Carcassonne - nail art

This picture above here, might make you confused, do no fear. This is a nail related post. 

For those of you that follow me regularly, might remember that it was my birthday not long ago. My boyfriend got me a lot of stuff for my birthday (you can read what he got me in this blog-post), one of those things he got me for my birthday was Carcassonne expansions. Carcassonne is a fun little game about building castles and roads, and it's one of my favorite (board)games in the world. Next to Labyrinth, which is without a doubt my favorite. If you are into boardgames you should check it out.

PS: Maybe not get this specific expansion that is shown with the picture below, it's a bit too fiddly, I prefer the other expansions.

Carcassonne - The Princess & the Dragon

Example of Carcassonne in play.

So my boyfriend told me he wanted to do my nails for my birthday. We grabbed some acrylics, and polish and dived into it. This is not the first time he has done my nails, he did a Serenity (movie) manicure . In the previous mani, we did not use any acrylics, and he has been dying to show of his acrylic skills.

First challenge. He wasn't happy with my selection of green polishes. So I had to go ahead and mix them up until we got the shade we wanted. 2 drops of ESSIE - Mojito Madness and 3 drops of ESSIE - Navigate Her seemed to be the shade he wanted.

ESSIE - Mojito Madness and ESSIE - Navigate Her

4 nails on each hand got painted green, and the thumb was painted grey with MISA - Working Hard, Hardly Working. Stamping using Ciaté - Vintage Paint Pots

The backing of the tiles in Carcassonne and the Bundlemonster plate I used for stamping.

Once the nail polish was all dry we got the acrylics out.

I was sneaky and got some pictures while he was busy doing my nails. 

You can see he has placed out the tiles he was recreating next to him. 

After half an hour we had a break. This is what it was all looking like then. You can see the pieces taking form. It was getting dark outside, so sorry for the terrible pictures. 

He wanted to use more time on this, but I had to draw the line somewhere. He was keeping me busy while he was painting by feeding me white wine, and after a while it got nearly impossible to keep the hands still. 

I did dent my nails over night, so sorry for the rough look, but here are some pictures of them finished.

Carcassonne nail art

Carcassonne nail art

Carcassonne nail art

Carcassonne nail art

Carcassonne nail art

What do you think? Would you wear nail art inspired by a game? 

Let me know in the comment section below. 

Sunflowers - Prado Red - manicure

There is one thing that I want to get better at when it comes to nail art.
Freehand

I took my acrylics out for a test. I'm glad I had plenty of time, cause the stuff I was attempting was a bit harder than I thought. So instead of a one stroke manicure, which was what I attempted first. I went for something a bit easier, and did sunflowers.

My favorite sunflower is the Prado Red. I think they are beautiful. Just look at em!

For this manicure I used Savina - Royalty. This was one of my first nail polishes, and I haven't used it for ages. I felt it was time to give it some love. 

Since I did this manicure long into the night hours, I do not have steps-to-steps pictures on how this manicure was built.

Savina - Royalty needed 3 thin coats to cover all VNL. I added topcoat over Royalty before I proceeded to the acrylic art. I used a deep red acrylic colour for this manicure and a flat brush. I used a stippling motion with the brush to create the petals. For the seeds I used IsaDora - Winter Rose, and a dotting tool. 

I then proceed to the stamping. I used Cheeky - Jumbo plate 3 - European Romance. For stamping polish I used China Glaze - Exotic Encounter. I did a full stamping accent, and isolated some vines on two other nails. This was really tricky, since I wanted the vines to fill in the gaps. I think this was pure luck with how well the stamping came out on the index finger and the ring finger. 

What do you girls think? Do you wanna see more nail art like this?

Holy Motherboard

I have to admit I am a bit late with this post, I'm playing catch-up on these challenges. The girls over at Llama Nails on FB have this Nerd Challenge going, and it looks really cool.
Previously on this challenge we have had "Inspired by Math", "Inspired by Space", "Inspired by Science Fiction" and "Inspired by Litterature", now its time for "Inspired by Technology".

I love computers, that's just how it is. So when this challenge arrived I knew what I wanted to do. A post I did last year was a programmers -manicure with HTML codes, and this time I'm going deeper, and taking a look at the Motherboard. Interesting enough, I'm holding my first motherboard in the HTML -code manicure.

For this manicure I used black and white acrylic paint, a liner brush, a script liner brush and a dotting tool. I used China Glaze - Unpredictable as my base color. At the end I added a metal circle and a nail art sticker ( for the serial number)

Michelangelo the Architect

Often when people talk about Michelangelo, the talk about the painter and the sculptor, but we often forget that he did not just paint and sculpt, he was also an architect. A pretty darn good one at it as well. So when the girls at Llama Nails FB -group said we where having a challenge "Inspired by artists", and the first artist was Michelangelo, my thoughts went to the architecture he designed. This manicure is inspired by some of the buildings he designed. I'm still very new with acrylic paint so it didn't turn out exactly how I imagined it to, but we all learn by doing.

I started out with W7 - Silver Suede, used a "fan" brush and added some white acrylic paint, and painted the architecture in black acrylic paint with a "script liner" brush, and a "spotter" brush.

Meet me at the Cupcake Cafe

I'm like two weeks or so late with this manicure. It just didn't spring at me right away, and thought of doing another transfer nail art just didn't appeal to me right now. So I waited for the inspiration to come to me. This morning it did. I woke up by the sunlight beaming into my bedroom, and instead of getting up and going to the computer like I usually do, I picked up my book that I started reading yesterday and started reading. 

It's such a good book. I know, it's chic-litt, it's not for everyone, but I happen to enjoy reading it. 

Few years ago, I would never even touch a chic-litt book, but something changed and 2 years ago I bought my first chic-litt book. I can't remember which book it was, but I'm guessing it was by Sophie Kinsella. If you don't know of S.Kinsella, I can tell you that she is the woman behind the Shopaholic -series, she also wrote (personal favorite of mine, when it comes to her books) Twenties Girl. I did not just love them, I devoured them, I read them in a day, and I keep looking for new books, so when I noticed that Kinsella had recommended "Meet Me At The Cupcake Cafe" by Jenny Colgan, I had to buy it. 

And that is how I ended up doing this manicure. 

For this manicure I used acrylic paint with a "script liner" brush, and NYX - Matte Baby Pink.

About creativity and me.

I'm a creative person.

Drawing
When I draw with a pencil, my problem is often that I get too focused about details. Things I want to show in my drawing, and there is just no possible way of drawing all the details in a wooden plank, when its merely a cm on my canvas. It's like I have a zoom function on my vision sometimes. It's where my "hyper-focus" kicks in. With "hyper-focus" I mean to be so focused about one thing/one aspect not being able to be distracted / talked to.
So I get discouraged to draw, and fall out of practice. So whenever I decided to pick it up again, I have to re-learn how to work with shades, how to draw. I drag around a notebook with clear pages and a pencil with me most of the time, in case the spirit comes over me, and I need to draw something.

Writing
I love to write, when I was younger it was poems, and essays, and now I mostly write on various blogs and write roleplaying games. I have this game I have been working on for a while, which is starting to look "finished" I have showed it to some of my friends, and we are going to playtest it soon. Looking forward to it. Now and then, I still sit down and write poems.

Painting
I like painting with oil paints, but haven't done that for ages. Back in my early teens I used to paint all the time, and would sit for hours and hours painting. Forgetting about eating and just paint. Pouring my hearts content out on the canvas. I just can't keep the focus to do anything for too long. and after a while I started doing something else. I think I picked up sowing, or candlemaking... or even soap making... I am sure it was something.

I constantly distract myself with new things. This blog has been a fantastic journey for me. When I started out doing nail art, and finally make a blog and all that, I thought it was going to be one of those things. Something I did for a short period, and then got distracted with something else. It's been a year and I am still as eager to do nail art as I was in the beginning. the thing is...

As a few of you might know already, is that I got ADHD. I never do anything by half. To me, it's mostly a blessing. It makes me, me. I don't take any meds for it, cause I am comfortable with who I am without. Some people needs it, others don't. I happen to be one of those. I have my tricks as to how to manage my life around, and with my condition.
People with ADHD often feel things a lot stronger than others, so for me that means I am more prone to severe depressions, falling in love with every soul out there, and thinking of every person I know the name of, as my best friend.

Nail Art
Nail art has so many aspects. You can do swatches of polish, nail art with acrylic paint, water colours, or nail polish, then you got all the different kinds of decorations, beads, rhinestones glitters. There are striping tape and stamping plates, tens of different brushes to use. Let's not even go into the whole "nail routine" thing, shaping, files, oils and the choosing of the right base coat for your nails. Endless of options to choose from. I love this. There is so many topics to learn about, and there always appear new ones. When you have learned about all that, you got the photographing, and the writing, and coding of your blog etc. endless of possibilities at your fingertips.  Always a challenge for me to test my skills on, to learn more about.
Then you got the nail polish groups, they got art-challenges, or copy someone else manicure days, and they in themselves are challenging. It keeps me coming back for more and more.

Crafting
But this post wasn't really going to be all about me, it was to be about creativity. For I have something to show you all. I have been crafty, and wanted to show it to you. I used nail polish, which is why this is totally relevant for this blog.

I used 12 mm glass cabuchans that I got from Ebay, and painted them with different polishes.


I have also purchased an acrylic paint set complete with art brushes, so that I can do more nail art in the time to come. I am really looking forward to use this set. I had some liner brushes before from a set I bought from Bundlemonster with 4 different thickness to them, which is really nice. I'm not sure how this liner brush compares to the ones from the Bundlemonster set. If you are interested in a comparison post, let me know in the comments below.