Saturday, February 2, 2013

on 12 comments

Framed Asian characters

I have a little bit of nail art for you today.  This is a relatively easy design to create and I owe my inspiration to Aisha, who created a similar design last year when she entered my Nail Art Challenge.

To create this look I started by painting my nails with Essie Good as Gold.  I then taped off the tips of my fingers like I was doing a french tip.  I then applied my red polish (I used Pretty Serious Santa's Sunburn) and just painted it about 2mm away from the cuticle edge. It's just like painting a mini nail within your own nail.  Then, take off the tape at the bottom and you have framed nails.  I think it's much easier to paint it this way around rather than doing a red base and trying to neatly paint the gold edge. 

To finish the design I stamped some Asian characters/words (or whatever they are - I hope I'm not wearing at someone).  I prefer the stamped designs that Aisha did in her original work. I think I chose characters that are too small, plus I still suck a lining up stamps on my nails, I need more practice.




12 comments:

  1. the index and middle fingernails are super appropriate for the lunar new year!

    simple translation:
    index - fortune and prosperity have arrived. (the character is placed upside down, and the word for upside down in chinese are homophones with the word for 'arrived/ here')
    middle - enjoy the good luck and prosperity that you desire (ok, i'm a bit unclear on the translation - i've lost a lot of the nuances in the original phrase)

    ring - green
    pinky - broken signal (lol)

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  2. Awesome nails for CNY, and the colours are perfect for it. Fantastic job with the framing too!

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  3. Wow such a lovely Oriental interpretation - I had no idea how simple it could be for framed nails.

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  4. Lovely mani for the upcoming Chinese New Year celebration starting 10Feb! The way you placed the character of 'fortune 福' upside down on the index finger is exactly how we place these words on our front door - inviting 'fortune' to arrive!

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  5. Your posts never fail to impress me, and this is no exception :)
    I'm glad you didn't swear at anyone in Chinese :D

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  6. This is really pretty, I adore it! You always come up with the most gorgeous designs...love how doable this is!

    It's always a bit risky when you stamp words you can't read, lol...I always tease my friends when they get tattoos in languages they can't read, imagine if it's something completely different to what you want!

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  7. I love these nails! I've always been seriously intimidated by framed nails, though I love the look of them.

    Great job! I might have to take a stab at doing framed nails myself

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  8. I like it very much! The colours, the words: just perfect!

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  9. I love that design and amazing blog. Could you check out my blog
    www.trichums.blogspot.com

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I live in Canberra, Australia with my husband, Mr Ten and Miss Eight. My blog is all about nail polish, and a few other bits in between. You can contact me at morenailpolish@iinet.net.au