Geek Nails: Swamp Thing Edition

Ever since Sammy of The Nailasaurus did her Week of Geek featuring nail art tributes to various topics of geeky fandom, I've been brainstorming ways to do some theme nails of my own. Since I'm not at all handy at freehanding nail art, I have to think of ways to use color and stamping to reflect my favorite characters.

Today's geek nails are inspired by one of my favorite comic book characters: Swamp Thing, created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson. In comics, Swamp Thing is both a human soul seeking to find a life in an inhuman body and an earth elemental with a deep connection to life of all kinds. I could wax on about the character for an entire post, but this is the wrong blog for that, so on with the nails!

 

I started with a base of OPI Stranger Tides, which is a murky, light olive green. The formula on this was a little tricky, as it was thin and runny. It badly wanted to pool around my cuticles (which is pretty obvious in some of these pictures). It took three coats to be opaque and even. That said, it is a great color and dried quickly despite the three coats.

On top of Stranger Tides, I used a makeup sponge to add random dabs of Revlon Hot for Chocolate to give the background some texture. Finally, I stamped a cluster of flowers from Bundle Monster plate BM15 three to four times to cover each nail using the slim brush dark green from KleanColor Nail Duo Bright. This polish comes in a two ended bottle that has a base color with a regular brush on one end and a nail art color with a thin brush on the other. The polish worked great for stamping, but the shape of the bottle was a pain, as there was no easy way to put the brush down between stamps.For my accent nail, I stamped a rose using Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Ton of Bricks. It didn't really pop as much as I wanted, so I added a red rhinestone on top.

Finally, I used Essie Matte About You topcoat (over my normal Out the Door topcoat) to give my nails a matte finish, since neither swamps nor swamp monsters are well known for their glossiness. It also seemed to change the color a little, minimizing the yellow undertones.

Pre-mattification

The roses on my accent nails are a reference to one of my favorite Swamp Thing story lines. In issue 52, Swamp Thing's wife Abby has been arrested in an attempt to trap him. Using a rose that Abby has carried into the courtroom, Swamp Thing grows a new body covered in roses and puts Gotham City on notice that he's taking over until she's released. He then covers Gotham in impenetrable plant life until she is, in fact, released. This story was written by Alan Moore, who's run on Swamp Thing is the best in the series. If you want to give Swamp Thing a try, I highly recommend reading his take on the character, which ran from issue 20 through 64 and is available in trade paperback form.

Dusk Pearl

I'd originally written a whole review of this polish, then decided it wasn't really necessary. I picked up this polish at the Dollar Tree because I liked the bottle. The color doesn't appear to have a name. It says Dusk on the label, but there were several other colors with the same label. I decided to wear it now because I've been re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and she wears all these really light nail colors in seasons one and two.

Finally, here's the bottle that inspired the purchase. It was worth every bit of $1.

Dewy Rose Manicure

I bought the two polishes I used for this manicure together because the colors such a good match. It took me a while to get around to using them, but now that I have it won't be long until I use them again.

The main color for this mani is China Glaze Fifth Avenue, which is a dark, dusty rose creme. The formula on this was very nice. It was a little thick, but went on smoothly. It was almost opaque in one coat, but took two to get really even coverage. For my accent nail, I used Finger Paints Hue Left a Message?, which has a translucent pink base with lighter pink glitter. On it's own, Hue Left a Message? is pretty sheer. When layering it over Fifth Avenue, the similarity of the base color gives the same color glitter a subtle, starry effect that I really love.

The only surprise was that Fifth Avenue dried significantly darker than the bottle color as you can see in this picture.

No one should look this closely at my cuticles.

I think I was attracted to this color because it reminds me of one of the first nail polish colors I remember owning in middle school. I had a long sleeved t-shirt the same color that was the softest, most perfectly broken-in shirt, and I wore it all the time.

What about you, do you have any colors that you like for nostalgic reasons?

Crazy Nail Polish Lady Mani

The polishes in this post led to my first official Crazy Nail Polish Lady moment (this is a title usually held by one of my nail polish mentors). I was at the Dollar Tree, which had gotten in a whole bunch of these three packs of Maybelline Colorama polishes. I'm on a budget, so I haven't been buying polish lately, but at $0.33 each, I felt like I could splurge and get a few. To maximize each dollar, I was systematically looking at each package to make sure I got the colors I wanted and minimize duplicates. Another shopper stopped and looked at me for a couple of minutes. Thinking she wanted to look herself, I offered to step aside, since I might be a while. She replied, "I don't like those colors," and walked away. Clearly, what caught her interest was my lunacy.

I started with two coat of Maybelline Colorama Raspberry Sorbet, which is a bright fushia shimmer. I was pleasantly surprised with the application of this polish. The consistency was great and easy to control. It went on very smoothly and was basically opaque in two coats. There was some patchiness that appeared in bright sun, but I'm sure a third coat would have taken care of it. The downside was that it didn't wear very well. I took this picture less than 24 hours after putting the polish on, and you can already see some chips on my thumb.

On top of Raspberry Sorbet, I added two coats of Maybelline Colorama Pink Pinata, which has a very light pink base with multi-colored flakes.

 Unfortunately, there was no good sunlight when I was taking pictures, so it was hard to show off Pink Pinata. This picture shows a little of the flaky goodness, but it was much more pronounced in person. That said, I think a darker base color with more contrast would be a better partner for Pink Pinata.

Lava Mani

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a blog post someone did where they put a black crackle over a sparkly red polish and commented that it reminded them of lava. That idea really stuck in my head, and I decided to do my own version. Unfortunately, my Google-fu has failed me, and I can't find that original post. I'd love to give credit where it's due, so if you posted that and happen to see this, let me know!

For my version of the lava mani, I decided to use KleanColor Chunky Holo Scarlet for the red. This polish is fairly sheer, so I started with one coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow to give it a bright base. I followed that with two coats of Holo Scarlet, which went on very smoothly. It has a red-orange tinted jelly base, but somehow doesn't seem as gloopy as a lot of other glitter-jelly combos.

I topped it with OPI Black Shatter. Most of the time, I like it that Black Shatter has a thinner consistency and cracks more than some other crackles, but in this case, I was hoping for something that would look more like the skin of cooling rock on top of lava. I was thinking of something more like my Turquoise Stone Mani, so maybe the China Glaze black would be better for this look.

The KleanColor Chunky Holos that I picked up all seem to have the same holo glitter in different colored bases. In a few cases, the base color has enough of an effect to make the glitter look different. Holo Scarlet is one of those; it really makes the glitter look much redder. In this case, it glinted like hotter points in the lava. It didn't pick up well in the photos, but I really enjoyed it.

Family Camp Mani

Every year, my mother's side of the family gathers for a week in the mountains about two hours north of my hometown. Mostly due to work schedules, I always seem to end up going for only 1-2 days, but it's always nice to catch up with my various aunts, uncles, and cousins as well as my grandparents. The family sport of choice is croquet, but I couldn't come up with a way to work that into nail art. Maybe next year. Instead, I decided to go with something that would look nice, but be soft enough not to scandalize the older folks.

I started with a base of China Glaze Tree Hugger, which is a medium grass green polish with a little bit of a yellow undertone. It also has very fine green and blue shimmer. The shimmer is more apparent in the bottle than on the nail, but it's still a long way from a creme. The formula was decent and applied smoothly, but it was fairly thin on pigment and took three coats to cover some bald spots and dragging around the cuticles.

On top of Tree Hugger, I stamped the daisy pattern from Bundle Monster plate BM16 using Pearl White Konad Special Stamping Polish. This polish does exactly what it's supposed to and easily stamps nice, neat images. I finished by using a toothpick to add dots of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow to the center of each flower and a yellow rhinestone for the center of one flower on my ring finger (the gem photographed really dark, but is about the same color as the polish dots).

As you can see, I had to stamp my thumb twice to cover it. I really hope I can get the newer Bundle Monster plates at some point, since they're bigger. Other than that, I was really happy with how this turned out - nice and summery but not ridiculously bright.

La Isla Bonita Mani

The stamp I used for this is from a fauxnad plate I got on ebay quite a while back. I have no idea what it's supposed to be. It's very small and consists of just a few wavy lines. Often when I'm stamping, I pick my design first, then come up with a color for it, but in this case, I'd already picked the color. When I looked at this design again with the color in mind, it looked like flowing water, and I decided to do little accent stamps across the corners of my nails so the size of the design wouldn't be a problem.

I started with a base of China Glaze Senorita Bonita. This polish is a bright purple jelly base with glass-fleck type shimmer in the same color. It is really a beautiful color and sparkly without being too blingy. In real life, it's a little redder than this picture shows and very vibrant. The base is a little thick. It had no problems with it running, but I did get some bubbling. That may have been my fault, as I tend to overwork thicker polishes trying to get thin coats. I used three coats to get maximum purple power.

This pictures shows off the stamping (and the bubbling) a little better. The stamping polish is Sally Hansen Color Quick Turquoise Chrome. I picked this polish up when I saw it on clearance because of my success stamping with Gold Chrome  and it didn't disappoint. Like Gold Chrome, Turquoise Chrome dried very quickly, but it made lovely, crisp stamps. I'd really like to get a few more of these, but they're a little pricey.

Senorita Bonita was the polish that seemed to get the most good reviews from the China Glaze Island Escape collection, and I can see why. Speaking of Island Escape, I'll leave you with a song because every time I read Senorita Bonita, I think of La Isla Bonita.