Pac-Man Nail Art!

A few days ago, a twitter friend suggested I do Pac-Man nails and I instantly jumped on the idea! Pac-Man was on my short-list for the Week of Geek but didn't end up making the cut and I guess I just forgot about the idea until Araneae mentioned it.

I used yellow (George Buttercup shine) as a base for my ring finger and black (Rimmel Black satin) for all the others. I used a nail art brush to freehand the outline of Pac-Man with black acrylic paint then black polish to fill out the remaining bits of nail.

For the ghosts, I used white acrylic paint to make out the shapes and then coloured them in using Miss Sporty Orange, Barry M Raspberry and L'Oreal Bebe. The blue of the maze is Barry M Cyan Blue which I painted on with a striping brush and I used a dotting tool with La Femme Grey Cream for the pac-dots.

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Day 30: Inspired by a Tutorial

Here we are at the penultimate day of the challenge and I'm getting a little emotional. This amazing journey will soon be over for Me, Chris and Rie so I'm gonna go out with a bang and give you the most awesome manis I can for the next two days!

Today I had to pick a tutorial to inspire my nails and I've always wanted to try out some of Jane @ Nailside's amazing designs. Jane comes up with the most amazing uses for scotch tape and her nails always look incredible.

I really wanted to try recreating her explosion design but I'm not very good with scotch tape so that went belly up very quickly and I decided to try her cartoon hearts. Swoon.

Follow me over to Cristina and Rie's tutorial inspired nails today.

My base colour is A-England Elaine. I used whit acrylic paint and Nails Inc. Shoreditch for the hearts, then topped it off with a few coats of NYC Top Coat.

I won't give you any details of how I achieved this look, you'll have to head over to see the tutorial at Nailside [here] and you can check out all of Jane's simple but stunning tutorials here.





For 'Day 31: Recreate Your Favourite Challenge' we've decided to pick our favourite challenges from each other so check back tomorrow for a double feature!

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Day 24: Inspired by a Book

Can you believe there are only seven days left of this challenge?! I really can't!
So, for nails inspired by a book I decided to go for a children's book - The Rainbow Fish. I did consider a few adult books that I've read recently but this seemed way more fun!

I can't wait to see Rie and Cris's book inspired nails today!







Stamping Plate: BM209
Base Colour: A-England - Tristam
Stamp Colour: GOSH - Holographic
To colour in the scales, I used: Nails Inc - Shoreditch, Kriston - 52, Rimmel - Blue My Mind and Models Own Juicy Jules
Top Coat of NYC



In the style of Rie, I decided to include a close up shot today. Check out those 'scales'!

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Day 23: Inspired by a Movie (V For Vendetta Nail Art)

Some of you may remember back to September when I did 'Just Like The Movies' week? Well, I pretty much used up every idea I've ever had for movie manicures! A friend suggested I use a 'V For Vendetta' theme and I immediately jumped on that concept.

In case anyone hasn't seen the movie, I won't give away too many details but it's loosely based on the events leading up to what is now known as Guy Fawkes Night (November 5th 1605 wiki). I don't know how well the story is known in the U.S. but it's a part of British history that every kid is taught about in school. Everyone I know that's seen the movie really likes it, so if you haven't seen it yet - you should!

Don't forget to check out Cristina and Rie's Movie Manicures too!

Thumb to Pinky:  'V', Rose, Fireworks, V himself, Government insignia





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Once Upon A Time (Disney Princess Nail Art)

I never watched many Disney movies growing up. The only ones I can remember watching as a child are Aristocats and Lady and the Tramp, I didn't even watch The Lion King for the first time until I was probably 16/17!

However, somehow I still know the names of most of the Princesses and can easily recognise them all and their iconic outfits. I picked a few of my favourites to decorate my nails with!

The Inspiration

Pinky to Thumb: Snow White, Jasmine, Ariel, Cinderella, 'D' for Disney.

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My Nails Are My Canvas

I've started using acrylic paint in my freehand nail art recently. It has it's advantages and disadvantages over nail polish so I just thought I'd share my thoughts for any of you that are curious about acrylic paint and using it on your nails.

Why it's better than nail polish

♥ It's more pigmented. There's no need to go over and over the same spot if 

♥ It doesn't dry out as quickly as polish. I blob out my colours on to a sheet of clear plastic, my 'palette' if you will, and when I use polish I'm constantly having to put out out new blobs of polish as it dries up. One blob of acrylic paint will last the whole manicure without drying up. 

Why it's worse than nail polish

♥ It's hard to work with at first because it's a different consistency to nail polish, so it just feels a bit alien. The best way to describe the difference is that it's less forgiving than polish. You have to be much more careful with the brush. After a few goes, you get used to this though.

♥ It takes a bit more work to remove, but will come off with your regular polish remover.

I really like using acrylic paint and I'll continue to use it since I think the pros far outweigh the cons. If you're on the fence about trying it yourself, I say go for it, but find it cheap somewhere. I paid 99p per bottle in Ryman stationers.

Models Own Purple Grey

White Acrylic PaintFreehan

The line design is by Wah Nails and it's called 'Basket Case'

The accent finger is my attempt at the pop art work, Crying Girl, by Roy Lichtenstein. It's not my best work but from a distance it looks alright, so I left it on!

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POW, PINK WEDNESDAY!

You may have heard of a little salon called Wah Nails?! Well I found out that they are open to recruiting anyone with a knack for nail art, nail technician qualifications aren't required. So if there are any UK nail art enthusiasts who think they'd like to apply, check out their careers page. I would apply myself but I live too far away from their salons and I'm in no position to move at the moment so it's going on my 'what I want to be when I grow up' list!

Today's Pink is Nails Inc Shoreditch and is definitely not something I would pick out on any normal day but I like to step out of my comfort zone on Pink Wednesdays and try out the colours in my stash that normally get overlooked. I thought I would be removing this colour as soon as the pictures were taken but I'm oddly enamoured with it! It's a creme formula so I used 4 coats for maximum opacity then spiced it up with some of Wah Nails' designs, Pow! and Basketcase.

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