Disney Princess Challenge #5: Rapunzel

   I was super excited for this week's design! Tangled is probably my favorite Disney princess movie. As with all my other princess designs, the bulk of the design is inspired by the character's clothing. I'm just a clothing freak; I can't help but really get into the costuming. For Rapunzel I also incorporated her painting of the "floating lights" and the lantern scene at the castle, since both are pretty iconic to the movie.

   The design on my purple fingers was taken from the detailing on her skirt. It's a really pretty design, I think. I started with a base of Nina Ultra Pro Plum of the Earth. Then I drew out the design with my white striper and another thin brush. Once that dried I painted over the white with either the light blue (Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Barracuda) or light purple (China Glaze Sweet Hook), depending on where it was wanted.

   To make the castle lantern scene, I did a ton of sponging, and was very grateful that I have small fingers so that details (and mistakes) are not easily seen. I painted a white base, and sponged on some light purple in the middle and a few shades of blue around the edges (more blue on the top than the bottom). Then I painted the castle in black with a small brush and sponged some purple mist on the middle of the castle, and purple water over the reflection to smudge it some. Then I painted the lanterns with yellow.

   The floating lights painting was a ton less stressful to paint! I started with a white base again, and then painted the green hills and dark green trees. I made the sky the same way as my watercolor ombre design with several shades of blue. Then I painted Rapunzel and the lights.

   As with the other princesses, this set is available in my Etsy shop! I have an option for both accents, the castle lantern scene and the floating lights painting. You can find them here in my shop.

   I think that's all for now! I might have another design or two to show you all later; we'll see what I have time for. (This week is kind of hectic.) Next up is Tiana! I really liked The Princess and the Frog, it was a pretty good movie. Although, I must say, I could not have watched it as a child - all those voodoo songs would have given me nightmares!

   I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Disney Princess Challenge #4: Merida

   This week's Princess is Merida from Brave! I didn't know exactly what I wanted to put in the design, but I knew I had to include her fiery hair. I eventually found a couple pictures of her clan plaid, so I decided to put that in the design as well.

   You can see her plaid pretty good in the first picture. I also thought the design on her bow was really neat, so I tried to tie that in as well. In my search I found this picture and I thought it was hilarious; that's totally a face I would get caught making - 

   Her hair was hard to figure out how to make, it's why I gave up and painted Pocahontas last week. I ended up painting an orange base (Sally Hansen Sun Kissed), then making squiggly lines with yellow (Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Butterscotch) and a dark orange (L'Oreal He Read My Mind).

   Making the plaid was complicated, but not as time consuming as I expected once I got the hang of it. I started with a base of dark green (Revlon Parfumiere Balsam Fir). Then I blocked off my nails with a white striper, filling in some squares to make a checker board of sorts. I painted some blue (Pure Ice Bikini), some red (Revlon Colorstay Velvet Rope). I outlined everything with a black striper, then painted white lines, going over them in yellow.

   I didn't like the hair all by itself, so I threw her bow and arrows over top to distract from the hair. I used a cream striper, and made the details on the bow with Nina Ultra Pro Beige-A Vu.

   I have this set in my Etsy. I added another option for a set with just plaid, in case someone doesn't want the bright orange or something. You know me, I always have to give some options. I can't help myself! You can find it here in my shop.

   Rapunzel is up next! I'm super excited for hers, Tangled is my favorite Disney princess movie. She's not my favorite princess (Belle is my favorite), but I loved the movie!
   I hope you guys have a great week!

Disney Princesses #3: Pocahontas

   This week's Princess challenge didn't go as planned. I had originally planned on going in backwards order, newest to oldest, but Friday didn't go as planned. My planned Merida design wasn't looking too great, so instead of redoing two nails, I did the obvious thing and repainted all of my nails with a completely different design. Makes sense, right?
   So I started painting my Pocahontas design. I had wanted to do that one to start with, which is probably why Merida was looking like garbage. ...But, by this time I had sat much longer than I had planned and so was a little squirmy. (Watching movies/TV helps me from getting impatient, but if it gets to going longer than I had prepared myself for I get squirmy and my art skills start going downhill.) Pocahontas didn't go the way I had planned. It's not bad, but I was expecting better.
   Anyway, all this just say that, while Pocahontas isn't bad, it's not what I had hoped to show you guys. I might redo it sometime later.

   The stripes didn't turn out like I wanted, but whatever. The chevrons are based off of her dress. I put her necklace on my thumb (you can't not include that in a Pocahontas design!). My middle finger is a bit more abstract. I based it off of the Colors of the Wind scene, with all the different colored leaves and whatnot.

My base was Maybelline Color Show Neutral Statement, and the chevron was made with more layers than I thought of Revlon Colorstay Pale Cashmere.  For the necklace I used Flower Good Bud-dy and Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Pumping Iron for the pendant. My middle finger was based off of this tutorial by The Nailasaurus. I'll need to practice it some more, but it's a really neat design.

   Despite my slight dislike of this design, I did go ahead and make it into an Etsy set. It did turn out better the second time around, so that was good. You can find the set here in my shop.

    Sadly, Pocahontas was just such an exhausting and aggravating ordeal that I just never could like it, so I repainted my nails last night. I think that's the shortest I've ever had something on my nails! Merida should be up in a few days. From now on, I'm going to go in backwards order like I originally planned!

   I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Frozen Nails Part II - Elsa

   As promised, here's Elsa-inspired nails. ...And another shocking secret; in addition to not being in love with Frozen, Elsa is not my favorite. I totally get that everyone loves her because she has that song that everyone loves and sings (it's more than that, I know), but I just don't relate to her. Let's face it, I've already admitted that I like the movie best for it's costumes.
   Speaking of costumes, here are the two Elsa-gowns I was inspired by:

   You can't help but like Elsa's ice dress, it's so sparkly and pretty. My only beef is that, being my fashion history buff self, I can't help but be distracted that it doesn't really fit at all stylistically or historically with everyone else. Especially with that giant thigh-high slit. But then again, when is Disney ever historically accurate?
    On a side note, I loved Anna and Elsa's hair for the coronation. I'm a sucker for that sort of hairstyle. I can't help it!

   There's not much to draw from for Elsa's ice dress, so I just did some icy/wintery sparkles on top of a blue base (Pure Ice Bikini).

   My middle finger was inspired by the bodice on her coronation gown. Much simpler than Anna's, but still pretty. I really liked the color and the stripey-diamond things at her collar. As I mentioned in Part I, I was super glad that Elsa's gowns were simpler since I painted this with my left hand. It looks a little wonky, but you can't really tell. It's probably just me being picky.

   When I was going through the pictures and weeding out the bad ones, I thought it was funny that my right hand (Anna) turned out bright and almost sunny, and my left hand (Elsa) turned out more blue and cold. I didn't try to do that, but it was really neat!

   I did make both the Elsa and the Anna designs into Etsy sets. I've decided that, in order to give myself a break from Etsy-to-Fingers, I'm going to finally get around to painting Disney Princess/character inspired designs like I've been wanting to pretty much since I first started getting serious with nail art. I'm going to make them into Etsy sets as well, because I think they'd be a nice thing to have in my shop. I'd buy them, anyway!
   You can find the Elsa nails here, and the Anna nails here.

   I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Frozen Nails Part I - Anna

   I'm finally beginning to paint Disney princesses! I've been wanting to paint them for ages, but I just never got around to it.
   Because of all the hype, I thought I'd start with the newest, Frozen. Don't hate me for what I'm going to say next, but... Frozen was not my favorite. It's not even in my top three. Sorry to all you Frozen-lovers out there, but I just didn't love it. Granted, I didn't watch it immediately and so I heard all the hype and expected something absolutely blow-your-mind amazing when I did finally get around to watching it (which was about a month ago. I'm so behind...). I probably would have liked it better if I hadn't heard all the hype, but I still don't think it would be in my top three.
   ....But, I did absolutely love Anna's dresses! They were so pretty! I've always liked Scandinavian clothing. It's so detailed and just plain pretty. These are the two dresses I used for inspiration:

   The second dress is my favorite. Her coronation gown is pretty, but her travel dress (as I've named it) is more like the Scandinavian clothing I like.

   I based my middle finger off of the bodice design of her travel dress. The other fingers were based off of the skirt of her coronation gown. The bodice design is kind of hard to see in the second picture, so here's a close up:

  Did I mention that this is my favorite of her dresses? It's so pretty! (By the way, this is a picture of a dress that someone made! If you're super into Frozen - or just like the dress - it's in an Etsy store! Prestige Couture has some fantastic and super detailed and accurate costumes.)

   This actually turned out to be a lot easier to make than I anticipated. Not that it was easy, but I was expecting the design on my middle finger to give me some grief.  I used a ton of colors for this design, so forgive me if I don't list them all.

   Once again, I haven't technically painted an Etsy set like I'm supposed to be doing. But I did make this into an Etsy set! I figured that Frozen nails would be a good thing to have in my shop since it's so popular. So this really was made with Etsy in mind! I think what I'm going to do is continue to give myself a bit of a break from my Etsy-to-Fingers project. I'm going to finally paint Disney Princesses/characters like I've been wanting to. I will make them into Etsy sets as I go, I think that they'll probably go over pretty well. I'd buy them, anyway!

   The bodice design on the middle finger is a little more accurate in this set - I made it this morning after I found the close up of her bodice. It's so small on my hand though, so I'm sure no one will notice (or care!). You can find the set here in my store.

   I will have Part II for you guys tomorrow! It is Elsa themed, and was also painted with my left hand, so it's a bit interesting. I was glad her gowns are more simple!

   Have a great weekend!

Matte

   I know I keep putting it off, but I apparently really need a break from repainting my Etsy sets. I did make this design into an Etsy set, so I'm not exactly falling behind...

   I did sort of have Etsy in mind when I created this set. My black matte set is by far my most popular set, so I thought I'd make another matte design. Mostly though I made it because I thought it looked cute. It's really simple and you don't really notice it at first, but I like it!

   It was super easy to make. I painted my base color (Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Coral) and then put a topcoat over it. After letting it dry for a while (I usually wait until the next day - I have horrible luck with tape - but I was feeling super confident with my quick-dry Seche Vite top coat ...and a little impatient!) I put on some tape and painted my matte top coat. I let it dry about halfway and then pulled off the tape. I discovered that the tape comes off the matte coat really weird and jagged if it dries all the way, which was really strange.

   The only downside to using tape instead of free handing the lines is that it isn't smooth. The corners of the diamonds are getting halfway caught on fabrics and rubbing really roughly on just about everything. I'm hoping it will wear down some, but I'm not sure it will. We'll just have to wait and see! I don't know how long this design will last on me. It will be a race to see if it chips of at work first or if I take it off because of its roughness first. I'm such a texture freak!

   As I mentioned, I also made this into an Etsy set. I couldn't really decide which color looked the best, so I have a few different color options available - pink (Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Coral), yellow (Sally Hansen Salon Professional Butterscotch), green (Revlon Brilliant Strength Entice), and brown (Finger Paints Masterpiece of Minimalism).

   You can find the set here.

   That's about all my news for now! My vacation this past week to Alabama was great! It was way too short, like most vacations. I was glad for the break, but I'm ready for work again. When you work practically everyday, it gets kind of weird not doing anything for longer than two days in row. :(

   Have a fabulous week!