Alice: Madness Returns inspired nails

Hi everyone!


What do you do when you're completely lacking any kind of inspiration for a new manicure but you have to go to a dinner party and you do want your nails to look nice? That happened to me this morning so I did what I usually do in a situation like that... I asked my husband! He was gaming at that moment so he told me to do an Alice: Madness Returns manicure, the game that was keeping him busy. Not knowing anything about that game I googled it... and I was confronted with dark blues, dark teals, blacks and of course lots of digital blood. So I asked my husband if he realised it wasn't Halloween yet. He just grinned and told me he had absolute confidence that I could do it but I could always go for something more season appropriate if I felt it was too hard for me. Ha! That was a challenge I just had to take on so I searched and searched until I stumbled across this image. Now those were colors I could do something with, namely this:

indoors, no flash

The first thing that I decided on was the design. I've been admiring fish braid nails for quite some time and I recently got a stamping plate that contains a fish braid image. I then started searching through my stash for a dark red, a peach, a nude and of course a black polish. I ended up with Il était un vernis Pinot Noir, Cirque Colors Cypress, Cirque Colors Never Nude and OPI Lady in Black and of course my trusted black stamping polish Hit The Bottle As Black As Night.

I started by making the decals. I painted two patches of OPI Top Coat (the normal, not fast drying kind) on my silicone mat, stamped the fish braid image from DRK plate DRK-D on the patches and tried to color between the lines with Pinot Noir, Cypress and Never Nude using a thin brush. After it had dried completely (and I had finished getting groceries and putting a load of laundry in the machine) I painted a coat of Lady in Black over the colored in fish braid. I left that to dry again and while waiting painted my thumb, index and pinky with two thin coats of Lady in Black, and my ring finger with three thin coats of Cypress and a coat of Seche Vite. When the decals were dry I peeled them off, cut them to size, painted a coat of Lady in Black on my middle finger and put a decal on the wet polish. I gently pressed it down, cut away most of the excess, painted a generous coat of Seche Vite on top and folded what was still sticking out around my nail's free edge to "wrap" my tips. The procedure got repeated on my right hand.

indoors, with flash

For some reason when I peel off a decal it's always matte, no sparkle or shimmer to be seen. As soon as I add a layer of top coat the sparkle returns and this time was no exception. Look at all that holo goodness! And it was even better in the sunshine as you can see in the picture I took while driving to the restaurant:

in the car with mobile phone, sunshine

(don't worry, I was in the passenger seat and hubby did the real driving while I was playing with my phone, totally absorbed in the sparkle on my nails and completely forgetting the fact that I would put the address of the restaurant in the navigation thingie... oops!)

These are today's polish choices:

Cirque Colors Never Nude, Cirque Colors Cypress, Il était un vernis Pinot Noir,
OPI Lady in Black, Hit The Bottle As Black As Night

I absolutely love how my nails look, the contrast between the ultra glossy black creme and the holographic sparkle, the colors, everything. I do have to practice placing the decals a bit better though as I have placed it a little askew but that's hardly noticeable in real life (or the people who examined my nails during dinner were too polite to mention it ;) My husband told me they turned out completely different from what he had imagined but they did match the Alice picture I found and he liked them a lot.

Do you like them too? And have you done a fish braid manicure yourself? And did you freehand it? (if so, big kudos!!)


Oh, almost forgot... Emiline Harris from Nail Polish Society has started a new challenge, the ABC Challenge. I decided to it myself (even though I'll probably enter my manicure on Saturday or Sunday instead of Friday) and just see how far I'll come. So this is my A manicure. You can see the other manicures with an A in the linkz thingie below:

ABC Challenge - A

Last thing: while reviewing my post I noticed the black polish on my thumb in the indoors pictures looks like it needs another coat. I've been staring at said thumb and even pointed a flashlight at it but I can't see any bare spots so I'm blaming the lighting for that one ;)


Cirque Colors Cypress and Never Nude were bought from Pretty Polish.
Il était un vernis Pinot Noir and Hit The Bottle As Black As Night were bought from Hypnotic Polish.