Flocking cow…

Where I live we have a cow, which is not that unusual. The cow’s name is “Trina”, she is 20 years old, is quite tame and likes to get out of her paddock and go wandering. She must then be lured home with bananas or bread. At the beginning of summer it was quite dry and she didn’t have much grass to eat, so I started bringing bread from work home for her. Now she associates my car with food and runs up the paddock if my car stops! So if the cow with personality (or is that cowonality?) wasn’t enough, a month or so before Xmas, a deer turns up to hang out with the cow!!

We of course named him Rudolf, discovered that the he was in fact a Canadian Elk, would grow really big and possibly be dangerous! Rudolph alternated between hanging out with Trina or some horses up the road, guess he just wanted company and couldn’t decide where he fitted in. I know that this design/theme has been done before, but they are my Trina the Cow nails.

I have recently bought some flocking powder (somewhat behind in this trend) and thought it’d be a perfect finish for cow print! The cow image is a vintage image from The Graphics Fairy, which I have made into a decal with my super awesome photocopy water slide decal paper,( printed on the clear paper). More about the paper in this post. Rudolph has since been sedated and taken away to live with the rest of his family that he escaped from. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed my cow meets dear story.

Valentine skittle…

Sometimes throughout the day, I see hearts everywhere. Leaves on trees, puddles, a piece of calamari, a splatter, folds in fabric. So why not do a Valentine skittle with a punk, grunge, gothic feel to it.

The pinky is a nail wrap, which I have cut a heart shape out of and stuck on, then outlined in gold polish to tie the design together. On the ring finger is a decal that I printed but it didn’t turn out very sharp so I painted over it in a few different tones of red polish. On the middle finger I painted a gothic-ish heart with Barry M fold effects in gold and the heart on the index finger is painted in acrylic paint over the black polish. All were sealed with 2 coats of top coat.

Punk-a-licious…

There are a few manis that I’ve done in the past that I’ve wanted to revisit and improve on them. My first punk nails leave alot of room for improvement. I cared or knew little about cleaning up around the cuticles, filing a decent shape with a similar length on each nail and lightboxes.

I also wanted much better looking studs, tartan and zippers. The tartan is a nail wrap, which I just haven’t made friends with yet, they crinkle, they rip, they don’t sit flat, ugh. The studs and zipper decals came from Born Pretty store and the anarchy symbol I’ve painted on with a silver striping brush. The thumb is Barry M croc effects over silver, I think by accident I have found a way to turn this polish into Leather Effects….stay tuned!

Thanks for looking!

My first tutorial….

I think this deserves its own special post…..I made a tutorial for the background landscape nails in the Goth Mona Lisa mani. I hope it is clear, I am trying to show it is easy to create this look and with a bit of know how that anyone can do it!

Game Of Thrones Take 2….

The first time I did this theme I knew I wanted to have a different family shield on each pointed nail, this was just too hard to paint so tiny and so neat. So I have made decals using water slide decal paper  that I printed with my photocopier using this image.

If you want to try to make your own decals, make sure to get the correct paper to suit your photocopier. There are two types of paper clear (imagine printing on a clear sheet) and white (like printing on a white sheet of paper). I printed these decals on the white sheet, as there was some white in the design. You also need to seal it if you are using an inkjet printer, I used clear nail polish. I tested what happens if you don’t, the ink just runs off the image when it touches the water. Sealing is not necessary for laser printers so I am told.  You also need to re-size the images using some kind of editing software, I just used the software that came with my printer (HP). To test the image was the correct size for my nail I did quite a few draft copies on normal paper, I really did not want to waste any precious decal paper!

I applied each one to a long pointy fake nail, I wish I could have long nails and my current job, but they just don’t go together. The decals are easy to move around when they are wet, once they were in place I pressed them down with a clean dry make-up sponge, which smooths out nearly all the wrinkles, some very tiny ones did remain. When they were dry I hid the edges with nail polish and finally added top coat to smooth it all out.

Thanks for looking, soon I’ll have some Steampunk nails and maybe some more punk too.