go ahead and marvel at my nails

It was bound to happen right? You can't have a major blockbuster like The Avengers come out and not expect me to plaster it all over my nails--or in this case my friend's. To be honest, as big of a superhero fan as I am (feel free to refer to my previous superhero post here), I wasn't really feeling all the hype for The Avengers like the rest of the world seemed to be. It could be because I'm right in the middle of finals week, or because Iron Man is really the only one of the Avengers I have payed much attention to over the years, or maybe in a very juvenile way it was because it outsold HP for box office sales for opening weekend... Anyway, I have yet to see it, but my friend and her boyfriend were super pumped and date-nighted it the other day, and apparently it was a hit because she wanted to Avenger her nails. After a few hours of painting, we got the result above. Trust me, after staring at The Avengers for that long you are going to want to see the movie. Therefore, I have now added that to my ever growing list of things to do once finals are over. 

So as you can probably tell, this design was about as easy as [insert some clever comparison to something that happened in the movie--give me a break I haven't seen it yet]. For this design it took a grand total of 14 butter LONDON polishes. I started with butter LONDON's nail foundation flawless basecoat. The following is a breakdown for each nail's design: 

• The Avengers Logo: I started this with a coat of Union Jack Black. Next I painted the A design using Chimney Sweep, a metallic, sooty grey. To make it stand out more, I outlined it in the blue-grey Lady Muck. 
• The S.H.I.E.L.D. Logo: I started this with a coat of Cream Tea then painted the design with Union Jack Black. 
• Hawkeye: For this hero's nail we decided to replicate the look of his helmet. The main coat was the rich purple color HRH and the block H was painted using Scoundrel. 
• Hulk: Hulk was a bit tricky to paint. We came up with a number of ideas on how to portray this hero on her nails, and ultimately decided his fist was the way to go. After a basecoat of HRH, I painted his fist with Dosh. Next, to make the hand more defined, I used British Racing Green to outline the fingers and wrist. 
• Black Widow: This design was really easy to do. All i did was paint the basecoat using Union Jack Black, then do the black widow hourglass using Come to Bed Red. 
• Thor: This one was fun to paint. It was pretty obvious that we were going to do his hammer, so we started off with a base of Union Jack Black. Next I painted the handle of the hammer using The Old Bill, a metallic bronze, and the head with Lady Muck. For dramatic effect I used Cream Tea to paint lightning coming from it, then outlined it with Victoriana, a twinkling pale blue. 
• Iron Man: We decided to do Iron Man's mask, and started with a main coat of Come to Bed Red. Next, I painted the yellow part of the mask using Cheeky Chops and The Full Monty. To finish it off I painted in the eyes and mouth with Cream Tea. 
• Captain America: For spacial reasons we decided to paint the design from Captain America's suit on the nail rather than his shield. To do this I started with a coat of Cream Tea. Next I painted the stripes down the whole nail using Come to Bed Red. I painted the top half of the nail with Blagger, then added the star using Cream Tea. 

After that I finished them all off with a coat of SV Topcoat for a glossy shine. 

Needless to say, I'm counting down until the end of finals so I can go see The Avengers. Have you seen the movie yet? Did I do them justice? 

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