The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Hello there lovelies.

So what we have here is me playing catch up with you a little bit. This will be quite a picture heavy post, as I'm going to chuck in several of my earlier designs (for want of a better word) to get them out of the way, before we move onto the slightly better ones - you know, where you can see improvement.

Please excuse the dodgy pics and hand poses - I had a LOT to learn...:/

I'm not going to bombard you with these up front, so if you care to read on, all the pics (which I advise you not to maximise) will be after the jump.

A lot of these designs were inspired by other designs, or I used tutorials I found for them, however, because it's been a while, I can't link them. So if you recognise any of these, please leave me a comment, and I'll whack it in.

These two were among the first of my recent designs. I used loose bristles from my bronzer brush taped to a toothpick for my 'brush'. Classy, I know...

Geometric stripes, left hand

Geometric stripes, right hand

These were on a friend, Nicole, and were my first ever mani on someone else.

Red and white bordered

I used a tutorial for these gorgeous lace patterned nails, but I can't remember where from, so if you recognise these, please leave me the link in the comment, and I'll put it here.

Lace patterns

These were for a friend, Danya's, dress-up party - she went as a bumblebee.

Who does't love a good bumblebee?

These were on a friend, Orit, just cos I could...:)

Colour blocking stripes

These are among my all time favourite nails. I think I just love the simplicity, and the way no one element detracts from the others, but the whole thing is vivid and awesome to look at.

Colour blocking, black and white

I hated these, but hey, this post does include 'The Ugly' afterall...

Black and white and ew all over

The following two nails I did for passover this year. I decided to capture the ten plagues of Egypt on my nails. I love the blood and frog ones.

L-R: Blood, frogs, lice, wild beasts, pestilence

L-R: Boils, fiery hail, locusts, darkness, death of the firstborn son

Just some more fun colour blocking, with cut outs. For this I used Revlon Passion Fruit - it's SCENTED. I didn't want to top coat these bad boys, they were so delish!

Cut out chevron

Contrasting dots

Contrasting dots

Vintage style stripes and roses.

Vintage stripes and roses

These nails I did for when I went to see the Avengers with some friends. I chose to do symbols representing each Avenger, or relevant character, rather than a full on image.

L-R: Loki, Nick Fury, The Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Black Widow

These were nails for Orit - she really loved my vintage roses, and I had just gotten in my striping tape!

Vintage roses and stripes

Alien nails on Danya

Alien nails

A version of ombré or gradient nails, where each nail is a gradation of the one before it, rather than multiple shades on each nail. The middle finger is the original colour - OPIs 'a grape fit'. To get the darker colours I mixed it with some navy blue, and for the lighter two, I mixed it with some white.
On top of the ombré I did some glitter placement stars. This is a technique where you pull out individual pieces of glitter from a polish, and place them onto the nail.

Ombré and glitter stars

Gradient dot nails with a cartoon heart accent, as seen on Nailside's tutorial, on Nicole for her birthday. I quite like the way the dots look - almost snowlike.

Gradient dots with a cartoon heart accent

This was my first attempt at a sponge on gradient. I had swatched the pink (Revlon Fierce) on one hand and the silver, which is actually a gorgeous pale blue metallic (Revlon Princess) on the other, and then got bored with it very quickly, so I did this!

Metallic sponged ombrés

These nails were inspired in part by Chelsea of getnailedd's tutorial, and in part by the colour change BYS nail polish I had just bought. You can see the tips of the pink fingers are purple - that's the colour CHANGING! SO COOL.

Colour change, Missoni nails

These were for Ilana who wanted something subtle for work - so I tape mani'd her up!

ZigZag tape mani

These nails were requested by a friend - she wanted me to do strawberry nails, so this was my take on it. In hindsight they actually look more watermelonny. Oh well.

Strawberry skittle nails

These are also up there with my favourites of recent times. I painted a glow in the dark top coat onto the white before adding the black and colours, so, as you can see in the second pic, they GLOWED.

Half and half with stripes

It's aliiiiive!

With these grey and purple nails I attempted to create a kind of gradient stripes effect - the grey fading into purple, and purple fading into grey, kinda like this.
My hand wasn't exceptionally steady though, so the effect wasn't so great, but hey, it was worth a shot. The colours are great, if nothing else..:)

Soooooo, if you're still with me, and I applaud you if you are, that's all of my older manis, coming into the slightly more adept ones towards the end. From now, I'll post more details about each one, etc, so that you actually have something slightly more interesting to read!
Woo!
Thanks for sticking around, dear readers.
Until next time,
xNai