Snowmen of Calvin and Hobbes

Today's manicure features a few of the beleaguered snowmen from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. Bill Watterson's amazing cartoon strip had some really twisted snowmen created by Calvin. Often the snowmen made his dad's life more difficult, by blocking the driveway, or embarrassing the family. Click here to see a few of the great snowmen comic strips, as well as some real life recreations.

This nail art is a combination of two different comic strips. On my thumb, I have Calvin walking along in his snow gear, quite satisfied with himself. On my middle and ring fingers you see two melting snowmen holding signs and warning of the coming Spring.

One of the strips I based my manicure on. 

I started with a white polish base using Sinful Colors Snow Me White. And lookee at my hand pose, inspired by my polish buddy Sarah from Chalkboard Nails. :-)

Here are the snowmen up close before I top coated. I was hard to write those small letters on their signs, so I had to truncate the messages. Artistic license. 

Here's the manicure before topcoat. I think it turned out well!

On my right hand I painted a little bit of Lynnderella glitter polish on the tips to give it a cold frosty appearance. This could be a very pretty winter themed manicure on its own. 

Polishes used in this manicure: Lynnderella Thank Blue! and Sinful Colors Snow Me White. I also used Essie All In One Basecoat and Seche Vite topcoat. 

I made a quick video of these nails to include it in Robin Moses' Let It Snow collaboration. Any snow inspired art work is welcome. I think this is pretty fun. :-) 

Sarah Waite vs Nessie

Ok, just to warn you, this is a VERY SILLY manicure. It may not make much sense to you. I was playing with my nail polish last night and tried a combo of a pretty shimmer green with a glittery topcoat, and I showed the base color to some of my polish friends. I asked them what I should paint on my nails as artwork. My friend Sarah Waite of Chalkboard Nails said, "my face" which of course is a very silly thing to paint on ones nails. I got a few other fun suggestions including one from Laurie Nievin to paint the Loch Ness Monster. So I decided to do both: I give you Sarah Waite vs. The Loch Ness Monster!

Bwahahahaah! So in case you couldn't tell, that is Sarah on my thumb and Nessie is swimming along the rest of my fingers. 

Here is the beautiful base polish. I will tell you which colors I used to make this base mani at the end of this post. Hint hint, one of the colors I used is up for grabs in my 100 follower giveaway! You still have time to enter. Just click here and scroll to the bottom to get your name in the drawing. 

I started by painting Nessie on my nails. I made her look kind of cartoony and fun. This was a fairly easy design to do. You could do it with acrylic paint like I did, or try it with nail polish. I think this design would be easy to do either way. 

Here is Nessie pretty much finished, and before topcoat. Also, no Sarah Waite yet. 

By the way, this is a pic of Laurie Nievin who suggested the Loch Ness Monster design. Thanks for the great idea, Laurie! :-)

This is my nail polish BFF, Sarah Waite. When I decided to paint her face after she pretty much begged me to do it, I chose this picture of her. It is black and white, and fairly stark, so I thought it would be easier to duplicate rather than a color photo. 

Here is how I started with acrylic paints. I used only black and white acrylic paint for Sarah's portrait. 

Here she is without her glasses on. I also made more adjustments to her hair before finishing the portrait. 

Before topcoat. I think I got pretty close!

Here are the nails together. I added some little bubbles to Nessie. Of course, when discussing this nail art with Sarah and Laurie, we knew that the two designs would have to duke it out, and thus the nail art on my right hand...

It's Sarah Waite vs. The Loch Ness Monster! (I was tired after that portrait of Sarah, so this was a lot easier design to paint using my non-dominant hand.) 

Polishes used in this manicure: Wet n Wild mini color icon in a shimmery aqua green, Sinful Colors Nail Junkie, Essie All In One Basecoat, and Seche Vite topcoat. 

This manicure demanded an epic video to showcase all of its awesomeness. I give you the Battle of the Ages!!! Sarah Waite vs. The Loch Ness Monster:

I am SUCH a nerd! And no, I am not going to paint your face on my nails. LOL

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Galaxy Nails

In space no one can hear you scream. Ok, I am pretty dang proud of these nails. I totally followed Sarah's advice from Chalkboard Nails on how to do galaxy nails. If you want to do galaxy nails, read her blog post about them. It was so helpful. I guess I can say she boldly went where I had yet to go. Seriously, she paved the way and has posted really useful tips on how to do great galaxy nails. Then I added my creepy Halloween twist...

It's the alien from Alien! Does this thing have a name? I showed this to my husband and he said, "Shut up. You did not paint that." But in fact I did, and I told him to shut up himself. 

Here are my galaxy nails before I added the alien. Sorry I did not take any pics before this shot. But really, Sarah's post on this says it all, so go there to learn how to do these. 

Here is the other hand. Besides adding the galaxy nail design to these, I did not add any more aliens. One is enough to do serious damage on a spaceship stranded in the middle of a galaxy. 

I started the alien by painting a dark silver shape, and then began to add highlights and shading to give it definition. And you gotta have the second mouth shooting out. 

I continued the design by mixing silver acrylic paint with white and black as needed to get the right shading and highlight the ribs on the chest, and the various parts of his ginormous noggin. I even added teeny tiny teeth with white acrylic paint. 

Here's a side view of the nails before I added the alien. This pic shows you how the glitter polish really lights up and makes these galaxy nails fun. 

Ok, that is just awesome. Sorry, I have to say it. I made a freaking awesome set of galaxy nails. 

Polished used in this manicure: Wet 'n Wild Black Creme, Sinful Colors Pink (it's a hot pink), Borghese Paradiso Pink, China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, and China Glaze Fairy Dust. Also Essie All In One basecoat and Seche Vite topcoat.

Tomorrow: water marble nails! After tomorrow, I am really looking forward to the rest of the challenges. There should be some fun ones. :)

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Polka Dot Nails

I totally copied a nail design from Sarah at Chalkboard Nails for today's manicure. I knew I wanted to do something similar, but when I saw her tutorial for this a few days ago, I knew that I couldn't do this idea any better. So here you go, EYEBALLS!

Sarah has posted a very cool tutorial on her site for these nails. I only had the patience to do one nail with eyeballs, so props to her for doing an entire manicure like this. 

I was able to use my brand new polish from Cult Nails for this mani. I had ordered their base and topcoats, plus the awesome sheer glitter polish Hypnotize Me, and Maria was nice enough to throw another bottle in my package as well! This is Cult Nails Awakening. It's really beautiful. 

Then I added white dots, and on my ring finger, added red polish in wavy (some were wavier than others) lines, and topped with more dots, first blue, then white. I need better dotting tools! I have one dotter that is pretty small, and I had to improvise with a needle from my sewing kit for the larger dots. 

Here is a close up of my ring finger after topcoat. It is a fun design, and not difficult, it just takes time if you are doing all of your nails this way. 

Polishes I used in this manicure: Cult Nails Awakening, Essie Lollipop (which is more red than this picture indicates), Cult Nails Get It On basecoat, and Cult Nails Wicked Fast topcoat.

Tomorrow is Day 12 of the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Stripes!