Theme: DC Comics - Two-Face

Here's my next instalment in the DC comic book characters theme: Two-Face.
Two-Face, real name Harvey Dent, is another Gotham villain. In the comics he gets acid thrown in his face by a criminal and then goes insane, in the movie The Dark Knight, he gets badly burned and loses his girlfriend under very horrible circumstances. He then goes mad. You can read all about Harvey Dent's transformation into Two-Face in the Batman graphic novel, The Long Halloween.

For Two-Face, I needed two contrasting colours on each nail. However, we all know that humans aren't exactly straight laced, so the colour I chose for Harvey Dent is a duochrome, China Glaze's Reggae to Riches. It's mainly a fuschia pink with a blue duochrome. The second colour I chose is quite halloween-y, so perfect for a Gotham villain. It's China Glaze's Ick-A-Body from last years halloween collection.
I painted my whole nail with 3 coats of Reggae to Riches and then topped it off with Seche Vite Dry Fast. Once it was fully dry, I used sticky tape to tape off half of my nails diagonally and then painted 2 coats of Ick-A-Body on the lower half.

 

I'm thinking it turned out quite well, but it would have been much better if I'd have chosen a nude colour instead of Reggae To Riches, maybe that would have represented a normal, human District Attorney much better than some bright pink!

On a different note, can I just say that China Glaze's Ick-A-Body is a B*TCH to remove? I went through so much polish remover trying to get that sucker off!!

While talking about problems with China Glaze, you will have seen my The Frog Prince/Princess and the Frog themed look recently where I used China Glaze's Entourage, well, I am so mad because Entourage has stained my nails yellow!!
It's not such a big deal because I never have naked nails due to a problem with my nail line, but I'm still pee'd off because my nails are freaking yellow!

I'm reading: Theme: DC Comics - Two-Face

A vampy, dark Valentine's Day look

This look was really simple to do, nothing too it at all.
First I painted my nails with OPI Chip Skip and my favourite base coat, OPI's Nail Envy for dry and brittle nails to prep and prime my nails for painting. This is the routine that I use for every nail look.

Next, I painted my nails with Nubar's Midnight Matte
 This is the first, and currently the only, Nubar polish that I own. I love the shape of the bottle, I love the shape and size of the brush, and I love the consistency of the polish. It's not too thick and not too runny, and it gives a very good coverage. It was almost perfect with just one coat, and if I was a little more skilled with a brush, one coat would have done, but I put two on because I'm a shaky, messy painter.
The dry time for this polish was really quick, but I think that's just standard for matte polishes. I'd really love to get my hands on a few more Nubar polishes.

Next, I used french tip stickers and OPI's Rising Star from the Burlesque collection to create red tips over the black matte. Rising Star is a lovely jelly red colour with a dark pink shimmer to it.
Over the midnight matte, which has a matte, silver shimmer through it that looks amazing, the red of Rising Star was made a lot darker than how it would normally look. This worked well for the vampy look!
After the Rising Star french tips had dried, I grabbed my nail gems and added a little heart to my ring finger on each hand. I used my No.7 matte topcoat to adhere the gems and a tiny bit of Seche Vite top coat to make the gems shiny again.

I'm reading: A vampy, dark Valentine's Day look

Theme: DC Comics - Harley Quinn

I have decided to set myself a challenge: Come up with manicures to represent members of the DC Comics Universe. I love comic books, mainly DC comics and a little Vertigo, and some Tank Girl.. But anyway, this is going to be a really fun theme for me! 

Here's Part 1: Harley Quinn, The Joker's Moll

I was in town the other day and I decided to treat myself to a new graphic novel. I got Gotham City Sirens: Songs of the Sirens because Harley Quinn is one of my favourite comic book characters ever. I also picked up some standard red nail polish because I had a nail idea that I wanted to create.

Harley Quinn's costume is black and red and usually has sets of three diamonds, either red on black, or black on red. Of course, that depends on the artist, and that's only in the comic books, she had a new costume for the game Arkham Asylum and yet another costume for the new game Arkham City.

I painted my nails with a base colour, red on my thumb and ring finger and black on the rest. On my ring finger, I cut very thin strips of tape and laid them out on my nails to create the diamond shapes and went over the top with black, then immediately removed the tape. Cutting the tape so thin and then laying the tape down was incredibly difficult, and I was having a really bad nail day as I kept making the simplest mistakes, like smudging the base coat and painting my cuticles!!

I'm pretty impressed with the result.

The black I used is Eyeko Cosmic polish, it has fine pieces of different coloured glitter in it, and in hindsight, I really should have used just a plain black polish as Harley isn't glittery, but her personality sure sparkles! The red is from Barry M. My base coat is OPI's Chip Skip and OPI's Nail envy, and the top coat is Seche Vite dry fast.

In general, I love this manicure and I love Harley.

I'm reading: Theme: DC Comics - Harley Quinn