New York State of Mind

Went on an awesome trip to New York in September with my friends Lucille and Nina. I didn't actually give myself enough time to paint my nails before we left so I took a few colours with me and painted most of them when we arrived.
On my left hand I have the American flag, an apple on a glittery background, the Wooster Street Tattoo shop logo (went to NY Ink while we there and Lucille got a tattoo done by the lovely Luke Wessman), a New York taxi and a pretzel. On my left hand I have the New York skyline on a sunset gradient base (including the Statue of Liberty on my little finger) and I heart NY on my thumb.
Also in the background of these pics is my awesome new 'Paper Plane Weekend Bag' by Disaster Designs I bought specially for the trip.
Was an amazing holiday filled with adventures and although it was my second time in New York, we got to see so much more and I can't wait to go back again one day!

Here's a couple of pics from our trip:

 The three of us at Times Square and the awesome view from our hotel room.

I also have an Instagram account which I frequently update my nail art pics. If you're interested follow me: juliawizardofnails

Juicy Fruit

Created these just after a pretty bad flu bug I had back in September. I was overdosing on vitamin C and fresh fruit for the entire week so this gave me inspiration for my next nail art.
On my left hand I have a melon, an orange, blackberries, a pear and strawberries. On my right hand I have cherries, grapes, an apple, a peach and bananas.
I decided to add an extra bit of pattern to the background of these nails as they seemed quite plain with just the fruit, so I painted various colours of polka dots onto the base colours before painting the fruit over them.
Fingers crossed I won't be painting fruit nails again for a while...

Blood and Bones

Not quite Halloween nails at the time but as we're now in the month of Halloween it's appropriate to add these to the blog. I created these in September when I had just received my latest pair of Black Milk leggings, the Splatter Skulls, which are in the background of these images. As they are now the 10th pair that I own from them I thought I'd celebrate by matching my nails to my legs.
I was originally going to paint skulls instead of skeleton parts to match them up with the leggings but I decided instead to add other areas of the skeleton (plus I was running a little short on time and bones are easier to paint than skulls). My left hand has the pelvis, the ribs and a leg bone. My right hand has the spine, a hand and a foot.
I am happy with how these turned out, especially the shading on the pelvis, which I painted by adding a little bit of dark grey and lightly stippling onto the white pelvic bone area. I painted the blood splatter by painting the detail in white to begin with, as red doesn't show up straight onto black, then I went over with a bright red - my favourite at the moment is the Barry M Gelly in 'Blood Orange'.
Looking forward to saving up for my next pair of Black Milks, got my eye on the Haunted House 2.0 ones from the Halloween collection at the moment...

Carnival!

It seems I'm a bit behind with my updates at the moment. It's been two months since my last blog but I've still been doing the nail art so I have many updates to post on here.
I painted these for Notting Hill Carnival at the end of August. Decided I wanted to do something bright and colourful so I looked into what the carnival represents and previous images of costumes to get some ideas. It was also FrightFest during the same weekend and I always make an effort to see at least one film there every year. I painted FrightFest nails last year however so I wanted to do something different this year.
On my left hand I have the 'FrightFest 2013' logo, a Jamaican flag, red yellow and green gradient with a palm tree, a pineapple and a cannabis leaf. On my right hand I have red green and yellow leopard print, a corn on the cob, a pink glittery butterfly wing, a Trinidad and Tobago flag and multi-colour gradient zebra print.
I wanted to experiment a lot with gradients when painting these nails. Most people use a sponge when creating gradients which is an easier way to do it, however I prefer to use a brush and stipple on the colour because it gives me control and the colour tends to come out stronger. This technique does take much longer though as the colours need to be layered a lot.
Had a great time watching the parade at the carnival, luckily the weather was beautiful as well. The horror film I went to see at FrightFest was 'Painless', a very good Spanish horror set in Civil War times. It also included some amazing prosthetic effects.

This Morning

This week I began work experience with the make-up department on This Morning so I knew I had to create some themed nails for the occasion. In order to decide what to paint I went onto the website and chose the various segments which they have on the show, then designed how to draw them onto my nails. On my left hand I have the show title, The Hub in a speech bubble, Style & Beauty with lipstick, Home with a cup of tea and Life on a hand print. On my right hand I have Health with a pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness, Garden over some blue flowers, Showbiz over glitter and a gold star, Food on a strawberry and the ITV logo.
The nail colours I use are mostly cheaper brands such as Barry M, Rimmel and 17. They all go on easily but need at least two coats so it can take a while to wait for them to dry before painting the detail. With the Barry M pastel colours I usually paint one or two coats of white first, then go over with the colour as I find it shows up better with a white base.
I'm more than half way through the week now and so far it's been a fantastic experience getting to know the team, learning how live shows work on set and applying touch ups to guests and presenters before they go on camera. Looking forward to my last couple of days and I can't wait to see where this experience will take me next.

Adventure Time!

Discovered the awesomeness of Adventure Time recently so for my first Adventure Time nail art I decided to create some cutesy romantic ones with Jake the dog and Lady Rainicorn.

I've stretched them out to have one character per hand as I wanted to create some quick and easy nail art. Then added 'Jake' and 'Lady Rainicorn' in hearts on the thumbs.

To create these I painted a white base coat, then used a mixture of nail colours and nail art pens before using a thin brush (usually an eyeliner brush) to paint the black outline. Then two coats of Seche Vite - the best top coat I've come across so far.

In other news I have changed the title of my blog to Wizard of Nails as I'd like to begin a new, more professional blog. Until that gets up and running I'll be changing this one slightly. Also these are my first nail art images to have the watermark of my blog name added.

Japanese birthday

For my birthday meal I went to my favourite Japanese sushi restaurant in Cambridge called Teriaki. Therefore I decided I should paint my nails for the occasion. I didn't want to paint them all sushi nails so I chose to paint one hand in the theme of 'My Neighbour Totoro', my favourite Studio Ghibli film.
On my left hand I have Cat Bus with a balloon attached to his tail (had to add the birthday theme in there somehow), Chu Totoro and Chibi Totoro, Totoro, the little dust mite creatures called Susa-ataris and an umbrella with heavy rain.
My sushi nails include edamame beans, salmon roe sushi - my favourite (also added a candle in there like a birthday cake), cucumber, salmon and pickle maki, salmon sushi and a plate of california rolls with soy sauce, wasabi paste and chopsticks.
I had an amazing birthday week with lots of yummy food and fun thrills at Alton Towers.