Vampire: The Masquerade nail vinyls!

So I set out to make a present for my dear acquaintance Jacob Burgess, and this is the result! I wanted to show off both the final results, and how I got there... But that would be far too many images to dump into one Discord or Patreon post. So instead, here's a whole page dedicated to this project! Extra special thanks to my dear friend Meredith Gerber for the advice while I was finishing up the final photos! Thanks also to my husband Alahmnat for letting me paint their nails, even though the photos didn't get used, and for the extensive CSS help.

Where we ended up:

An image of Oscelot's nails close up, painted with black holo nail polish on all nails except the pointer finger, which is black with a holographic v5 Vampire: the Masquerade ankh in the middle. The text in the top left says Burgess Rainbow in the Dark A look designed by Oscelot. The Text in the bottom right says Shown: Vinyls in Vampire v5. Polishes in Holo Taco One Coat Black, ILNP Cityscape, ILNP Mega S. Topped with Seche Vite.

Starting off strong with the signature look I created for Jacob. This is the piece I agonized on most! Both nail photos have extensive retouching to repair minuscule chips and most extensively to hide how dry my hands are right now, or how much of a klutz with a brush I actually am. I very explicitly did not touch the designs on either photo, though. I spent probably 6 hours just retouching these, then more time for colour grading (Especially on the Burgess piece, which had to be taken in full sun in order to get the holo to sparkle. I am white as a damn ghost, so full sun is... rough to photograph me in. Then the addition of the light leak effects and other small modifications (darkening the background, adding texture to the background, etc) means that I was working on the three final "ads" off and on for a week!

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An image of Oscelot's nails close up, painted five different ways. All looks have a black background, then from the thumb to pinky they go sparkly red, matte black with a shiny black design, a bi flag glitter gradient, green, and gold. The text proclaims 5 vinyls, 5 ways! A list follows, with headers in the style of each look. Starting with Blood - Vinyl: Vampire v5, Polish: ILNP Royalty. Shadow - Vinyl: Camarilla, Polish: Holo Taco Matte as Hell. Bi-ckett's - Vinyl: Beckett's, Polish: Holo Taco Purple Slushie, Holo Taco Magenta Jelly, Essie Wild Card 1582. Verdant Anarchy - Vinyl: Anarchy, Polish: ILNP Reminisce. Golden Alliance - Vinyl: Independent Alliance. Polish: LA Colors Gold Mine CNP638. All looks use Holo Taco One Coat Black

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This image reads: What are Nail Vinyls? How do I use them? So, what the heck are nail vinyls? They're basically stickers that go on your nails when you paint them. They allow you to leave part of your nail uncovered by the next coat of polish - like reverse stencils! To use nail vinyls: 1) Paint your nails with your base coat, whatever polish (if any) you want to show through where you place the vinyl, and a top coat. Allow your nails to dry for a good 30 minutes, just to be safe! 2) Peel the vinyl off its sheet (tweezers can help with this and will keep your vinyl sticky), and press it firmly to your nail wherever you want it. If you get it in the wrong spot, just pull it up and restick it. Be sure to press down any small details firmly, straight down against your nail. 3) Press the sprue for your nail vinyl down against your nail, as well as against your cuticle so there's no polish bleed that can mess up the top of your design. 4) Paint over the nail vinyl, pull it up (carefully!) as soon as possible, and paint over the sprue shadow before the original coat dries. 5) Get your top coat on there after it's dried, et voila! Awesome nail art with very little effort. Some answers to questions you may have: Yes, nail vinyls (these ones at least) are made of removable vinyl. This makes them more durable than stickers in the face of any watery nail polishes or times you may need to pull up and restick them. If you're having bleed issues, please double check that you've pressed the vinyl down firmly. Assuming that you have already done so, a few ideas: 1) If your nails are textured, a ridge filling base coat may help greatly with bleed. 2) Be sure your nail is free of excess oils before pressing the vinyl onto it. Oil is the enemy of sticky! 3) Always use at least a base coat on your nail before using a vinyl, to even out the surface. If you're having a hard time pulling up the vinyl, consider keeping a toothpick at hand to slide under thin areas. Using a pair of fine tipped tweezers can also help. Please be sure to pull the vinyl in the direction it's laying, to avoid breaking any thin areas. If you have any issues with polish

This image took the least time, since there was no retouching to do. The hardest part was compressing all the information into a 4x6 image! I also added the light leak in layers and darkened the background down. To ensure I got the same colour temperature and texture as the other images, I used the same background.

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A bonus video that I took while trying to get photos!

How it started:

The final product was the end result of about two weeks of work, plus an extra few days to work on a card - I started with an idea that ended up being far too intricate and small for the Cricut, then switched to the opposite with a minimalist moogle card you'll see at the bottom of this page. For the vinyls, I started by creating vectors of each style of ankh that I wanted to create, and then scaled them down and started testing. Every one required additional tweaking to go to smaller scale, which meant I ended up with a great many files...

An image of my Vectornator screen, showing 11 files, two of which are just for the envelope sleeve, the rest are for the ankhs

None required more tweaking though, than Beckett's ankh. It started with full detailing and...

An image of one of my test cuts. Prominently shown is Beckett's ankh, the centre of which is just a ripped up pile of vinyl because there was too much detail.

It didn't go so great. The Cricut just couldn't handle that much detail in such a tiny space, understandably.

Multiple iterations later though...

A pile of all the prototypes and cut bits of paper.

The fruits of my labor: three sheets full of ankh vinyls, already weeded (having extraneous pieces removed) and ready to go.

I finally got them finished and ready to go! I absolutely had no idea what a huge project I was getting myself in for, but I'm very proud of the results. Scroll on for pictures of the finished box!

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The finished envelope is black, with cutout sections containing the Vampire v5 ankh and the word Vinyls. The finished vinyls slot perfectly into it.

The finished vinyls! Creating the envelope for this was a separate, but much smaller project. I created the original design in Vectornator, then ran a few prototypes to get the cuts the right size. After I had the final envelope cut, I taped it together with double sided tape, and added red cardstock inserts behind the openings. You can also see a test painting on my thumb of the Beckett's design. I painted all of them at least once to ensure the design was solid at smaller sizes. Beckett's and the Anarch ankhs were the biggest problem children, and required extensive changes to be able to work at such a small scale.

The finished box! Description below.

Finally, the finished box! Complete with a message Moogle card which I custom designed in Vectornator, then cut on my Cricut. To finish it off, I painted an insert of watercolour paper with watercolours to glue into it. After that was dry, I pasted in a piece of paper with the letter on the inside. The box also contains bottles of Seche Vite quick dry top coat, Holo Taco One Coat Black, ILNP Cityscape, and ILNP Mega (S). (No, these aren't affiliate links, but I DO think they're great products. I would never have sent them to a friend if I didn't think they were the best of the best!)

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, be sure to follow me for upcoming nail vinyls and other work on Patreon!

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All art copyright Oscelot 2021. Moogles and Vampire: The Masquerade are the intellectual property of their respective owners.