Sunset On Tatooine - Star Wars Nail Art

Today I have a bit of geeky nail art to share with you! If you are a fan of Star Wars, I'm sure you know about Tatooine. The planet was both Anakin's and Luke's home and is where Luke first meets C-3PO and R2-D2 in A New Hope. This nail art shows Luke with the two droids as the planet's twin suns set on the horizon.

The background of this nail art is an incredibly subtle gradient of OPI Going My Way or Norway? and OPI Ice-bergers and Fries. The silhouettes of Luke, C-3PO, R2-D2, and the Lars homestead were painted with OPI How Great Is Your Dane?. All three of those shades are from the new OPI Nordic Collection. I am loving the two caramel shades, in particular.

The ground is painted with OPI I Sing In Color, while the suns are done with Lime Crime Milky Ways and Lime Crime Peaches <3 Cream.

The manicure is finished off with OPI Matte Topcoat.

This nail art ended up being pretty timely. A few days after I finished it, a group of us watched A New Hope! If only I'd still been wearing it that day.

Are you a fan of Star Wars? Which one is your favorite?

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Raiding My Drafts: Blushing Peach Gradient

Sometimes I do a manicure and upload it to my drafts, but then something happens and it never gets published. Either I have too many other things to post and then too much time passes, or I fall out of love with the look, or some weird Twilight Zone stuff happens and I basically forget that it's in there. I have been busy with behind the scenes blog stuff lately, so I thought it would be fun to raid my post drafts for a new look to share with you today.

This blushing peach gradient was a reject from the 31 Day Challenge; I ended up posting leather gradient nail art instead. Seeing this look now though, I find it quite pretty, and great for the ever-warming Arizona springtime.

The two polishes used in this look are:
OPI If You Moust, You Moust
Lime Crime Crema de Limon

This is the first horizontal gradient that I've done, I think. It was a little trickier than the typical vertical gradient but not unmanageable.

The weather has been so pleasant here lately... I almost want to recreate this look to celebrate the pleasantness before it gets hotter than the devil's armpit.

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Tiny Chowder Nail Decal

If there's one thing you need to know about me, it's that I'm obsessed with my dog, Chowder. You may have familiarized yourself with him when I did nails for his 5th birthday, or maybe you follow my Instagram account, where I occasionally post pictures of him! Either way, he is the best and everyone knows I love him ALMOST too much.

Imagine my absolute delight when I opened up a gift from Michelle (Sonoma Nail Art) that contained two sheets of custom decals... THAT HAD CHOWDERS ON THEM!

She used a digital illustration that I made of Chowder and modified it to work as a decal. He's got his little front paws up like he does when he stands up on his hind legs. How cute does baby Chowder look on my nail!?

I used Lime Crime Milky Ways as the base of this manicure.

I ended up wearing this manicure for something like six days and loved every second of it. I'm not sure why it took me so long to get it posted, though!

Thank you Michelle for such a thoughtful and personal gift - you clearly know me well!

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MINIONS!! - Despicable Me Nail Art

Last weekend I went to go see Despicable Me 2 with my sister, and I just couldn't resist doing minion nail art! I have seen so many cute minion nail designs (most recently from Rebecca Likes Nails, though I don't think she has posted them up yet) and I knew I wanted to try one out for myself.

I had a lot of fun assembling the pieces for each of their faces -- eyes (both placement and quantity), mouth, general expression -- they are all unique!

For those of you unfamiliar with the minions, here's a good YouTube montage of minion clips. The minions are basically the main character's creations, and he uses them to help him execute his evil plans. They like to goof off though, and are a huge part of the comedy in the movies! Very endearing.

For my version, I started with a base of Lime Crime Crema de Limon.
Then, I added the eyes in white, and the irises in China Glaze Call of the Wild. I outlined the goggles with A England Fated Prince and added the strap in black.
The tongues are done with Zoya Renee.
Lastly, I added their overalls in American Apparel Mount Royal, and distressed them a bit with China Glaze Secret Peri-winkle.

The movie turned out to be really cute, and I liked knowing I was watching it with my own little minion buddies!

Plus, we went and got Dairy Queen afterwards... Choco Cherry Love Blizzard!

Have you seen Despicable Me 2 yet?

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Geometric vs. Organic Floral Nail Art

Hey fine folks, I'm sorry I've had such a large gap between posts lately. Like I briefly mentioned earlier,  I've been really busy working on a huge project at work. I'm going to do my best to prepare some posts this weekend though, so hopefully there won't be too many more big gaps!

I was determined to do some nail art last night and decided to start with a floral. Now, I love florals (I've definitely done my fair share of them!), but I wanted to punch up the design a little bit. I thought it would be cool to contrast a harsh, black and white geometric checkerboard against the soft organic floral nails. I love the way they stand out, so rebellious!

I freehanded everything in this manicure with my medium length striper brush. I probably have a checkerboard stamping plate somewhere but I did want to challenge myself a bit and freehand those nails, too. I did force myself to be a little less controlling about the checkerboard lines than I normally would have been. That's kind of ass-backwards, huh? Controlling myself into being less controlling?

Colors used in this manicure include:
Cult Nails Tempest (white)
American Apparel Hassid (black)
OPI My Vampire is Buff (bone)
Lime Crime Peaches and Cream (lighter orange)
OPI Call Me Gwen-ever (darker orange)
Illamasqua Jo'mina (lighter purple)
China Glaze Crimson (darker purple)
China Glaze Def Defying (green)

I wish the Lime Crime polish would have shown up better in my photos. In person it has a much better contrast to the pale cream background.

So, what do you think about this geometric vs. organic manicure? Too much, or just bold enough?

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LaBarbara Conrad's Pants Print Nail Art

Sometimes, nail art inspiration can come from the weirdest of places.

I have mentioned here before that I love cartoons. Along with Adventure Time, Futurama is one of my favorite animated shows. I was idly watching a few episodes the other afternoon and saw this awesome pattern that was just screaming to be turned into nail art! I'd ask if you can guess where it's from but I'm afraid I've already revealed it in the post title. The pattern was on LaBarbara Conrad's (Hermes' wife) pants!

Here is the best shot I could find of the pants.

source

I didn't get the colors quite dead-on, but I really love the way these look together nonetheless. I used American Apparel Malibu Green, American Apparel Crescent Heights, and Lime Crime Lavendairy painted freehand over one coat of Cult Nails Tempest (a white creme).

This flowy, wavelike camo pattern was a lot of fun to paint and not too difficult! I think I'll be trying this again in the future in different color combinations.

Have you ever been inspired by something unusual like this? How do you think I did replicating the pattern?

Thanks for reading!

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Trippy Drippy

When all else fails, paint some drips.

That's my motto. Or it should be, anyway. Drip nail art is awesome. It's easy and fun and it looks pretty impressive. I sat down to do some nail art last night and was unsure what I wanted to paint. The idea to make a lineup of rainbow drips eventually came to me, and as I was painting them, I realized it would look even better if I could turn the colors into a gradient. I kind of changed course a bit to try to make that happen. Thankfully, I think I was successful!

My red shade is China Glaze Snap My Dragon which is a new shade from the Avant Garden collection. I grabbed Zoya Arizona for my orange, and then picked China Glaze Happy Go Lucky for the Yellow. The green is Lime Crime Pastelchio and the blue is China Glaze Hanging in the Balance. I finished off the rainbow with China Glaze Gothic Lolita for the purple.

This gradient technique was a bit different than a normal sponged gradient. I ended up making custom mixes of each of the two colors I was gradient-ing and then lightly brushing it on to create as smooth a transition as possible.

I painted rainbow stripes using the same colors on my thumb.

Doesn't Zoya Arizona look like nacho cheese in the pic above?

Hope everyone is enjoying a relaxing Sunday, and thanks for reading!

Some of the products in this post were provided for review.

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Ivory and Turquoise Antiqued Baroque

Good afternoon you fine folks! I have some nail art today for you, hooray! Here is my ivory and turquoise baroque patterned nail art.

Originally, I planned to do a design based on the curtains that Maria used to make the kids' clothes in The Sound of Music. After a few moments of patting myself on the back for being so original, I googled it and found that Debbie had beat me to the punch! D'oh.

That was okay though, I had received butter LONDON Two Fingered Salute in the mail yesterday afternoon and was itching to use it anyway. It's a bit too turquoise to pass for the curtains in the movie, so I used it to make a pretty baroque design over my base color of Lime Crime Milky Ways.

I freehanded this design using my trusty medium length striper brush (I know, you're shocked). Two Fingered Salute was a bit sheer for nail art, so I did have to go over my embellishments twice, but I am enamored with this color and didn't mind at all. As for the actual patterns, I just made them up as I went. I did have to re-do a nail or two because I wasn't pleased with the way the pattern had come out.

I love the copper sparks in the turquoise base, and layering it over an ivory shade really just made for a nice vintage look.

What do you think? Are you feeling the vintage vibes?

butter LONDON Two Fingered Salute is a Nordstrom's exclusive and can only be found in Nordstrom stores, on Nordstrom.com, and on butterlondon.com.
Lime Crime nail polish can be found on the Lime Crime website and on Harlow & Co.

Post contains affiliate links. 

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