Langerhans Cells Inspired Nail Art: Nail Art Ideas Link Up January Challenge: Health and Wellness

I have always wanted to participate in a nail art challenge but they have always seem so impossible to me with 2-3 different designs per week!! Jacqui at Crafty nail recently let me know about the "Nail Art Ideas Linkup" that she organises each month with Brijit from Brijit’s Digits and Jemma from Eeeek! Nail Polish!  . These challenges are very chilled with just four designs per month, and no pressure to complete them all- Perfect!!! They are also very creative ideas, a bit different from the common themes you see in nail art challenges such as blue, dots, marble, etc :)


This month the first theme is health and wellness. Being a PhD student involved in medical research I immediately wanted to try some histology inspired nails. In my honours year I was lucky enough to do a lot of fluorescent immunohistochemistry which I imaged on a confocal microscope which is able to image very thin slices of an image and even build 3D images of whatever specimen your working with! The cells I studied were Langerhans cells which are dendritic cells which reside in the epidermis of the skin and have long arms that search for antigens and are the first step in triggering an adaptive immune response. Anyway...enough of that- all you need to know is that they are very beautiful! Here is some close up images (A=unactivated, B= activated). Sorry about the grainy image- its straight from my thesis!! The red and yellow cells are the Langerhans cells and the blue cells are the nuceli of the keratinocytes or skin cells :)

 And here is a less zoomed image- aren't they pretty??? (Yup I'm pretty proud of these pictures haha)

Ok and now for my attempt to recreate them on my nails :)

 I painted my nails first with OPI Black Onyx, and then with a polish I made to look like the blue 'hoescht' stained keratinocytes which has blue circular glitters and some holographic small glitters just for fun ;)

I then used white acrylic paint to paint the cells so they would stand out over the black. I made sure the cells arms weaved between the keratinocytes. I used China Glaze Sun-Kissed and China Glaze Shell-o to colour the cells.

I think I managed some likeness to the real thing but the arms needed to be finer. What do you think? Thanks for stopping by, and if you are interested in the nail art ideas link up (NAIL) follow this link.