Ghosts "This is Halloween Nail Art Challenge"

The theme for today in the Halloween Nail Art Challenge is Ghosts, and I've had a real hard time coming up with something I like.

I originally did Pacman ghosts but I really wasn't happy with them, and I've since seen many more from this challenge that were way better than mine. I was then looking through google images to see if I could get some ghostly inspiration, but all that popped up were black nails with white ghosts.  I love black nails with white ghosts, but I wanted to try something a little more unique.

Then I found a great image which had floating ghosts in a blue background and I knew it would be perfect for some temporary tattoo nail art.

I used a base of Layla Mercury Twilight and put the tattoos over the top, then filed the loose edges off.  Topped with a coat of Seche Vite to seal it all in and make it shiny.

What I loved most about these is that indoors when you look at them closely, you can see the little ghosts, but in sunlight when the holo flare shines through, it looks more like a blue holo water marble.  I also love that it doesn't look weirdly halloween, but more of abstract swirls.

I promise I wont cheat and use temporary tattoo paper for the next theme, I'll do something freehand.

Mandelbrot set inspired tattoo nail art

I'm stepping into uber geek territory here and showing a nail art design I made using temporary tattoo paper and a Mandelbrot set design. 

What's a Mandelbrot set you ask? It's a distinctive and easily recognizable two-dimensional fractal shape, named after the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot.   Or as Wikipedia explains it "... the Mandelbrot set is the set of values of c in the complex plane for which the orbit of 0 under iteration of the complex quadratic polynomial z_n+1 = z_n² + c remains bounded.  That is, a complex number c is part of the Mandelbrot set if, when starting with z₀ = 0 and applying the iteration repeatedly, the absolute value of z_n remains bounded however large n gets." 

Still with me?  Nah. Well don't worry I don't understand any of that mathematical mumbo jumbo either, but I do know if you google image search "Mandelbrot" you'll get a bunch of aesthetically beautiful designs that would work perfectly for nail art temporary tattoos. 

Here is the Mandelbrot design I printed onto the temporary tattoo paper. I cut sections for all my nails, and used a full mini design on each of my thumbs.

 

Image source: http://fractaljourney.blogspot.com.au/

Unfortunately there was no sun today, so I had to take these under the bathroom light.  It was also after 24 hours of wear, so there are the starts of  some tip wear where I forgot to wrap my tips.

Here is my right had to show the different designs and colours - and I still can't work out how to hold my hand with it feeling cacky handed!

The only thing that annoyed me with this mani are the little lines across the nail that look like hairs. They are in fact little gaps that my ink jet printer leaves when printing sometimes - grrrrr.  It's only really noticeable in these photos and not no much in real life.

If you need more information about how I did these temporary tattoo nail art designs, then check out my tutorial. I have also grouped my other temporary tattoo nail art designs under one tag. 

I hadn't done a temporary tattoo design for ages, and I'm really happy with how this one turned out.

Ninjago nails

One of my little nephews turned four today, just five weeks after my little man turned four.  His mum and dad had organised an excellent ninja themed party for him today because he is totally into Lego's Ninjago.

If you don't know about Ninjago, they are a whole story line of Lego, and include the below four original mini figures.

I decided to create each of these characters on my fingers.  Cole the black one on my index finger, Jay the blue one on my index finger, Kai the red one on my ring finger and Zane the white one on my pinky.   If you look closely you can see that each actually has a different facial expression (or should I say eye expression).

There is also a new green ninja now, so I added him to my thumb.

In my hand I'm holding a Kai LED torch keyring, which was part of the birthday gift before I wrapped it up.

I created all of these using temporary tattoo paper, which I originally showed as butterflies here, and also created a tutorial.  The base polish is two coats of Layla Mercury Twilight, which has become my go to silver holo polish - I'm nearly half way through that bottle, I will need to get another soon!

Finally, here is the awesome cake that my brother baked, and check out those very cute take home lolly boxes in the background that they also created!

My sister in law had also organised little prizes for everyone throughout the party, some won them through games, others just for fun reasons.  I received mine for having the best nails. What I forgot to take photos of was all of us dressed up as ninjas, mostly with t-shirt masks wrapped around our heads and dressed in monochromatic colours.  It was great fun!

Holographic autumn leaves using temporary tattoo paper

Once a week I like to try out another temporary tattoo nail art design. This is a design I put together based on autumn leaves.

Here is the image I used, which I shrunk down to fit on each nail, then I also printed a larger version for an accent nail.  The temporary tattoos were applied over a mani done with two coats of Layla Mercury Twilight.

I have to say, the design didn't quite translate onto the nail.  It was certainly pretty and colourful with lots of autumn colours and that stunning holo shimmer, but in the sun you really couldn't tell they were autumn leaves.

Even in the shade they were hard to make out, except for my thumb which turned out perfectly.

See, lots of multicoloured autumn goodness, that really doesn't look like leaves. Oh well.

While I have your attention, can I please put in a quick apology.  I was reading a few of my past posts earlier today and was appalled at the number of spelling and grammatical errors in my blog posts. I truly am an educated woman with a well paying government job, that actually does know how to spell and construct well formed sentences.  I do know the difference between your and you're, and now and how, despite the example that I provide here daily on my blog.   You see, I just type and click publish.  My life is too short and busy to proof read my blog posts, but unfortunately that means you lovely readers get stuck with my craptasitc spelling! Please forgive me, but don't expect to see a change ;-)

Purple dragon nail art

Here is some nail art I wore last week.  I found some images of dragon stuff online, then edited them in Photoshop to get the designs and colours I wanted.  I then printed them onto the temporary tattoo paper that I featured in the tutorial here.

The index finger represents the dragon skin/scales, the index finger is clearly his eye.  Thank you to Mr Kitties26 for his suggestion to make the dragons eye green, it looked so amazing!!  The ring finger is the fire that the dragon breaths, and the pinky is an abstract part of the dragons wing.

The ring finger is painted with Layla Mercury Twilight, and the other fingers are painted with Layla Ultra Violet.  Apologies for the tip wear, these were taken at the end of day two.  I suddenly had a gap in the clouds and snapped some sun shots, rather than the photos under the bathroom light.

I love this up close of the dragon eye.  The gradient of the yellow and green, with the holo behind it was so cool.

Finally, here is the image used on my thumb.  I had to take a photo in the shade, because the sun photo was just too holo to be able to see the actual image on my nail.

Sorry about the lack of chit chat ladies, I'm so unbelievably busy at work at the moment, I just can't empty my brain of work stuff to insert nail stuff into it.  Damn stupid brain  - work faster or something.  I wish I could just backup my brain to an external hard drive, and then reload it ready for work the next morning!

Holo diamonds

The sun was out on the weekend, so I grabbed my holos again and played around with one of the temporary tattoo designs I had printed.

This one didn't quite turn out how I had imagined in my head.  On the paper these were beautiful enlarged brilliant cut diamonds that showed all the facets in different shades of grey.  But on my nail they look more like star bursts or shards of glass or something?!?.

I'm not going to call it a fail, just different to what I had imagined.  This photo in the shade shows the shades of the faceted diamond better, which seems to get lost amongst the holo.

Still, it was something fun to spice up a holo polish, especially indoors.  Cause sometimes holos can look a little uninteresting indoors when they aren't flashing all the colours around.

Holo rainbows using temporary tattoo paper

I have something very special today that I have not shown very often on my blog. No it's not that I'm using the temporary tattoo paper again (although I am).  The special thing I'm showing you.... is my right hand!!

I had be nursing a chipped corner on my ring finger on the left hand for about a week, and after filing my nails last night it came off and couldn't be reattached with super glue.

Kudos to you girls that swatch and post photos of both hands.  Let me tell you, I felt like a complete nuff nuff photographing my right hand.  My hand was twisted and fingers misaligned, and then trying to press the shutter button on the camera with my left hand resulted in many pictures with my hand shadowing the photo.  Anyway, enough about my cacky right handed pictures, let me tell you about what I did here.

Here is another design I did using the temporary tattoo paper, but this time as a full nail design.

I first put on two coats of Layla Mercury Twilight and then I cut out my tattoo paper in shapes to fit my nail.  I decided to curve the base of the design so it would hopefully have a neat finish at the cuticle.  I'm really happy how that part worked out, as it is much neater than trying to clean it up with acetone.

I did learn two new lessons applying the temporary tattoo this time. Number one, and evidenced on my pinky finger, was having fingers that were too wet when handling the paper.  What happened was, I picked up the cut piece and where my finger was wet, the paper soaked it up.  Then when I tried to remove the transparent backing, I couldn't separate it from that edge, instead the paper was just coming away.  So I then peeled the transparent backing off from the other end, but as soon as I did that, the end where it had already become loose from the paper curled up and stuck to it's self.

Lesson 1 - do not handle temporary tattoo paper with wet hands.

Lesson two is one that I learned on my index finger of the left hand.  Firstly as you can see on my left hand, I had to file this hand quite a bit after the break.  What I forgot to do after that was shorten the design so some of the red would show, but that's not what the lesson was.

You can see the bit of blue missing on my index finger, this was because there was a bubble in the paper after I had stuck the transparent piece to the printed piece.  This bubble torn slightly as I removed the backing, and then when I put water on the nail, some of the inkjet colour just ran and disappeared.

Lesson 2 - make sure there are no bubbles after applying the sticky transparent backing.

I also found that I got a neater finish at the tip of the nail if I filed the temporary tattoo paper off, rather than trying to removing it with acetone.  Even with acetone, it seems to take ages to dissolve and ends up just a sticky gloopy mess on the tips of you nail.

I'm planning to do a few more of these temporary tattoo designs over the next few weeks, but I still need to work through that drawer of untrieds.

Until next time all you polished lovelies!

Holographic Butterflies - Tutorial

OK people, thank you so much for all your wonderful comments on the holographic butterflies, I got the message that you do want a tutorial loud and clear, so I'll just get right into it.

Let me say that this is seriously easy.  When you see what it is you will think, "Is that all!" Anyone with a printer will be able to create nails like these, because it really is very simple and quick to do!

First up, what is the product?  The paper that my designs are printed onto is Temporary Tattoo Paper.  I bought mine off eBay.  If you search eBay for "Temporary Tattoo Paper" you will find a few suppliers.

The supplier I bought mine off has a very good video about how to get your tattoo paper ready. You can check out that video here.  But in simple terms, the tattoo paper comes in two sheets. One white sheet with a glossy side that you print your design on, and another sheet which is a piece of white paper with transparent film on the other side.  After you've printed on your first piece of paper, you let it dry, and then separate the second piece of transparency from the paper and stick them together.  Seriously, watch that video, it only goes for two and half minutes and it shows how to prep your tattoo paper perfectly.

So here is my first sheet of designs I did up.  As you can see there are lots of different sized and coloured butterflies. I just found a butterfly image on google images and then fiddled with the hue and saturation in Photoshop to get all the different coloured butterflies, but keeping them all a consistent design.

There is also some old English names printed (my husband has real tattoos like this with mine and the kids names, and Mr 3 thinks it's really fun to have matching temporary tattoos as dad).  You can also see gaps where I have already cut out designs.

For this tutorial, I' m just going to do some small butterflies.  In the last design, I used the large butterflies, cut in half with partial wing designs on each finger, as well as the accent nail which was the collection of little butterflies (despite the fact that the little butterflies look like the Sally Hansen butterflies, they are completely home made).  I will be applying the purple butterfly to my thumb, and then applying the red and green butterflies, cut in half on each of the other nails in the video below.

First, start off with you base colour.  I used a layer of Orly Bonder base coat and two coats of Layla Mercury Twilight on all nails (actually only on the left hand, you will see later that my right hand is still the previous design - yes I'm still wearing it!)

So here is the little butterfly that I printed and put together using the temporary tattoo paper. I trim it closely around the design, but it doesn't have to be perfect.

Next you peel off the plastic covering to expose the sticky side of the tattoo.

Now just stick that image straight onto your nail. Make sure you place it correctly, because you wont be able to move it around like a water decal.  It is just like sticking down a sticker. Press it firmly and rub it outwards gently to ensure there are no creases.

Grab a cotton ball or wipe and dip it in some water. Hold the water against the nail for 10-20 seconds.

The piece of paper will now just slide off.

And now your design has been transferred.  You can clean up any parts of the tattoo that overhang your nail edge or at your cuticle with a bit of polish remover (or trim with scissors).

Then put on some top coat and you're done.  The tattoo, once it is applied and no longer has paper on either side, is actually very stretchy.  This means that it can be easily smoothed onto the nail and it doesn't form any creases.  That is the problem that I have with water decals.  Water decals are great for small images, but these temporary tattoos are perfect for all over nail designs.

Now I did record this rather dreadful video.  I've said it before, but I have no clue about editing videos to make them fancy, so this is just a direct download of what I recorded from my camera.  Apologies for the moments where I forgot about the camera and my fingers disappear from the screen, and also for the odd clicking noises.  It's only a short video and I do four nails, so you will see how quickly this can be done.

Here is a photo of the final look.  The only difference here from my original mani is that I did a smaller butterfly design on my nail.  I think the full design covering the whole nail looks better, but I wanted to show another option.

Unfortunately there was no sun today, so these photos are under the bathroom light, which doesn't show the holo off as well., but you get the idea.

I found these lasted on the nail really well.  As you can see in the video, I still have the original design on my right hand. I have plenty of tip wear, but I actually found that where the tattoo was on my nail it made the holo polish last much longer.  

When I was removing the polish off my left hand prior to doing this tutorial, I found that the design actually seemed like it wasn't coming off.  I rubbed and rubbed and it didn't do anything except remove the polish from the nail where the tattoo didn't cover it.  I found that it was much easier to pick at a corner of the tattoo and peel it off in one sheet, then remove the polish off the nail.

Now I'm sure you will agree, these are super dooper easy to do.  Let me know if you get any temporary tattoo paper and give this a go!  I'd love to see what people come up with.