Wednesday 30 October 2013

Vincent Van Gogh paraphrase

When I finished my internship at the end of this summer my team had got together to arrange a leaving present. They had over the 6 months I spent with them noticed my interest in nail art and decided to give me some proper kit. With better tools than just toothpicks I couldn't resist trying something a little more challenging: Van Gogh paraphrasing!

The idea had crossed my mind after I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam earlier during the year but thought that a toothpick might have been pushing it. With the new pens it felt worth a shot and Google provided plenty of inspiration.

I will admit, they took a long time. Was it worth? Easily. I stuck to only dots on my right hand, but was so pleased with these that I didn't particularly mind.

Halloween eyes



Halloween! Last year we both did zombie type nails with spiderwebs but somehow this year the day crept up on me. I've planned to do this design for a while and it seemed well suited to the holiday. The original inspiration, from Wah! Nails, used a darkish blue for the iris, but I felt the green one gave a better contrast. In hindsight, I think it would have been cooler to stick to green but that will have to be a note for next time!

Happy Halloween folks!

Monday 21 October 2013

Circuit nails

Many, many times have friends shared a circuit board nail design with me, requesting that I replicate it. Not only is it cool, but also related to my degree which means that I've left it until I found something I was happy with. I didn't want to start painting golden lines unless I knew what it actually did, would it be an actual circuit. I finally got around to it, but decided to keep it straightforward. 

On my left hand, I started off with three filters: band-pass, high-pass and low-pass. With the ring finger and pinky not being very big it seemed easier to show diods in parallel/series.

I posted the first picture on facebook and one of the reactions was "Not impressed at all. Needs a Bode plot" (link to Bode Plots). I considered doing that for my right hand, but decided I was too lazy and took an easy way out instead. In the picture you can see the schematic symbol for a capacitor, inductor, resistor and a battery. I decided to spend a little more time for the thumb and made a basic op-amp circuit.

Op-amps and filters are pretty neat, but I've barely touched them since second year. Well, filters are hard to avoid but op-amps easily disappear into bigger "black boxes". However, you should look them up. They are cool.

Animal vibes

Lady birds, from before autumn came!

The ring finger nail ended up a bit wonky, but I found it pretty funny. Animal designs are usually so childish that I can't do anything but love them, even if they're quite basic :)

Duck!