Gotta paint 'em all, Pokéballs!

Finally, the much delayed Pokéball mani post! Why is this post delayed? Because I made a major mistake - I didn't make sure I had all my supplies before I started my mani & found myself in a rough spot. 

The polishes I used to create my Pokéballs were Orly Forever Crimson, Sinful Colors Show me White & Stripe Rite in black. 


It was not until I had painted all my nails red before I realized my blunder. I must say this Orly color is beautiful & I love how smooth Orly polish goes on. I used two coats to get a nice bright red. 

I originally tried to do the white halves freehand but it looked awful. I'm a bit obsessive with detail, even though I'm still new at this I will do a finger over four or five times if necessary to get it as perfect as possible - which is why my manis can sometimes take hours. After trying the freehand I removed it, painted it red & decided to take my chances with sealing the red with a top coat. I wasn't sure how well the white would paint over the top coat but since I knew I wouldn't be able to get tape right away I didn't want the red coat to be wasted. I hate wasting polish. As I've said before I'm a college student working retail & these nicer brands of polish aren't cheap. I don't feel like I've gotten my money's worth if the mani doesn't last at least five days but I usually aim for a week. Lucky for me, the red held up until I was able to grab tape a couple days later!

I lined my tape up halfway down the nail. When taping, make sure that the edge of the tape is completely stuck to the nail. As you can see in my picture there were some bubbles in the tape but it was sealed at the end & that is all that mattered. I made especially sure to press it down tight where the side of the nail meets the skin so I didn't get bleeding. If you're doing this mani in one setting like I intended make sure your red is completely dry before you start taping.

Once the tape is sealed paint the white polish on. Make sure to cover up all the red & try to paint it on as smoothly as possible. All of the area not covered in tape should be covered. 

When I did my laser mani I let the polish dry before removing the tape. However on this one I removed the tape as fast while the white polish was still dry. I was quite happy with the result, I got a smooth nice like without bleeding. 

If your white line isn't perfect don't worry, the black line that is drawn where the white & red meet will cover up any small mistakes. For the line I decided to attempt freehand with the striper. One does not realize how much their hands are capable of shaking until attempting something like this! But the Stripe Rite did make it really easy to get a clean line. I did mine in one quick swipe to try to get as clean of a line as possible. 

Now to be accurate all we need is the the dots in the middle of the black line. This requires a larger black dot & then a white dot inside the black dot. I didn't have a dotting tool that was quite up for the challenge so I figured I would challenge myself & use the striper to freehand paint the larger dot. The result was not perfect bit better than I expected. 

For the smaller white dot I wanted a more precise shape. I know not everybody has dotting tools, especially if you're starting out like me, so I decided to test out the bobby pin method I had heard about from a couple friends. This involves using the rounded ends of a bobby pin dipped in paint to make a dot. Cool right? I decided to bend my bobby pin into a shape that served this purpose a bit more.

You could dip the pin right into the polish jar if you wish but I decided to just lightly dip the tip into the brush since it requires very little paint to make one dot. The result was actually quite nice, I was impressed.

There you have it! A relatively easy, cute mani. I chose to only do two balls as accent nails but you could paint as many or a as few as you like. 

Here they are holding Pokémon Conquest, the game that inspired them! If you're a fan of Pokémon I definatelty recommend the game, I couldn't put it down yesterday which is why this post wasn't up yesterday, sorry! This game is a crossover between Pokémon & Nobunaga's Ambition. You play a warlord with an Eevee traveling through the Ransei region with the goal of conquering all the kingdoms within the region. You can form links with new Pokémon & recruit allies to achieve this goal. I really enjoyed how it is nostalgic of classic battles but with a new twist. I think Nintendo underestimated how many people were excited for this game, when I went to pick mine up from Gamestop they told me they were only sent enough to fill preorders and had to turn people away. My sister was unable to find a copy today but I'm sure over the next couple weeks more copies will come in.