Who watches the Watchmen?

I am quite a fan of the movie and graphic novel Watchmen. I took a bunch of friends to see it for my 18th birthday, and needless to say I was one of few who really liked it. It didn't make boatloads of money, but it was visually amaaazing and made me start to fall in love with Zack Synder's visual style. Watchmen is one of my favorite super hero stories, however it is very intense and very graphic at times (and not to mention a super long movie). I bring you Watchmen inspired nails!

Here are the polishes:

• Wet n Wild clear
• Revlon Dark Pleasures "Blacker Lacquer"
• Essence Colour & Go yellow
• Bon Bons glittery red

A lot of little bottles of color and patience here. Painted 2 coats of yellow on top of a clear base coat and then carefully painted the black ontop once the yellow had plenty of time to dry. Leaving both thumbs only yellow, I used a dotting tool (huzzah, my nail art kit came in about a week ago!) to make the smile and blood stain. Since I am less adept at doing things with my left hand, I used the polish brush sparingly on my right thumb to draw out the doomsday clock's hand and put a few tick marks around the thumb to make it more obviously clock-like.

They look good in the picture because you're not seeing them up close ;-; I probably should have done the black layer first and then spent more time putting yellow tips on top, because the black made little dots on either side of each nail because I was a bit sloppy. But if you do that, you may want to paint a white layer first, because I have issues with many colors not showing up on top of blacks. I also thought of painting one random tip red and using glitter on the yellow, but this is Watchmen, after all, and it was about super saturated, bold colors (unless we're talking about Dr. Manhattan). Happy painting :)

Fullmetal Alchemist Nails

Summer definitely is and at the same time is not a time for watching TV. I hardly ever watch TV unless it's the primetime shows that premiere in the fall or I tend to park in front of the set when I'm sick. So when all the shows come to a close in May I find myself at a loss... However, last summer a friend introduced me to the anime Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and I spent many an hour watching episodes on Hulu. It's on Adult Swim now, the English dubs almost completed, and thought I hate the dubbed voices, I will watch it if I catch it.

I know, you're probably thinking, Fullmetal what? Speak English. It's one of the best animes I've seen though. Fantasy/scifi series combined with an epic war...mmm it's all kinds of good. The series focuses on a pair of brothers who have learned alchemy at an early age and have the power to transform a variety of materials into anything they so desire. The logo for the series is silver and red, and often features a transmutation circle or the "blood seal" (cross and S formation) one of the characters bears.

For this design I used:

• Wet n Wild clear
• Wet n Wild "Metallica"
• Wet n Wild "Everybody Loves Redmond"
• Revlon Dark Pleasures "Blacker Lacquer"

First, start with your typical clear base. Though I haven't discussed how exactly (well, the order in which) I paint my nails, I typically start with painting the left thumb and work out to the pinky, then switch and paint the right thumb and work out to the pinky. Usually--as long as the coat isn't too terribly thick--I can paint the left hand, then right, then immediately start with another coat on the left while the right dries.

Take the silver and paint an even coat across each nail. I painted a second thicker layer on the ends of each finger as well, as the top of the nails will show the color. Next, take a bright red and paint a thick horizontal line across the base of each nail. Some reds are tricky and deceptive, one of my favorites (the little bottle of red Bon Bons I've used in previous designs), though it's bright it tends to blend in with whatever it is sitting on top of and consequently won't show up on darker colors. The Wet n Wild Fast Dry "Everybody Loves Redmond" works fine on top of the Wet n Wild Metallica, I found. Coat this base layer with clear polish to seal.

To make it more obvious that we're going for a Fullmetal Alchemist theme here you could paint a transmuation circle or Al's blood seal (for those of you seriously reading this, I'm sure you know what these symbols are). I chose the blood seal because it was less intensive and less liney. To make it, I used very little polish on the tips of the black nail polish's brush and just worked at dotting/painting thin lines. I drew the cross first, leaving space at the top for the crown and the wings, and then drew the S shape, then the wings/crown at the very tip of the nail. I gave it several minutes to set (even though it was a very thin layer of black) before sealing with clear.

My design came out extremely shiny. Though I have favored using glitter with a lot of my designs thus far, this one needs none. A good shimmering silver and a bright red coated with a couple layers of good clear polish should have this thing shining like metal. Changes I would consider would be using the silver for only the tips of the nails, rather than splitting the color half and half, though I do like the way it mimics the logo. I'd like to attempt this design and paint a transmutation circle across the ten fingers (or at least half a circle). An alternative to the color scheme could also be to use silver and gold and blue to mimic the uniforms of the military in the series, however the red/silver combination is likely to be more recognizable.

Well excuse me, princess...

Continuing on with the video game trend, this week I have for you a simple design in tribute to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the 3DS. I've played the N64 version a fair few hours and own all if not nearly all the Zelda games released for the home consoles after it. It's a good series about heroism and courage and rescuing princesses and whatnot. And in each game it seems you're dropped into a world where the legendary Triforce has been shattered and you have to go find the pieces again.

For this design, here are your polishes:

• Wet n Wild clear
• Wet n Wild "Bijou Blue"
• China Glaze "Kiwi Cool-Ada"
• Milani 3D "Hi-Tech"
• Prestige gold

To accomplish it, start with a clear base. I used two coats of the blue near the base of each nail and then two coats of the neon green on the remaining 2/3s of the nail. The green should overlap the blue to it looks like they smoothly melt into each other. Then apply some of the green sparkles courtesy of the Milani 3D polish, I tried to keep the green sparkles on the green half of the nails, although it looks fine if it is applied to the blue as well. At this point it would be wise to seal the base colors with a coat of clear.

For the Triforce, slowly start with a dot of the gold polish. The Prestige polish I used is extremely old and very transparent, so I really had to work at making each triangle on the middle three fingers. It took several coats (4~) for those three little shapes! Just work at it slowly, starting with a dot and dragging out left, right and upper corners. It may help to start with a straight horizontal line and then add a dot ontop of the line and work from there. Persistence and patience are key :) Once you've got the triangles into vaguely triangle shape, seal the three fingers with more clear and give them plenty of time to dry.

Much less intensive than some of my other designs, this design I feel gets the feel of Ocarina of Time across in a subtle way. I have a poster for the game that is extremely heavy on blues, and the game of course is heavy on green and brown and gold. Some of the later games are more heavy on lighter colors or on darker colors, but based on this poster alone, the bright blue and green call Ocarina of Time to mind, and the Triforce is an easy symbol to add to the color scheme as well.

Prepare for trouble...

...make it double! To protect the world from devastation, to unite all peoples within our nation!

I forget how much I love Team Rocket. Especially those folks from the original Pokemon anime show. And how fitting that this design would come to me right after the Pikachu design, seeing as Rocket always lusted after Pikachu in the show. I had fun painting these although this design had it's intricacies.

I used the following polishes:

• Wet n Wild clear
• New York Color "French White Tip"
• Revlon Dark Pleasures "Blacker Lacquer"
• Bon Bons (the same dark magenta used in the Pikachu design)
• Wet n Wild Fast Dry "Everybody Loves Redmond"

Pictured above is my right hand, which I used a base coat of "French White Tip" on each finger, two thick coats of white because it tended to get very line-y the more I tried to smooth it out. The thumb and pinky are the only fingers of this design with additional details. The pinky: using "Everybody Loves Redmond" I painted the top half of the nail red, once it dried then a stripe of the "Blacker Lacquer," then a dot of white in the center of the black to make the pokeball design. For the thumb: carefully I painted a thick stripe across the bottom half of the nail with "Blacker Lacquer" and added a narrow triangle on top (this is mean to resemble Jesse and James' shirts). Once the white had time to dry, I used alternating layers of the Bon Bons polish and the Wet n Wild red to draw the R.

For the left hand, I painted the pinky and the thumb with white base polish, and the remaining three fingers with "Blacker Lacquer" for the base. Using the same technique with the pinky to make the pokeball, the thumb was done backwards from the right hand... White base, then I used "Blacker Lacquer" to paint around the bottom and around the triangle shape. The pattern is the same, just colors reversed. Once again using 4~ coats of Bon Bons / Wet n Wild "Everybody Loves Redmond" to make the R.

Helpful hints for this one would be to work quickly and thickly with the white polish. I have this problem with nearly all white polishes I get though...either they gunk up on the nail and look very line-y with a brush pass, or they are too translucent and require 8934752101 coats and an hour to dry. Also, for the R's, it was very difficult to get the R to show up on the black polish, so a white base may be an alternative there. It's also easiest to have the legs of the R straddle the triangle shape of the thumb design to get them to show up in the most notable fashion.

...I also happened across a Pikachu toy after a recent trip to McDonald's. It was destined to me.

Team Rocket, blast off at the speed of light, surrender now or prepare to fight!

Pika Pika

If you're a nerd like me, then perhaps you'll recognize this design from Dorkly. I have been playing Pokemon games from the very beginning. My first was the Red Version; my dad gave it to me either in '98 or '99...I would have been seven years old. Ever since then, I've made a point to buy at least one game out of each subsequent generation (if not all three cartridges). And what's the most easily recognized Pokemon? Pikachu, of course. A little yellow electric mouse of a pocket monster. I never had any great fondness for the Pokemon in-game myself, but it's easily recognizeable so on the nails it went.

For Pikachu nails, I used clear Avon polish for a base on both hands. Then several, several (I'm talking 5+) coats of this old bottle of Prestige polish I had. Looking at the bottle, I can't actually tell you what shade it is, other than it's a faint gold/yellow color with some sparkles in it. The bottle still has a clearance 0.25$ sticker on it, folks. The Prestige painted on very thinly and very transparently, so it did require a great number of coats to actually appear a vague yellowy color. Then I used a coat of Wet n Wild clear to seal the base.

Now for the details... Because I couldn't locate a really black shade of polish, I used my Sally Hanson Xtreme Wear "Night Lights," this is a very sparkly polish but it has a pretty good dark gray color in addition to the glitter. A couple of solid dots made the eyes, and then I used one corner of the brush to put a smaller dot on the middle fingers and kind of barely nudged the polish out of the dot from the left and right to make an inverted triangle. Trial and error and practice is very much necessary for these things...my right hand actually ended up looking better than my left, even though I paint soooo much better with my right. I double coated the eye dots because the "Night Lights" shade really is too light to be considered black with just one coat. Then after I let them dry for a bit, I ended up getting a Sharpie to draw the mouth. It works better to dot the Sharpie rather than pressing down and drawing a straight line..if you do this it drags the polish and screws up the ink flow in the marker. Finally for Pikachu's rosy cheeks I used a tiny bottle of Bon Bons polish that is a deep magenta with some faint sparkles in it. Just dotted twice for each cheek to make a fat rosy mark, and then covered all the nails with a generous clear coat.

Watermelons

It's very much summertime here. Coming close to or breaking 100 degrees here...I'm not a great fan of the heat, but since I've been in college I've learned I like the freezing cold less. So in celebration of summer, I painted my nails like watermelons about a week ago, I just hadn't posted them yet. These were far easier than my TRON design and didn't take nearly as long either.

I started with a bottle of clear Avon polish (my mother sold it for a time and my sister still does, so I'm a bit of a fan) for the base coat. Then one moderately thick layer of Sally Hanson's Xtreme Wear "Green With Envy." Then a coat of sparkles from Milani 3D Holographic polish in "High Tech." I've got two bottles of the Milani because I found them on clearance at Target, one is definitely blue and the other green, although they kind of behave like a top coat of sparkles with a bit of color tint when you actually paint with them.

For the upper layers, I used a Wet n Wild pink, "Lavender Pearlescent." I jokingly call this color the Barbie nail polish, because I really like the deep super shiny pink, but there was a week in school when I work it on both my fingers and toes and found myself carrying not only a pink school bag but a pink water bottle as well. It was a bit much for me, especially since pink isn't even my favorite color. But alas! For the watermelon nails, I was really careful to leave space by the cuticle for the sparkly green of the watermelon rind to show through. It probably would have made more sense to left the nail tips green, but this was mechanically way more easy for me to do. Just go slow if you're unsure of yourself! You can always go back and touch up the line to make it more straight. Finally I used a sparkly black, Sally Hanson's Xtreme Wear "Night Lights" for the seeds. A couple of coats of Wet n Wild clear sealed the deal.

This design lasted about 3 days before it noticeably started chipping, but this may very well have been because I used sparing amount of coats (the green was only one coat, and I didn't go back over the pink either. Orrr it could have been because I had this design on when I started back up at work for my summer shift (and typing on a register is never good for nails). So that would probably be one of the things that needs work, more coats and perhaps switching the green to show at the tips rather than at the cuticules.

TRON Design

...I'll have to figure out what camera to use to get the best pictures. Nails are small targets and hard to photograph all at once.

For those of you unfamiliar with the theme, TRON is one of Disney's film franchises that tells the story of programmers being transported into a digital world. Two films have been released, one in 1982 and one in 2010, both heavy with special effects and both heavily sporting a black and blue color scheme. The patterns I've etched on my nails are supposed to be reminiscent of the light cycle races.

How did I get them to turn out? I used clear Avon polish for a base and then Wet n Wild "Bijou Blue," though I did have to put on 3-4 coats of the blue. I really like Wet n Wild because it's extremely cheap, but for some colors it really does require a ridiculous amount of coats to make the color show. I put Sally Hanson Xtreme Wear "Shooting Star" sparkles on top of the blue, and the sparkles themselves had a blue tint so they deepened the color. Then a coat of Wet n Wild clear to seal the bottom blue layers...and then the waiting game. It took a good half hour for the nails to really set and dry because I knew I was going to be going at the upper coats with a tooth pick and didn't want to screw up the base.

Once everything was dry I found an old bottle of OPI "Russian Navy" which I put one pretty thick coat on every finger, but I went one at a time and took a tooth pick and drew lines before putting polish on the next finger to make sure they wouldn't dry up on me. The first two fingers I did screw up pretty badly, but went back at the end with more of the navy and patched things up. Again I let everything dry and carefully put some more Sally Hanson Xtreme Wear sparkles on the spots that I didn't etch out, this time the sparkles were a black tint--"Night Lights." I would have rather coated the entire nail in this stuff but it is surprisingly dark and actually covered the blue showing through the etchings on one nail so I had to then paint around them :p Finished up with a couple of the Wet n Wild clear coats and waited an extremely long time before even daring to touch anything.

And tadah! Easy TRON nails. Even blasted the soundtrack while I was working on them. The OPI polish ended up being bit difficult to work with because it was so dark and I had to use thick coats, so I ended up getting it all over my palms and legs when I was working with the tooth pick in an effort to keep the point sharp. But then again, that's what remover is for. I feel like practice would make this design more perfect, but for the first attempt they don't look half bad :)