The Nail Polish Hypothesis

One of my favourite TV Shows has to be The Big Bang Theory, I can't believe it's taken me so long to do a BBT themed Mani but it's been on my list (along with Suits and Mad Men) for some time.  Having four main protagonists meant that this mani was crying out to be a 'little people' make, so here are Sheldon, Leonard, Raj and Howard complete with Soft Kitty on the thumbs :)

Of course, Sheldon simply had to be wearing a Green Lantern shirt ;)  The first versions of this had 'Bazinga' on the thumbs, but the difficulties in painting yellow over red and getting them to show up at such a small size proved a little too much so soft kitty made her appearance instead.

Prince Charming - Adam Ant nail art

Last week a song popped into my head, a song I don't recall hearing since 1983, Adam Ant - Apollo 9. I spent most of the weekend singing it and spurred on I started to listen to the old albums I'd loved so much as a young girl.
The effect of this was that I caught my 15 year old daughter happily listening to the Kings of The Wild Frontier album and absolutely loving it!  When she suggested that Adam Ant nails would look quite good I had to agree.  Adams style was so unique that he would make great nail art and this was the result...

The nails feature OPI Gold Crackle over a base of Barry M Black.  Adam himself and the very small Ant Logo are done with acrylic paint.

Narrowboat Art Nails

Whilst I was browsing my Bloglovin feed this morning I came across this really pretty manicure by Robin Moses Nail Art featuring beautiful snow white daisies.  The more I admired them the more they reminded me of 'Narrowboat Art'.  For my Non UK readers this is a style of painting adopted in the 19th Century when boat owners painted roses and castles on their boats.  As the popularity of canals here dwindled the art faded somewhat though it's recently had a bit of a revival.

I love the style, and it's something thats so simple to do but looks incredibly effective, admittedly its a little trickier to work on something as small as a fingernail but I am pleased with how this turned out.  Thanks again to Robin for the inspiration!

Canal Boat Art
Features Barry M Black Polish and Acrylic Paints.

Friends :)

As a small girl many many many years ago I had a group of close friends who stayed with me from Primary school right through to high school and beyond.  One of these was a lovely girl named Nicki.
We'd been close for many years but lost touch around 20 years ago.  We've both changed our surnames so finding old girlfriends is incredibly hard.

Just before Christmas I'd run out of blank nails, in a panic I had a look on eBay and searched locally and found a lady selling just what I needed.  I was amazed when she told me she lived literally half a mile from my house.  I headed over to pick them up, knocked on the door and was stunned when Nicki opened it and even more stunned to see she had hands full of the most fantastic nails I've ever seen.

It turns out Nicki is a bit of a genius with nails, her YouTube channel, configure1973 is followed by thousands and kept me enthralled for hours.  Because she's so lovely she gave me a shout out on her channel yesterday so go and have a look then check out her amazing designs and tutorials.

So Nicki, thank you again, it's good to have an old friend back! Go check out Configure1973 because she is amazing!

Who ya gonna call?

As I kid I had a few movies which I loved, Highlander was my all time favourite, St Elmo's Fire, The Lost Boys, Pretty in Pink and the amazing Ghostbusters.  
I was quite gutted actually as I'd reached an age where I was deemed too old for toys so I missed out on the brilliant toy range that was produced on the back of the movie.

Anyway, it occurred to me that the Ghostbusters would make a fantastic manicure so I got my paints, my bottle of OPI on Stranger Tides which I've never been impressed with the colour of and I created our 4 heroes.

I especially love Venkman, but then again I loved him in the movie.  Nerds rock, even on nail art!

Disney Commission

Occasionally I get asked to do a commission set of nails.  I was approached by a lovely lady called Niki asked me to design a set of Disney nails for her Florida holiday I was quite excited.

I believe they get sunshine in Florida (I vaguely recall sunshine) so with that in mind I wanted glittery nails that would 'pop' in the sunshine.  I added Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, Pooh, Belle and one of Cinderella's mice along with Cinders castle to the thumbs.

This was probably one of the fiddliest sets of nails I have ever made but it was great fun!

Do you have an idea for a commission?  Contact me on pulliptears@gmail.com and we'll see what we can come up with together :)

What makes you beautiful....

My daughter has been nagging for a while for One Direction nails, not something I'd usually do but well, why not...

Here we have Harry on the thumb, wearing his Pink Floyd T Shirt, Zayn,  Liam in a 1D T Shirt, Niall and Louis on the little finger.

These were created with nail polish and acrylic and will be available to buy in my etsy shop shortly!

Nail Art, Bitch!

All my recent mani's seem to be TV related don't they?  Well, whilst we are on a roll heres a little Heisenberg Breaking Bad manicure I did a while back.  I especially love the crystal meth blue little finger nails :)

Game Over...

I'm still playing around with nail shaping and decided to revisit a design I'd done a while ago, but with a twist. Pac Man!

My first attempt at this had the slice cut from Pac Man's mouth, however, this presented two issues.  The first being it left the nail unstable and prone to splitting further, and the second, and probably most significant was that is was very, very, VERY sharp.

In his second incarnation pac man then became shaped, rounded at the end to look a bit more effective and the mouth applied in varnish. The ghosts have the cut out 'v' shapes underneath them which are filed down slightly to make the design more wearable.

Colours Used. Models Own Black. W7 UV Yellow. Rimmel Ultra Violet. Nails Inc St James. Essie Orange, it's obvious and Ciate Holiday Blues.

Game Over.

Na Na Na Na.....

I'm so in love with these!  These are my prototypes (poorly attached with blue tack but you get the idea!)

This is my first foray into shaping, I wanted something a little 'different' that was still wearable.  I've seen some amazing shaped nails over the years but I have to wonder how the wearer copes with them for any length of time.  Shaping the thumb nail hopefully means you can still function with reasonable normality whilst wearing something a bit different.

I'm currently bursting with shaping ideas!!

Ethical Nails?

Last night I happened on an auction on eBay.  The auction was for 'Children in Need Pudsey False Nails'.  How nice I thought, using your talent for charity, something I should probably do a little more of (though as an aside I've spent the week working on nails for a Lymphoma Charity Auction).

As I read through the auction it dawned on me that the nails, featuring the charity mascot and colours had nothing at all to do with the charity and the seller of the nails was keeping all £3.99 + P&P to themselves.

Now this annoyed me.  Children in need is a big event in the UK, to use the mascot of a charity to sell nails to fill your own pockets is morally wrong I feel and completely unethical.  It annoyed me so much actually I dropped everything I was doing and made a set of my own set of Pudsey Children In Need nails, but the difference being every penny from their sale will go to Children In Need charity.  I'll even pay the postage.

What are your thoughts on using a charity logo to sell your items?

X Factor

Before I continue I should point out that I usually detest the X Factor, however, this year I have been unable to avoid it as son and his Girlfriend sit on the sofa of a Saturday night and watch it.  Of course I'm now completely hooked...

The lovely Lady S over at Nailpron suggested a set of X Factor nails, and here they are:

Quite pleased with how much like Louis Walsh little Louis looks!  Not a manicure I'll be repeating though :)

Daria

I don't think I've ever actually seen Daria, certainly in the years it was airing it's not something I remember in the UK, though from memory in 1997 my son was obsessed with Hey Arnold! at the time which is probably a whole other manicure.
Anyway, when I saw Katy Perry's Daria nails back in September I was intrigued.  The style of them was something I've been doing for quite some time so I was a little surprised at the fuss they caused.  What I did think as soon as I saw them though was "I need to try that!"  I had a free afternoon today so I decided to give it a go,  I'm reasonably happy with it considering it's something I've never seen!

We're walking in the air...

The only thing the air was in my house yesterday was blue I'm ashamed to say.  I started these nails originally in acrylic.  The original set were beautiful, finely detailed and the sky was gorgeous.  Then I applied a clear W7 topcoat.  I've not used that brand with acrylic paint before and its something I won't do again.  As I watched the topcoat dry I watched the paint underneath crack and flake.  I was gutted.

So this is version 2, all in polish this time, though I will have to revisit the acrylic version simply because I'm just not happy with the detail on the winter scenery nails.  In fact, I'm not overly happy with these as a whole, but I thought I'd share them anyway.

Ok, small edit.  Because I'm bloody stubborn I went back, started again with acrylics and I am infinitely happier with this set of nails...

On monday he ate through one apple...

Ironic isn't it?  You spend all afternoon delicately working on one project, and the doodle you are working on while it dries turns out to be much nicer than the original project :)

My eldest son loved this book, it was a firm favourite and I had a flash that I really should pay homage to The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Now thats done I am going back to what I was working on initially....lol

And so the lion blah blah blah...

Let me start by saying I am not a Twilight fan.  I did read the books, which at the time I enjoyed, but then I found other better novels of the genre and realised just how poorly written they were.  I read Breaking Dawn on a flight from L.A to the UK and frankly by the time I got in the Taxi I was jetlagged and annoyed.  It seemed to me that it was a poor fanfiction rather than an end to the saga, and don't start me on 'Renesmee'.

Anyway, a friend of mine commented that she was surprised I'd not done Twilight characters in my nail people designs, and I admit I was a bit surprised I'd forgotten them myself...

Firmly tongue in cheek of course, Edward (who actually sparkles but the camera didn't pick that up!) Bella (sporting the same expression she wore throughout the entire movies) and Jacob (shirtless, obviously).   Couple with that an apple and a chess piece and there you have Twilight. 

We looked! Then we saw him step in on the mat! We looked! And we saw him! The Cat in the Hat!

I was thinking to myself just how amazing Thing 1 and 2 nails might be.  I love Dr Seuss, especially the amazing artwork in the books. Theodor Seuss Geisel was actually an amazing artist away from drawing cats in hats!

Anyway, these are a one off and wont be replicated!  Hope you like them!

Heroes in a half shell!

I've been stupidly busy this last week working on Halloween nails so forgive me if I've been a little quiet.  I'm also working on some new designs....

These aren't finished I add.  I tend to make up a test set of nails and all others then stem from that.  This is my test Turtles set which will probably change a little between this and the finished version which will appear on Etsy :)

Gory, ghastly, Mean and cruel, Stuff they don't teach you at school...

I've always had a bit of a thing for Horrible Histories, despite the fact that my children are 15 and 19 I do frequently find myself turning on CBBC just to watch.  Because most of my best nail art tends to start with something I love, I decided it should be the Gorgeous Georgians, or namely the 4 George's from the 'Born To Rule' song.

Meg & Mog (and not forgetting Owl!)

Superquick post, bit naughty really as they aren't quite finished (still quite wet in places so Meg's face doesn't look quite right!) but I had to share with you my latest Halloween fun....

Meg & Mog!

Meg & Mog was one of my favourite book series when I was a child, Meg was a terrible witch and her poor long suffering cat Mog was usually the one to pick up the pieces.  With the addition of the lovely Owl they made a trio who's books I still love today.