Pokeball Nails

So.. I know for a FACT that there are lots of people who do this and who have done it so, so much better than I have here. But this is literally my first attempt at any kind of nail art ever in my life. I've never so much as tried to make a flower before. I think it turned out alright..

Here are the nail polishes I used. I also used Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Nail Hardener as a base coat (terrible idea! It peels your nail polish off within a day!) and Seche Vite top coat. I believe the red is just called 'red' by Pure Ice.. I got it at Walmart for like, $2. The white is Essie's Blanc and the black is just a Sally Hansen Extreme Wear or something like that. Both the black and red are really cheap, and the white was a super shitty white. I had actually gifted these to the boyfriend so he could make pokeballs out of ping pong balls for beerpong.. can you tell we really like pokemon?

Okay. So lay down your base coat if you so please and then your white. I took three coats of white to make it opaque.

After it's dry.. I mean REALLY REALLY DRY.. like WAITED 45 MINUTES DRY.. go ahead and tape half your nail. Be careful you don't get the line crooked! I personally just used scotch tape.

Then paint the top half red. This is one coat here, but I eventually let it dry and used two coats of red.

Let it dry, then carefully pull the tape off. Notice that it took a little bit of the white off.. a layer just about.

hello!

Here is where I ROYALLY FUCKED UP MY NAILS. But, that's okay. It gave them character. :)

It took me a while to figure out how to get this done. I really, really did not want to tape twice along the middle white/red line and paint it black. Would take too long and I might take off some of the red/white again. I suppose looking back, I could have top coatted at this point, let it dry, then double taped.. but again, so much work! I'll probably do that next time I paint, but for now, I made them have a lot of character this way.

My first thought was 'I'll paint the side of a bobby pin black and stick it along the line of red and white on my nail! Perfect black line!'

LOL. that went well.

So then I found this concealer brush I'm not using anymore and deemed it alright for the purpose. It's actually a Bare Minerals Max Coverage Concealer Brush. I have like four of them because I keep buying the kits, so I wasn't sad to see it go.

a little better.. not by much, but by enough.

I didn't document this step and I'm not sure why. At this point I took a q-tip and doused it in black nail polish and stamped the black circle in the middle of my nail. It was the perfect size, and actually worked really well.

Now here, I took the dotty-end of the bobby pin and covered it in white nail polish. It totally worked for the middle white dot of the pokeball.

Ta-da!

Overall, after cleanup, I loved my nails. Totally worth all the hassle it took. I love that they aren't perfect either. I'm sure they'd look better perfect but I don't care. I did them myself and that's that.

Here's where I did all my practicing. :)

So again - they aren't perfect but I love them anyways, and am still really super proud of them. Hence the posting on the blog :)