Thursday 22 May 2014

"Game over man, game over!"


Last week saw the sad loss of an amazing artist, set designer and the man behind the creation of the xenomorph, H.R. Giger. To commemorate I decided to paint some detailed Alien and Aliens film nails as they are two of my all time favourite films and without Giger's designs they wouldn't be nearly as visually stunning. My left hand is Alien themed while my right is the sequel, Aliens.
On my left hand I have the 'Alien' title, a chestburster (unfortunately forgot to paint the blood on it), a xenomorph, an alien egg, and acid blood splatter. On my right hand I have the pattern from the power loader Ripley uses, multiple alien eggs, the queen xenomorph's head, an M41A pulse rifle and a facehugger.
Took a very long time to create the detail and shading for these nails but it paid off and I'm pleased with the outcome. Painting the shading involves a lot of stipple technique using a very thin brush and lots of layers of colour. I also stipple the excess paint onto a tissue before painting to get fine detail, as opposed to blotchy colours.
I love the Alien franchise and I'm so glad Giger's work will live on in such classic and beautiful films.

Tuesday 13 May 2014

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!


Last Monday was the annual Cinco de Mayo celebrations and as my best friend is part Mexican I decided this would be my nail art theme for the week.
On my left hand I have 'Feliz Cinco de Mayo', sugar skulls, a sombrero and a cactus. On my right hand I have a chilli, more sugar skulls, maracas and the dragon eggs from Game of Thrones. The eggs may seem a bit out of place but I wanted to include them because not only are they the same colours as the Mexican flag, the new episode of Game of Thrones aired on the same day as Cinco de Mayo.
To create these nails I used a white base coat on most of them because I wanted to make the bright colours pop. I then only wanted to include red, yellow and green in the colour scheme as they are the stereotypical colours which represent Mexico, plus they're bright and festive.
I hope everyone who celebrates this day across the pond had an amazing day!

Monday 5 May 2014

You go Glen Coco!


Last week saw the special 10th anniversary of the awesome film that is Mean Girls so of course I had to paint my nails for the occasion. Unfortunately due to a busy schedule over the last few days I haven't been able to complete this set so I just have the one hand as I'm moving on to a new set of nails today.
Here I have 'Mean Girls', pink leopard print (on Wednesday's we wear pink), the Burn Book, Karen's mouse ears from her Halloween costume and Regina's R necklace. On my other hand I was going to paint the prom tiara, Janis and Damian's prom suits, 'fetch', the sexy santa outfit and 'You go Glen Coco!'. Will create a whole new set of these when the occasion calls for it next and include all the ones I didn't have time for.

Yesterday was also the 30th anniversary of one of my favourite films of all time, Sixteen Candles! With all these anniversaries of awesome high school rom coms I think it's time to get the booze out, slippers on and girls round for a pyjama party...

Friday 2 May 2014

The Tale of Peter Rabbit


This was of my favourite books as a child and my mother used to read it to me a lot as she also grew up on Beatrix Potter's books. These were originally my Easter nail ideas but as I was a bit delayed I decided to paint them the following week for my mum's retirement. Now she can finally relax and maybe make some Beatrix Potter tales of her own.
I wanted to paint these in the order of the story but didn't quite think it through how they'd be displayed and got them a bit backwards, so I've flipped the images below to put them in the correct order:


From left to right I have a basket, a robin on a shovel, Peter wearing his nice new blue coat, carrots, a robin looking at Peter's lost shoe, a sparrow flying away from the fence, a watering can, Peter after he lost his coat, Peter's coat and shoes displayed like a scarecrow and a hot pot of camomile tea.

These nails took a long time to paint as I wanted to get the detail of Beatrix Potter's paintings just right. To do these I painted a white base on all my nails, then painted the detailed drawings first before adding a light stipple of colour to the background of some of the images to create a watercolour paint look. I also used dark browns instead of black to create the outline of some of the images so it looked more painted and less harsh and cartoon-like.

Coming next, "On Wednesday's we wear pink."....