Nail Art! Rin Matsuoka from Free! ending song

Happy Fall, everyone!

     

      I've finally come to terms with the fact that Autumn has fully set in.  It's a little hard to deny that fact when all the leaves are gone from the tree right out in front of my kitchen window.  But hey, Halloween is only a few days away, which means that I can dress up however I want.  Not that I don't do that anyways, haha.

     An anime I absolutely fell for this summer was Free!, also known as the swimming anime.  I won't go into too many details (watch it for yourself on Crunchyroll.com!) but personally, I feel it was really well done.  And while its in a modern day setting, the ending song puts the main characters in an "Arabian Nights" sort of setting.  Something I noticed right away was that one of the characters (Rin Matsuoka) had a neat nail design on.  I went all summer without thinking too hard about it, but then the anime ended for the season a month or so ago.  In my anime withdrawal-wracked brain, I decided I needed to something to commemorate the anime, hence this blog post about my first attempt at nail art!

Firstly, here is the picture I used for reference:

His nails look so nice and evenly done, yes? Do you think I can accomplish the same feat? Let's find out!

I started with two base layers of a white nail polish. One layer is shown in the photo.  Polish is Andrea's Choice in "Reverso"

Because I'm all about the glam, I added a couple layers of a gold sparkle polish.  Polish is Hard Candy's "Crush on Gold"

very glam.  much sparkle.

 Next, after the first few layers of polish dried, I cut a little triangle shape out of some medical tape.   This will serve as a stencil for the black polish to go around.

For tracing around the edge of the stencil, I used a nail-art brush that has a very thin brush for making fine details.  The brand is "Art Club."  

I carefully traced around the edge of the stencil, rather than slopping paint all over it, because the tape I used was a little porous and I wanted to keep sharp, clean lines rather than blotchy shapes.  I filled in the rest of the nail with a non-art brush, using Sally Hansen's "Black Out" polish.

Repeated on all my nails, then finished with a clear coat to preserve my hard work!

 Final thoughts-- I love it! I've gotten more compliments than I anticipated, from coworkers, friends, and even strangers!  I will admit, my right hand didn't turn out quite as even or pretty because I had to use my non-dominant hand to paint with.  But from a distance its fine. Regardless of all that, this design works well because it creates the illusion of longer, graceful nails when in reality my fingernails are kept really short for work.  It's edgy without being overwhelming, and is kind of Halloween-themed also (I've gotten several comments that it looks like cat claws.)  I especially liked adding the gold sparkle, but I think a creamy gold color would be pretty also.

Thank you so much for reading! I love hearing feedback, so don't be afraid to leave questions or comments.

Stay warm, everyone!
-Alycia
heartandsoulcosplay@gmail.com, @whimsyAly on Twitter