Staticky TV Screens

So, remember when I said I was next going to be taking it easy? Lies.

Still with the winter thing. The street is so deeply rutted with ice that driving IN the ruts is a death wish for your car's undercarriage. I've considered hiring a Sherpa for all my travelling needs.

I was taking a look at the LeaLaC plate I ordered from Llarowe last month and was struck by the rounded rectangles (3rd row from bottom, 4th column from left). They kind of reminded me of a bank of TVs, and my mind wandered to horror tropes of static-filled TV screens, kind of like this. (Note: I don't watch horror movies, I am the least qualified person to being mining them for inspiration.)

AND THEN I thought of something much happier, which is Persona 4. I think Aegis from P3 remains my favourite Persona character of all time, but Kanji from P4 is a close second. What a dreamboat.

Soooo anyway, the TV screens! The Midnight Channel! The static! The swallowing up our brave protagonists!

The steely hair of our unnamed hero, to match his steely will! Ok I'll stop now.

Depressingly, this took about as long as the Valentine's nail art I did, except the results are nowhere near as impressive. And it was a huge pain in the butt. HUGE PAIN IN THE BUTT. There is, however, one upside-- and I will get to it in a little bit.

I'm getting more consistent with hand position, which is a small victory I suppose.

The first step was getting the static going. A full 7 steps went into building it up. I started with Nfu Oh JS03, followed by a heavy dose of the spun sugar technique (I did it MUCH thinner than XOXO Alexis Leigh is doing it in the video, but same principle) with GOSH Nero, again with the spun sugar in Revlon Spirit, then spent a dizzying amount of time dotting Nero and Spirit all over the place with my tiniest dotter, followed by another coat of JS03 and a coat of American Apparel Moon. Then NYColor Grand Central Station to get it all to dry so I could SLEEP.

DOESN'T EVEN LOOK LIKE STATIC

This afternoon, I stamped the shapes over my nails with the LeaLaC plate using Nero again, and then whipped out my tiniest brush to fill in the in-between spaces with the black polish, add teeny silver dots to represent the TV knobs, and little reflection marks in white to try to give some dimension to the TV screens. Then two more coats of topcoat to even it all out, and a bit of clean up, and finally done.

You can see some of the neurotically thin spun sugar effect going on at the edge of my nail.

But, in a way, this was a worthwhile endeavour, because I got to use Moon. (My partner has been bugging me to use it since the day I bought it and, if nothing else, this mani makes him very happy.) Because Moon DOES THIS!

This photo involved tenting a blanket over me, a self-timer, manual shutter speed, manual focus, and a slapdash process of charging up the nails by lamp, hitting the shutter, shutting off the light, and stopping breathing.

So there you have it. A mani for all of us with a soft spot for horror films and/or Japanese RPGs.

Polishes used:

Nfu Oh - JS03

GOSH - Nero

Revlon Top Speed - Spirit

American Apparel - Moon

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri - Silver Sweep

OPI - Nail Envy Matte (base coat)

New York Color - Grand Central Station (topcoat)

J.

Flakie Swap Mani + Stamping + Matte

There has to be a more elegant way of phrasing these things.

When The Polishaholic's collaboration shade with piCture pOlish, Mallard, arrived in the mail, I decided it really needed to be paired with its kissing cousin, Sephora by OPI's 212-Sephora. And then I had to screw around with it some more, because that's how I roll.

DOUBLE CLAW ACTION (flash on left, daylight on right)

I cropped that one aggressively to spare you the sight of my awful little wrists. You can kind of guess at the horror as it is, but I promise the worst got the chop.

For this, I did a swap mani with Mallard on my left hand and 212-Sephora on my right, switching the polishes for the double accent nails (middle and ring). I then stamped the giraffe(?) print image from Bundle Monster plate #BM-313 on both my ring fingers using Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Silver Sweep. Then I top coated the double accent nails with Essie's Matte About You.

Whew.

As I tenderly pat the leather couch.

This was my first time stamping, ever, so the outcome was a little wonkier than I'd like, but it'll do. The following photo shows the flakies in action: while Mallard's show up very orange and very green at the same time, 212-Sephora's are predominantly copper-orange that shift to green at extreme angles.

Stamping wonk!

A close-up to show how the matte topcoat brings out the flakies more:

go macro lens, go!

A bit about these polishes... Mallard applies slightly thick, but it isn't at all unmanageable (like buttery, but a notch more viscous). Its first coat shows off the (surprise!) VERY teal base of the polish, and it's opaque and emerald-shimmery at two coats. The flakies are sparse and medium-sized, and it's easy for the base polish to cover them up. 212-Sephora was a huge PITA. I know lots of bloggers are fond of SOPI polishes, but I've yet to find a single one that doesn't make me want to punch something. It was alarmingly streaky on the first coat, and super-watery. I expected the base to be thinner to account for the different kinds of glitter, but I haven't had a polish make a run at cuticle-flooding in a long, long time, and yet this one did. It's a black-brown base that ends up looking like a dark bronze-khaki when at opacity. It needed a generous three coats to get there and to even everything out. Its flakies are smaller and more numerous, and its shimmer is coarser (almost micro-glitter) compared to Mallard's. It also technically contains holo particles, but good luck finding those on the nail. Mallard's thickness meant that Good to Go again played its magic shrinkage trick, though it wasn't so bad this time. I think I'm going to have to start a database of which top coats shrink which brands of polish...

And I leave you with an awkward and vaguely evil hand-clasping. Deploy the skeleton fingers!

In case you find this way intimidating, know that I took this photo with a blanket over my front like a bib.

Polishes used:
piCture pOlish - Mallard
Sephora by OPI - 212-Sephora
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri - Silver Sweep
Essie - Good to Go
Essie - Matte About You


J.


PS: LOOK WHAT I JUST GOT! Tortoiseshell mani, here I come.

Elevation Polish nail mail! <3