Flower Field nails tutorial

Today's tutorial is going to be a short, to the point way to make cute flowers on your nails. They're very easy, and your best friend is going to be just a dotting tool, so grab yours in your fav size and let's go!

This technique is highly customizable, you can create a very petite and dainty pattern or be a bit more random, like me. I wanted this organic look, personally, as flowers don't grow in a pattern, usually. The polishes I used for this look are as follows:

 I wanted to play around with shimmery polishes so I made my base a delicate shimmer and my flowers are a bit more obvious shimmers with bigger size particles, giving me the contrast I wanted:

• Sally Hansen Miracle Gel's 918 Under The Tree
• Essence Crystal Power's Be Brilliant
• Essence Crystal Power's Be Passionate

You may want to add or remove polishes from here: you need your base colour, which can be other shades and not green if you want a flower pattern and not a field. Then, the colour of your flowers, which is white for me! And then the optional steps, a green for leaves or a nice warm shade for the center of your flowers, if you decide to do that.

Of course we start with our base colour to opacity, we don't want to have to be mindful of our flower placement to avoid seeing gaps and dark spots. Then, we only have to get our flower shade and do them in the following way: place a dot in the center of the flower, then place several dots around it, touching the center. You can make them closer or just barely touching the center, according to your preference. A good amount of dots for this crown around would be 5 or 6. 4 could read empty and from 7 onwards it can get muddy and turned into a blob. I decided to go with 5.

Creating the centers of the flowers should be easy enough that doesn't warrant an explanation. I didn't do it, but you should wait until these flowers are dry enough and then dot the other colour in the center as you did here. For the leaves, I also used the dotting tool. With my green, I applied the dot loosely, and without lifting the dotting tool, I moved it to the side along the nail to elongate that dot, creating a leafy shape. I tried to put two leaves at most for each flower, but it was not a strict limit.

 

I placed my leaves apart from the flowers to avoid making them bleed into each other and because I was being a bit more abstract. If you want your flowers and leaves closer together, I'd recommend waiting for your polish to touch dry before applying the other shade. And I'd also suggest starting with the center dot and before applying the petals, make the leaves, and let that dry. That way, your flowers will overlap your leaves and it will look a bit more concise and concrete.

That's it for today! It's a very short and to the point post but honestly, these kind of flowers are quite easy to understand when you learn how to do them! There are other varieties that look more ornate and organic but those can be way more tricky to execute and that might be the subject of another day, if you're interested!

Fakemon Friday: Tokief, the beggar Pokémon

 I know I took a lot of time to post another one of these but hey, sometimes you are overwhelmed with so many different tasks and it's difficult to get the results you long for!

My concept here is around a feature that was removed from the original source due to its ties to adult activities that should not be promoted to children, and that part I understand: the casino! Yes, my concept revolves around a Pokémon related to casino coins or tokens, and it's even named after that! I also did something that the original canon hasn't done yet: a three stage pure Dark type evolutionary line. Although I call my equivalent Shade type.

As you can see I decided to make a raccoon evolutionary line, getting inspirations from the aesthetics of cartoon prisoners and novelizations of the presentations of organized crime. I think this is a perfect introduction of what Shade type is to me. As I personally consider this universe to be better left in a veil of mystery and not delve deep into things, because when you start, everything starts falling apart very quickly, I wanted to explore something that they have already explored, like organized crime, under the lens of something that the iconic Team Rocket has already played with. And you know what it is said about casinos, house always wins. What if, in this theoretical reboot or region, Pokémon were in charge of being "house".

I beat myself a little bit up with these concepts as I thought they were a bit simplistic and didn't have enough bone in them, so to speak. I took a very superficial approach, but in some occasions, that should not be a bad thing, probably. Even with the shinies, the approach was really simple: oh, they're raccoons with a grey and red as an accent palette, let's make them red panda inspired. The golden hue was a second choice, I initially thought of making it green, not just because of my huge bias, but because of the shades that can be found in a roulette. But it just wasn't working with those exact red shades and decided to move on and try other possibilities. Grey wasn't flattering, so I went for gold.

And I will also add: I won't apologize, this is baby's first furry bait, I hope you enjoyed it. The people that saw Tokapo said that the design could be categorized as "daddy" and I'm... confused, about how did I achieve that. Not disappointed, though!

This is the first evolutionary line that I'm posting here, so something important to me is how it interacts with itself, what does the evolution add to the design, personality wise and just in a progression sense. I wanted the first stage to be very light-hearted, to not make the whole line gritty and tonally dissonant with the rest of the universe, but at the same time I wanted to make the final evolution imposing. The humanoid approach here was something that I settled on quite early on the design phase because I thought I could add elements of gangsters and yakuza easier on that kind of portrayal, but at the same time I wanted to exaggerate proportions to not go full on furry trap. The middle stage, though, it had probably the more varied iterations, because several attempts were too disconnected from either the first or the last stage. A scrappy middle ground that wants to steal but is not good enough to get what it wants cleanly felt nice.

Honestly, I almost consider that this evolutionary line shares elements with what we could qualify as the official starter formula: cute first stage clearly showing the animal and a personality trait, in this case I'd say cheerful is the superficial one although the rest could be classified as clumsy, an awkward middle stage that nobody will pay attention to because what we want, what we need, is that final evolution that in so many cases has to stand on two feet and basically be almost humanoid in behaviour and personality. I got comparisons from this fakemon to the official Incineroar, vibes wise, and I wanted to slightly stray apart from that.

In any case, I wanted to further solidify the casino theme, so as an additional requirement for evolution I thought that you'd have to have a certain amount of casino coins or tokens for the evolution to go through. You can't become the boss without capital, so the trainer is providing that, in this particular scenario. And yes, they'd be consumed, now are Tokapo's. I kinda dislike how gimmicky one-time evolution methods can be, specially in the later generations, because there's no way we're not meant to look it up on the internet. So I wanted something in the middle, something simple and very thematic but also unusual. I will consider adding this "pay in game to win" mechanic to another creature down the line, but it's something that I can't promise. I don't even know what will be the next fakemon I'll post, I still have to make it!

Additional art of these three is dropping, too. I do animations for the front, backsprites and icons, see you in I hope less than two months, readers that are here for fakemon design:

 

Easter Egg nails tutorial

Welcome to another entry of nail art that could and should be many different colours but in my rendition is monochromatic because I literally don't own other colours of nail polish. Hope you enjoy your stay. Today we're going to overcomplicate an Easter egg.

I know this looks quite complicated but it's really doing the same steps over and over until you get the look that you want. Let's review the polishes I'm using, and then we're going to play with them to create the shapes you're seeing:

I used mostly pastels for this look:

• Wild & Young (previously Pinkduck) Blooming Nº420 (heh, not intentional)
• Wild & Young (previously Pinkduck) Acid Collection Nº343
• Wild & Young (previously Pinkduck) XOX Nº11
• Wild & Young (previously Pinkduck Sweet PWR Nº398

I also used a brush and a dotting tool. For my brush, it was a striping brush, as it's the most adequate for the main task. But to begin with, you know the drill, we start with base colour to opacity:

From now on, I recommend using one colour at a time and, honestly, going with your own personal criteria. I am conscious that my full end result is a bit too extreme, specially if you want to replicate it in all nails, but you can use parts of this process to craft your perfect egg. And it's probably cheaper than the real ones, at this point!

 

I placed several lines with my striping brush. My control of the striping brush is not perfect but I demonstrate that you can place things at a different positions. You can put lines a bit separated from each other or touching each other, and both have different effects. Also in my cuticle area, as these are swatch sticks and the shape is a bit extreme, I decided to warp my lines to that extreme. But you can do something else, too:

You can place two lines of the same polish and then fill up the space inbetween to create a wider stripe! I did two in this example, a thinner one in the darkest green and a wider one closer to the free edge. We'll come to these later. The two steps that can make this look more like an egg is adding a row of dots and a squiggly line. The dots are easier and honestly, for the line I struggled a little bit and took it very slowly. I tried my best and it's actually not even that bad, so I'd recommend taking it easy, slow and be confident on your stroke:

You can place the rows of dots and the lines either on top of stripes or on the base, depending on your preference and the space you see available on the nail. I have to admit, my nail ended up being a little busy because I went a bit overboard, so learn also from my mistakes. Although if you're into maximalism, I won't stop you. I can't even stop myself! Now wait. No, but really, wait. You need to wait for this to dry enough to not smudge with your top coat, and float it:

All the unevenness will go away with your glossy top coat. Believe me, nail art usually looks hideous without your top coat of preference because things go in different layers and they are quite noticeable due to the slopes that the natural shine of the polish generates. But Easter eggs in my opinion look better matte. Ironically, these last two tutorials have been matte but with two different vibes:

 Ignore my bubbles from not really applying my top coat properly and the small fuzz. It's fine. Don't worry about it. Also, I want to show you that some regular polishes have fun properties under black light. I didn't do this intentionally whatsoever, I just saw these polishes on regular light while working at it, and chose them in that setting, but I have a black light flashlight and I like pointing it towards my nail swatches for funsies and... this happened:

 Nº11, the medium green, and Nº343, the more saturated pastel green, have black light reactive properties so they glow under these circumstances, leaving the shade that I used as the base and the off white looking flat. And hey, if you're going to an Easter party or something like that, this might be your wake up call to check on your polishes and try to create a fancy nail art!

Next week I will post a new Fakemon Friday so be ready for that, thanks for reading!

Penitent in the Night nails tutorial

Our inspiration today comes from what in Spain we call the Holy Week. If you can't tell by the name, it's a festivity that lasts for a week and it's Catholic in origins and executions. In several cities, big sculptures are transported publicly as an act of devotion, and we call this act a procession. Not only the people actively carrying the five hundred year old ornate wooden figures, that are also delightfully decorated with hand-embroidered fabrics each year, walk along. Lots of these people are dressed in a very particular way and are called penitents. You might have seen a fantasy representation of this in the game Blasphemous, as your main character emulates that dress, but one of the main focal points is a tall and pointy head piece called capirote.

That was what I tried to emulate today, a capirote going along in the darkest night.

You don't even need the backstory and you can do this in any combination of colours that you want, but I went with these shades in particular:

These are the only polishes I used, aside from the base and top coats:

• Holo Taco's Green Taffy
• Holo Taco's One Coat Black
• Holo Taco's Reflective Taco

I also used triangular nail vinyls, so that's all you need for this. You can see how simple it can be with the correct materials:

We start painting with the shade that our capirote is going to be, in my case, Green Taffy. We want this to be opaque, and apply a quick dry top coat to seal it in and rest assured our nail vinyl won't rip off this so far, so be patient and wait around 15 to 20 minutes if your top coat actually dries quite quick. I used Seche Vite and those times worked perfectly for me, if you want a reference. I know Seche Vite has shrinkage problems on lots of people but, weirdly enough, not on me. And I say that because I switched from my previous holy grial of a top coat because of the shrinkage. I guess different strokes for different folks, right? Specially of nail polish.

Now that I've made that paragraph long enough for you to let your top coat dry, because obviously you're doing this in real time with me, apply your top coat. I applied mine in the example from the free edge of this swatch stick for ease for the curve:

The nail vinyl barely extends beyond the swatch stick but it is on the longer size. Press it. Firmly, you don't want polish below it! When you're positive you have it properly pressed, paint a coat of the other nail polish, in my case, black, and peel the vinyl immediately. You will want this second polish to be quite opaque, in order to achieve this step properly. One Coat Black is that girl for me.

Correct the lines if you need with your clean up brush and a tiny bit of acetone. Don't worry, your base colour is protected by a layer of top coat so if your brush is not dripping wet, you won't mess it up. I needed to do it because the vinyls I used weren't the best, but those were the triangles I had to my disposal. You can also use two straight lines, even with striping tape, if you are amazing controlling your brush to not overstep to the other side while doing it quick enough to not let the polish dry. I'm not good enough, I'll restrain from that.

Up until this point it has been a very basic "use a nail vinyl" tutorial, and, honestly, it doesn't have much more. For the stars, I wanted them to be extra twinkly, so I opted for using reflective glitter instead of holografic. I also knew I wanted to play with matte top coat, so the choice was made already.

 

This picture is it after applying a coat of Reflective Taco and another coat of quick dry top coat. Taking the pictures let it dry enough time to be safe to apply a final coat of matte top coat, but the one I used was very bad so I needed to overcorrect and it messed up a bit the shape in the final picture. I'm a bit disappointed by that, but show must go on!

 

The matte top coat still allows the reflective glitters to shine, specially under a flash, and still gives the twinkle effect. And now, let's adress the elephant in the room. If I knew I wanted to use a matte top coat, why did I choose a linear holographic? Well, the answer is simple: I am a nail criminal. But in all seriousness, a linear holo with a matte top coat has a visual texture that reminds me of soft velvet, the material capirotes are made of. I let real life inform my nail art. What is this, using references?

This would be the end, but I have sad news: I broke a nail. Again. This time, I could save the length via careful reshaping and dropping the soft square nails towards rounder, oval nails. Why do I tell you this? Because I was actually planning on doing this on my actual real nails for the week. Which is kinda blasphemous in itself as I'm a guy that paints his nails and the community around this is quite traditional, but see if I care for what they think of me painting my nails:

 

In order, you have a picture of them glossy, glossy with flash, matte and matte with flash. The effect looks quite different. Also, if you're eagle eyed, yes, I did the penitents coming from my cuticle on my nails. I planned on doing it like this on myself.

This is actually the end of this blog post. As the publication date of this post, it's the official first day of this Holy Week and it will continue until next Sunday, but for that day I will have something unrelated to that celebration. Join me to see what else could I do on nails and don't forget to tell me what you'd like to view from me or show me if I inspired you to do some specific nail art!

What I wore on March 2025?

Welcome to a post that should have been published last week but something happened that difficulted it. Don't worry, it will be adressed in this post. I will start by telling you that last month my best friend brought my half order of Holo Taco. We both purchase together to save up on delivery, but we now live a bit away from each other, so we don't see irl as much. That means that when we do, I get several orders worth of nail polish, that's why I'm always way behind on their release schedule. This will explain why basically all my manicures were Holo Taco this month, although I didn't even do that many!

My first manicure of the month was March 4th, and I was feeling the need of trying out Holo Taco's Ivy League. I felt like a dark polish but not black. To add some nail art, I decided to play around with Holo Taco's Silver Flake Taco but only using it as a french tip. Honestly, I'd recommend this a lot, it doesn't require perfection and it gives the point across!

My next manicure was done March 13th. I needed a change and my heart required to use Holo Taco's Foiled Again. Do you want to read a storytime that will tell you that delulu is my way to live? Foiled Again came out on the declassified collection, after being rejected for the first Royalty Trio, right? My browser had an image of the prototype open until it came out. I looked at it every single day until it came out. And it was even better. And it was a mess because it got out of stock just when we were going to purchase, I had to wait until the following year, and then... I got two bottles. It's the first and only time I've done that for a nail polish. And I regret nothing.

I was a little nervous because what if I didn't love it? But at first swipe, every doubt vanished away. I obviously needed nail art, so I decided to play with swipes of Holo Taco's Mint Money and Holo Taco's Gift Receipt to give it a little something extra:

 

I loved the polish, I didn't love the manicure. The mint and silver lines ended up too thick, almost indistinguishable and, honestly weird of me to say this, but too shiny. Don't get me wrong, I'm a magpie, but too many shiny pigments made it difficult to distinguish them. If I repeat this, I'll probably switch a shade by Holo Taco's Blacklisted or Holo Taco's Frozen Benanas... or even changing it for another finish. Who knows?

You can say that I loved this shade so much that it was on my nails for 12 days, until it chipped, so on March 25th I did another manicure. I needed a change of pace, a warm green, so I opted for Holo Taco's Peridon't Bother Me. For nail art, I looked into my stash and found nice stickers that could be used for the french tip, as I truly wanted to look at this polish on its own, too:

The sparkles sent me so so far that I was so willing to ignore that the stickers were not of great quality and didn't lay nice on the nails. Nice concept, I'd love to recreate this, but I am unable to draw lines that narrow. Ah, maybe in the future. The stickers ended up getting off, and I ended up enjoying a basic manicure for a bit, too. And honestly, I would probably keep wearing this polish at the time of writing this post if it wasn't chipped... if not for the tragedy.

A cabinet decided to be moody and temperamental and took away two of my nails. Two. I'm still processing it. So March 30th saw my last manicure of the month, after shortening all my nails for the second time in two months. I can't win. I wanted to play with a glitter so I went for the opposite this time, a cool toned shade, Holo Taco's Starry Eyed. Glitter makes things better when you need a boost of serotonin, right? As an accent, I drew with Holo Taco's Bottle Service a line where the visible nail line would be, so not a french but the same concept. And writing this is making me realise that I'm a bit basic and always go with variations of french tips, right? I might need to push myself out of my comfort zone more often! Anyways, the nails:

I tried my best to fish some star glitters but I didn't do really well. In any case the nails look good, even though I barely recognize them this short. Nothing bad with nails being short, I just feel mine weird this short, I'm too used to longer nails on me. They're great for scratching pets!

In any case, be ready for an April of trying to grow out my nails. Again. Pray that I don't break any nail before the summer, I have an important event then and I truly need to make them look perfect by then! So expect more nail tutorials this month and, honestly, a bit more variety in brands would also be good. I can't promise it, but I've been eyeing some nail polishes in my collection and they're calling my name! See you then!