Doctor Who Themed Nail Design

I am kind of a Whovian, and since the 50th Anniversary episode is only *glances at clock* 17 hours or so away, I thought I'd share my Doctor Who inspired nail design!!

(don't worry, I was parked in the parking lot when I took this... not driving the interstate!)

When deciding what to do on my nails, I did a Goggle search for Doctor Who themed nails and found a pretty good amount of pictures to give me ideas!

For the bowtie, I painted my nail with Sinful Colors in Snow Me White for the background. To do the bow itself, I used Nina in Love Struck and a dotting tool. 

1. I started by making two triangles with their corners touching, like this:: |><| 

2. and then I put a big dot in the middle, where the triangles meet, and that gives you the shape of the bowtie! 

3. I then went in with Finger Paints in Ch-Art-Coal Black, which is the bottle that comes with a striping brush. I used the striping brush to draw the outlines around the middle knot, and the outsides of the triangle, and put in some little lines as accents, radiating from the center out into the triangles.

For my Dalek nail, I painted my nail in Nina Shiny Penny. For the Dalek hemispheres, I used Orly in Glitz with a large dotting tool. I put the dots on very lightly, not wanting to flatten them. Of course, they still flatted over time, but not nearly as much. 

For the TARDIS, I was lucky to have a perfect TARDIS blue already on hand! I used Finger Paints in Cerulean Seascape, which is a deep but brilliant blue! I then used a dotting tool again with Snow Me White to do the three squares for the windows and the sign. Using Ch-Art-Coal Black, I outlined the windows, including stripes through the middles of the windows to make the squares. After outlining the sign, I wiped off as much polish from the brush as possible, and made little dash marks to give the impression that there's writing on the sign. 

The Bad Wolf was simple. I painted my nail Sinful Colors Black on Black. Then I used Snow Me White with a small brush to write the words. I dipped the tip of the brush very VERY lightly in the polish so that the lines wouldn't be too think. It was *super* tough to write using my left hand onto a nail on my right hand! Afterwards, I used a matte finish top coat which gave it a cool effect.

The galaxy design is similar to one that I've done before and written about here in the entry about sponges. The tutorial I used specifically for my inspiration this time around is from Polish and Pearls. She even has a video tutorial on YouTube that was very helpful. I wanted to recreate it exactly, but my local store had NONE of the colors that she used! Her post was over a year ago, so maybe they have been discontinued. ANYWAYS, I just ended up using what colors I already have. After a base coat of Ch-Art-Coal Black, the colors I used on my sponges were::

Finger Paints in Cerulean Seascape

China Glaze in Rich & Famous

Sinful Colors in Slate

Since Cerulean Seascape is so dark on top of the black, I also used just a tad of Nina Caribbean Blue to give a hint of a lighter blue, but only a tiny bit. In the future I might try and find a slightly lighter pink or a good bright blue, that's not too light or that has a slight green undertone (like the Caribbean Blue does).
Anyways, I followed the advice from Polish and Pearls to use just the edge of a wedge sponge to dab on the color. In the past, I've used a piece of the sponge and held it using tweezers, which I would then dip in the polish and dab onto the nail. Both techniques give you the same result. I started with the Cerulean Seascape, then overlapped it a bit with Slate, and then some Rich & Famous. It doesn't hafta be perfect or exact. Then I used two different glitter polishes:: China Glaze in Fairy Dust, which has real fine glitter, and Nina in Dime Piece which has the larger glitter pieces. 

I love the combination of these colors and the dimension the two different glitters give to the design! I might hafta do this design on all of my nails!

And that's my Doctor Who manicure!! Once I was done, I couldn't stop looking at them! I'm so happy with them and I'm looking forward to the 50th tomorrow!! Allons-y!!

Trying New Polishes - Matte Finishes and Glitter

I found a new line from Sinful Colors that have a matte finish. I picked up two, once of which is called Leather Loose. It's a real deep, shimmery brown. On it's own, it looks kinda interesting as a matte finish, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it.
I also found some fun glitter from Nicole by OPI called Pick Of The Glitter, which has flecks of copper and an aquamarine-like blue. I thought this would go perfectly with a dark, shimmery brown! The colors matched perfectly! I paired it with a matte finish top coat from Kiss to dull down the shine of the glitter a bit, and it came out real nice!!

 (Natural light)

(with flash)

Trying New Polishes - Fuzzy Coat by Sally Hansen

I was in Target and spotted some polishes that looked like they were mimicking yarn and sweaters, called Fuzzy Coat by Sally Hansen. And since it's been getting cold, and plus I've been on a crocheting kick to make presents for the holidays, I felt like it'd be cute for my nails to look like they're enjoying sweater season too!! I picked up All Yarned Up

Then I found a super pretty blue by Sinful Colors called Aquamarine that matched the flecks of blue in the All Yarned Up pretty well. I needed about 3 coats of All Yarned Up to cover up my whole nail but I thought it looked really cool!

(I forgot to get a pic after I got them cleaned up... oh well!)

I finished them off with a shimmer top coat from Kiss. I considered trying a coat or two of All Yarned Up over the top of the Aquamarine, but that'll be for next time I guess. :) It did have some texture to it, but not so much that it was distracting. I'll have fun experimenting with it more in the future!