd one), so I can't speak for the rest (there are 8 so far!), but it seems like they improve a bit with each game. I love running through the cities in the game and then seeing pictures or documentaries on TV and I really feel like I've been there. They did a fantastic job with the artwork and atmosphere of the game. Plus I'm learning about history (probably) so it's making me smarter too. I've been grabbing the rest of the series on Steam sales as they get cheap, but seriously.. so many games, so little time. I'll finish them all someday even if it takes me 40 more years.

Now for the technical stuff. For the gradient I started with two coats of Sinful Colors, Snow Me White. The medium grey is China Glaze, Recycle and the darker grey is Nina Ultra Pro, Inkling. I cut a makeup sponge to about the size of my nails and painted all three colors of polish onto it, then rolled it over my nails, moving it up and down slightly to blend the colors. I repainted the sponge and applied to my nails about 3-4 times to get the opacity and blending I wanted.

Now lets talk about the foil nail. Tragically that day I had ripped this nail almost half way across, but I really wanted to paint these AC nails and wasn't ready to cut it down yet so I used the tea bag method to patch it up. The patch is pretty smooth, but I think the shininess of the foil highlights every little bump which is unfortunate. I wanted to make the middle finger look like metal to replicate the hidden blade that Altair and Ezio use to stealth stab their enemies. Because what's better than sneaking up behind someone and stabbing them in the throat right? The foil I used is Pewter from Dollar Nail Art. It has a cool brushed metal look that was perfect for my blade. Don't worry, no throats were harmed during the wearing of this manicure.

The logo nail- I used black acrylic paint and my tiny nail art brush and I free handed that sucker onto my thumb nail. It's a pretty simple logo, so it wasn't as hard as some I've tried, but you will need a steady hand if you want to try this. Half the time I end up painting my art on crooked because I have my hand turned a funny direction, so I was really happy with how this came out.