Mar 20, 2012

Doctor Who?

Recently I entered a nail art contest at More Nail Polish.  I have a lot to learn when it comes to nail art and I knew I'd be up against some very talented people but I thought it would be fun to enter and with random draw prizes how could I not?
The theme was “Inspired by” so I decided to do a Doctor Who inspired art work.  I spent ages planning just what I'd do and even ordered the perfect polish for it.  The design looked so good in my head and I was pretty sure I'd worked out just how to get it all together but the polish I ordered didn't arrive in time.  So at the last minute (hours before closing) I completely changed my design.  I could have just used a different polish (the one I ordered arrived the day after) and gone with my original idea but I didn't want to compromise and may still do that design one day so it was easier just to come up with something else.  I stuck with Doctor Who but this time took my design inspiration from my TARDIS t-shirt.  My 7yo son has the same shirt, he's the real Whovian in the family :)


I didn't have a light blue to use as the background so I had to franken one.  I was pretty happy with the resulting colour (it's a better match in real life) but the formula was horrid, a really streaky cream finish, so I had problems getting a neat edge.  I had to do 3 coats for even coverage so it's all a bit thicker than I'd like.  My middle nail is cracked right across the middle and held together with layers of base coat and paper fibers so it's really lumpy.  I'll have to keep wrapping it like that until it grows out far enough to cut off :( 
The design on the shirt isn't very clear, the TARDIS details are fuzzy, so I had to do some work in photoshop to get it looking the way I wanted (I'm better at photoshop than polish).  Then I printed it onto some water decal paper.  I've found I can actually use polish to paint my designs on the paper too before transferring so I used some 2 way nail art pen/brushes to touch up the design before I soaked it onto my nails and then I did a little more touch up work once it was on and dry.  Then I coated it all with CND Ice Blue Shimmer to help meld it all together and (hopefully) enhance the blueprint style. 
I was pretty pleased with how it turned out, lumpy polish and all :)    The design on my thumb was the best bit but I couldn't get it in the photo.
There were so many amazing entries in the More Nail Polish contest so I was stunned to see myself in the top 8 tonight.  The judges had a hard time choosing so they narrowed it down to 8 with a random draw for the prize.  I am so glad I didn't have to judge because there's no way I could have got down to 8.  If you want to check out the entries they are in 3 posts, entries 1-30, entries 31-61 and mine's in with entries 62-93.  They are definitely worth a look and you might discover some new blogs to follow :)
You can view the judges top 8 and find out who the random winner (one of my favourites) was here

9 comments:

  1. I was wondering how you did it! :) Your entry was definitely one of my favourites, I love how the thumb lines up!

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  2. I was also wondering how you did it. Love this!

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  3. I was also wondering how you did this. I love it!

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  4. can we be best friends now?! seriously this is soooo awesome very Galifrayan ;) im a MAJOR doctor who fan and i love love love love love this and i cant wait to do this myself :) thanks for the idea and ill be sure to post a link to this on my blog if thats okay!!?

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  5. Your's was one of my favourites and I was glad to see it in the top 8, congrats! I didn't notice the bumps until you mentioned it. :)

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  6. I already commented about how much I loved this, but woah, I didn't know you could do a water decal transfer onto nail! Did you just print it with a normal printer, or is there other special things you have to use? :O

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  7. This looks so wonderful!! I love Dr. Who!! :D (10th Doctor = hoooot!!)

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  8. i've seen you nail design a lot on pinterest and absolutely loved it! but i never knew how you done it and nobody seemed to know either. and let me tell you your pic is all over the place so i had quite a lot of chances to look. the more i saw it the more i got the suspicion it could be something like a decal because it's so detailed. but i'm very happy that i've finally found out what it really was you used. i think, as a matter of fact, that it's definitly one of the best doctor who nail art designs i've ever seen!

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