Dear readers,

Work's still keeping me busy, so here's a quick post with nail art I somehow neglected to post in November - my nails for Thor: The Dark World. I love me some Marvelverse!

The base is LynBDesigns Little Foot, and if I remember correctly, Mjolnir is LynBDesigns Eloquent Dust topped with ILNP Bottle Service, with the handle in some Essence brown. The lightning is some random white polish topped with a bit of Model's Own Indian Ocean, which gives it a nice glow (same as the arc reactor in my Iron Man mani). I had glowier photos on my phone but that died so you'll just have to trust me on that ;)

Lightning before adding the topper

Giveaway news: The giveaway has ended and I'll be drawing the winner tonight or tomorrow and contacting them by e-mail. Once they've responded, I'll announce their name on the blog. Thanks for participating!

Have a nice day - and for those of you watching the Superbowl: Enjoy the game! I'll be watching, but I still need to pick a team and re-watch Basic Football with Burt Reynolds. As you can probably tell, I'm really dedicated to this sport ;)

Captain Spacenails

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Dear readers,

Today's challenge theme is inspired by a movie. You know I often do movie manis in advance so I can wear them to the theatre, but this one is inspired by the imagery of Man of Steel. First, let's have a very short, non-spoilery review: It's not a very good movie. It's entertaining (although they could have cut about half an hour towards the end) but half the time we were laughing at it, not with it.

That said, the Kryptonian design is beautiful. It's quite different from other Superman movies, very metally but organic - really, the only way I can describe the aesthetics is 'art nouveau-punk' (as in steampunk, but inspired by art nouveau rather than Victorian style). Have a look at Christian Lorenz Scheurer's concept art for Man of Steel even if you're not into superhero movies! (Could be a bit spoilery as you may be able to guess a few scenes in advance, but quite honestly, I could guess what was going to happen for most of the film.) Some of these look almost Giger-esque, but the overall impression in the movie is not so much of nightmares and surrealism as of organic metals. 

I first wanted to use the design of a gorgeous window on a space vessel that appears in the movie but I couldn't find a picture of it, so I chose the chairs in the Council Chamber of Krypton (totally non-spoilery picture here). 

Due to my choice of colours it ended up looking a bit like a wedding mani - perhaps I should have chosen a different base. Actually, I absolutely should have, because this one bubbled something awful and every brushstroke shows. It's a cheapo-cheap drugstore polish (b.pretty pearl) which I only got because it was part of a nail pearl set. Not using this again except as base under the pearls.

The ornaments are essence go bold!, which I really love as a gold tone because it's not too bright, if that makes any sense.

I had to add a more direct reference to the movie of course, so I painted Superman's sigil on my thumb. As he explains to Lois Lane, it's not an S, it means 'hope' in Kryptonian - to which she responds with "well, it's an S here". This is done in a-england Sleeping Palace.

See the other movie manis here:

25. Inspired by a Movie :

Did you see the movie? Do you have a favourite superhero? 

The nail newbie, who cannot wait to see what inspiration Pacific Rim holds (and more importantly, cannot wait to see Pacific Rim tomorrow!)

 

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 Nerdige Nägel - ich kann nicht genug davon bekommen. Habt ihr Star Trek schon gesehen? Und falls ihr Raumschiff Enterprise-Fans seid, schaut mal weiter runter zum Tricorder-Link - coole Sache, oder? Da kommt man sich richtig vor wie Pille.

You know when I said I was a trekkie? Well, I wasn't kidding. There were so many fantastic images in the movie that didn't leave me alone (plus I saw it a second time) so I had to do another mani.

 

For the geeks among you, this is a mashup of this screenshot and the scene at 2:13 in this trailer, part of which you can see in this picture. For everyone else: The USS Enterprise is on the left, the USS Vengeance on the right, but all you really need to know that it's a battle in space. So basically, full of awesome.

The polishes I used may seem familiar to you - yes, this was originally intended as a tri-polish challenge manicure in May but it didn't seem right to use it because the red and blue play only minor roles and the overall impression is certainly more of black and white. The only "new" one here (but still within the tri-polish rules) is the glitter topper, which will get its own post soon because it's filled with win.

I have at least one other idea for nail art inspired by the movie and there probably will be more Star Trek nail art coming because I'm currently in the process of re-watching the original series with its papier-maché rocks, monsters with visible puppet strings, questionable story lines (gigantic evil cats in magician's castles in space, I'm looking at you!), the people on the bridge throwing themselves left and right to simulate being shaken when the Enterprise is hit, good old Leonard "Eyebrows" Nimoy as Spock, the unbelievably cool Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, and William Shatner as Captain Kirk, the original space cowboy and ladies' man. 

Man, it's so good. I grew up on that stuff and watching it is like coming home. 

For any trekkies reading this, I had a bit of a geek-out over this project on Indiegogo (which is a crowdfunding page like Kickstarter but you have other payment options than Amazon and I'm really sad Kickstarter only uses Amazon payments because now I can't help put a TARDIS into space :/ ): a real medical tricorder. It sounds amazing and I'm tempted to get one just for the coolness of it although I have no real need for a constant heart rate, stress level or blood pressure monitor. My nail polish shopping behaviour is a pretty accurate way of telling me what my stress level is and I think the tricorder would try to rush me to hospital for the way my heart rate soars when I see holo polish swatches. But it's so neat!

Just a shame Indiegogo's headline in the newsletter was "Heal me up, Scotty!", and other articles are using the Beam me up, Scotty line as well, even though a tricorder has little to nothing to do with beaming. Get your nerd references right, people! Though admittedly, it is a better tagline than if they'd used what Doctor McCoy usually says while holding a tricorder: "He's dead, Jim."

The nerdy and possibly slightly hipster nail newbie

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I've got another movie mani for you today. 2013 seems to be the year of scifi and fantasy films, what with Star Trek Into Darkness, Man of Steel, Thor 2 The Dark World, Ender's Game, the second part of The Hobbit and Simon Pegg's new movie The World's End, which I cannot wait for because he makes pretty much the funniest films ever. And these are only the ones I'm looking forward to (or enjoyed, in the case of Star Trek) most - there's tons of other interesting ones on the horizon.

One of those was Iron Man 3, which I watched a few weeks ago and enjoyed thoroughly. It was a lot better than the second and was so much fun to watch!

Heute hab ich wieder ein Nageldesign für euch, das von einem Film inspiriert wurde. 2013 ist ein richtiges SciFi- und Fantasyfilmjahr - Star Trek Into Darkness, Man of Steel (Superman), Thor 2, Ender's Game (Das große Spiel), dem zweiten Hobbit-Teil und The World's End von Simon Pegg, der einige der lustigsten Filme aller Zeiten produziert hat. Und das waren jetzt mal nur die, auf die ich mich besonders freue (bzw. mir besonders gefallen haben) - es kommen dieses Jahr noch jede Menge andere raus die auch cool sein könnten.

Einer dieser Filme war Iron Man 3, den ich mir vor ein paar Wochen angeschaut hab. Er war wesentlich besser als der zweite, sehr lustig und unterhaltsam.

Since I was looking forward to it so much, I did my nails. If anyone's as geeky as me and is wondering, this is the Mark 42 armor, though I added a ring of red around the arc reactor to make it stand out better. If you have no idea what I just said, don't worry, just look at the first picture on this page.

This was a fun mani to make! I painted the whole nail with Essence 140 go bold! and then used Flormar M109 for the red bits of armor. You can't see the Model's Own Indian Ocean well in the pictures but it's on the eyes and the arc reactor to make them glow a bit rather than just being stark white.

Nachdem ich mich so darauf gefreut hatte, musste ich mir natürlich auch die Nägel entsprechend lackieren. Für die Nerds unter euch - das ist die Mark 42-Rüstung, allerdings hab ich einen roten Ring um den Arc-Reaktor hinzugefügt, um ihn stärker hervorzuheben. Wer jetzt nur Bahnhof verstanden hat sollte sich nicht grämen, seht euch einfach das erste Bild auf dieser Seite an.

Dieses Design hat echt Spaß gemacht. Ich habe Essence 140 go bold! auf den ganzen Nagel aufgetragen und Flormar M109 für den Rest der Rüstung verwendet. Das Model's Own Indian Ocean sieht man auf den Bildern nicht sehr gut, ich hab's auf die Augen und den Reaktor aufgetragen, um sie zum Leuchten zu bringen.

 
Do you like scifi, superheroes and fantasy? What movies are you looking forward to?

The nerdy nail newbie

Wie steht ihr zu Science Fiction, Superhelden und Fantasy? Auf welche Filme freut ihr euch dieses Jahr?

Euer nerdiges Nagelnewbie

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Diesmal nur auf Englisch. Zusammenfassung: Ich hab mir gestern Star Trek Into Darkness angeschaut und kann es nur empfehlen :)

Looking all smart in their wee Starfleet uniforms (matte)

I don't think I've mentioned this, but given my other interests, you probably won't be awfully surprised to hear I'm a trekkie.

So last night I saw the new Star Trek movie, Into Darkness. Oh. My. God. Good old prime directive, new enemies, old bromance, Spock being very spocky. And that's pretty much all I can tell you without spoiling the movie, so if you haven't seen it yet (and I realise it’s only coming out in the US next week), go see it. Even if it's just because of Benedict Cumberbatch. (Note: I do not think he's the only reason you should watch it. You should watch it because it's a Star Trek movie and it's great. But I did have the feeling that several of the girls in the audience had accompanied their boyfriends mainly because of him. Hey, if it gets people who normally wouldn't dream of watching this "dorky sci-fi stuff" into Star Trek, it's all fine.)

These seem to be in dress uniform (w/o matte topcoat)

A word on Mr Cumberbatch, though. I don't usually recognise actors, which means I suck at film quizzes but makes suspension of disbelief very easy for me. When I do recognise someone, it's pretty hard, and suddenly I'm watching a movie about a hijacked train with Capt. Jean-Luc Picard and James Bond, or annoying but sweet little Dawn Summers from Buffy all mean and manipulative and coked off her head in New York (this was particularly traumatic because I really could see Dawn going off the rails like that had season six played out differently.)

Having watched and re-watched Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock, and given that he's got quite a distinctive look (not to mention voice), I could probably recognise him anywhere, so I was a bit worried. It is a measure of his great skills as an actor that I was able to watch the movie and not go "Sherlock in space!" or even "Benedict Cumberbatch in space!" but to see the character he was playing, and to base liking or not liking him on the character's actions, not on the fact that I like the actor.

(I did wonder what Mickey Smith from Doctor Who was doing there, so it's definitely not just me being able to immerse myself for once.)

As you can see, I dressed my nails in wee Starfleet uniforms for the occasion*. I think as long as I don't send my ring fingers on an away mission, I should be fine.

For the thumbs, I tried to recreate two of the posters. Not very detailed, of course (maybe I should get one of those watchmakers' eyepieces...), but I think you can get the general idea. On the left, we have the teaser poster with John Harrison standing amid wreckage, and on the right is the US poster with the ship falling to Earth.

 

Do you like Star Trek? Are you going to watch it?

Live long and prosper,

The nail newbie

*I may or may not have dressed myself in a Starfleet uniform as well.

Making of:

Colours used:

Uniforms

• h&m yellow
• s-he 285
• OPI - Cajun shrimp
• LOOK - red 
• Flormar supermatte 127
• LOOK nailtattoo liner black
• Boulevard de beauté 17

The red's one layer LOOK on top of two layers of Cajun Shrimp

Thumbs

• Flormar supermatte 127
• p2 up in the sky
• Nola petrol
• LOOK black
• s-he white (115) 
• h&m orange 

sketchy sketch

All done!

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