Yesterday night a friend and I decided to go down to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for Summerfest! For anyone who doesn’t know, Summerfest is the worlds largest music festival, spanning over 11 days and hosting over 700 bands each year! It’s awesome being a Wisconsinite and having such a huge music festival right in my backyard. For more information about Summerfest you can go to http://www.summerfest.com/home/ . This was my second Summerfest, and I decided to do my nails for the occasion. I recently bought a set of nail art brushes and this seemed like the perfect time to test them out!
I started with a base coat. The thumb is two coats of silver, the ring finger is just one coat of black, and the rest are two coats of white (I later re-did the middle finger in white as well, but that was done after I took this picture).
Each finger was done with a different design to represent Summerfest. I’ll go over each finger individually. First, is the thumb. On my thumb is the Summerfest logo (just a red smiley face). This was really easy to do with a nail art brush. It took a few coats of red to get the red dark enough but it came out pretty well in the end.
On the next three fingers I tried to represent this statue just inside one of the gates (Also, you can see the Summerfest logo that I did on my thumb on the base drum of the statue).
On my index finger I decided to represent the piano. Piano keys are really simple to do. Just start by drawing two skinny lines vertically up the nail, then add to blocks to the tips of them, and done! Simple, easy, and quick!
On the middle finger I represented the guitar. Originally I had this nail painted black but the red wasn’t showing through very well against the black so I repainted it white. I started by painting a peanut shape in red at the tip of the nail. Then, I just added a line of black to the other end of the nail, traced around the outside edge of the body of the guitar, and drew a black circle in the middle of the red. Then I finished it of by adding two white lines for guitar strings. The only thing I wish I would’ve done is flip the guitar around so the neck of the guitar reached up toward the tip of the nail instead of toward my finger, because now technically it’s upside down. But, I still like it.
On the ring finger I tried to represent the drums, however it ended up looking more like a tambourine. But, it still looks okay. I started with a white circle, then traced around the outside edge of that in red. I finished it off with some silver dots and an ‘SF’ in the center of the drum.
For the pinky I just wanted to do something very generic and musical, so I just painted a bunch of music notes. To do the music notes I put a slanted line, then a vertical line and finished it off with a diagonal line downwards (it’s a lot easier to see in the picture than to describe it). When I put the top coat on some of the notes weren’t completely dry and therefore they smeared a little (which you can see in the last photo).
I finished all of these with a top coat to make them extra shiny. The nice thing about all of these is that, with the exception of the thumb, the rest of these could be used for just a music themed manicure rather than being specific to Summerfest. An all piano, or guitar, or music note manicure would be great also.
So, I have a little story to go along with this. My friend and I were waiting for the band we were going to see, MUTEMATH, to start playing. They were playing at the U.S. Cellular Connection Stage, and the cool thing about that stage is they had a giant screen where the crowd could text messages or pictures to a certain number and they would appear on the screen. So, we decided to take a picture of my nails and text it to the screen to see what would happen. Within five minutes a picture of my Summerfest nails showed up on the screen! Definetely a cool moment to see them up on a huge screen. I took a picture of the screen, but we were up in the front so it was hard to see the picture. The actual picture we texted is on the right.
Just to show how close we were to the stage, here’s a picture I took last night. You can see the corner of the screen in the upper lefthand corner of the picture. MUTEMATH was great. If you haven’t heard of them here’s a live version of one of my favorite songs by them. You should definetely check it out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5x75NeC8Hg&feature=channel&list=UL
These are the nail art brushes I used to do this manicure. The top one is what I used for the larger red designs such as the red of the guitar and the logo on the thumb. The second one is what I used for the piano and for the neck fo the guitar. The third is technically a dotting tool, but I used it for the smaller designs such as the music notes, the SF on the drum, and the strings on the guitar. The last one I used for the white circle on the ring finger.
And, finally, these are the polishes I used. The names and brands are listed below the photo. This was a long post but I hope you enjoy my Summerfest nails and think about doing something similar at some time! Leave me any comments below and have a great day!
Base Coat:
LA Colors Nail Hardener Base Coat
White:
Sally Hansen Hard As Nails- Hard to Get
Black:
Sally Hansen Insta- Dri- Night Fight
Silver Accents:
Kiss Nail Art Paint- Silver Glitter
Silver Base:
Sally Hansen Color Quick Pen- Silver Chrome
Red:
Kiss Nail Art Paint- Red
Top Coat:
Sally Hansen Insta- Dri Anti- Chip Top Coat
Polish Phanatic 