Triforce Nails (mini-tut)

In celebration of the 25th Anniversary, the Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddess! I painted them before I went in commemoration of 25 years of Zelda awesome.

That music was my childhood. It was hard not to cry through the whole thing...

Anyways, I promised a mini-tut, so here's the best explanation I can write up. ;

You'll need:
Whatever you want for base/top coats
black nail polish
green nail polish
gold nail polish
tape (preferably scotch)
a makeup sponge (or other high-density foam sponge)
time (preferably a lot. This likes to dry overnight halfway through)

First, base coat. Always have your base coat, especially with this, because you don't want to stain your nails! I used a crappy clear polish that I got a long time ago--LA Colors I think? Anyways, slap on whatever you want. On top of that, put down your black until it's solid. I used N.Y.C. "Black Lace Creme". I don't like it much--it's too thin and runny--but I got it ages ago and am not willing to toss out a useable bottle of polish because I'm too picky. >.>
Now for the green gradient. I didn't have any green nail polish, so I borrowed some from a friend. I remember the brand was Confetti, but I don't remember the name of the color. It's a glittery, shimmery green, and thankfully the color proper came out pretty decent in the picture. Paint on a thin strip at the end of each nail (kind of like french tips, but you don't have to be super precise here).
Now pull out your makeup sponge. Touch the tip of it to the stem of the green nail polish (the area above the brush--you don't want much polish on the sponge) and dab it on your nail. Work your way up the nail, and try to concentrate the majority of the green on the lower third of your nail. Remember that you're going to have triforces on the top of your nail! It would look a bit strange if they were overlapping with the gradient...
Once you have dabbled on the gradient to your satisfaction, seal it up with a top coat. This is very, very important. We're going to be masking things out with tape, and you don't want to ruin the gradient you just made!

Now, let everything cure, preferably overnight. Masking things out is kind of a pain, and you really don't want to mess up the bottom layers because you were in a hurry.

If you really can't wait overnight, 30 minutes is a alright amount of time, I think, but don't take my word on that.

This step is going to start off remarkably similar to painting chevrons, so if you need some pictures, google is your friend.
Take your scotch tape and tear it into sections about 3/4" or 1.5cm long. Now tear the scotch tape at the little teeth marks into skinny strips. You want the edges to be as flat as possible for straight edges on your triforce. Place them as though you were painting chevrons on your nails (aka, outline two sides of the triangle. The base of the triangle is your cuticle). If you have very rounded cuticles, you can either place another strip of tape at them, or you can just have a rounded triforce. It's up to you.
Now to paint them.
I don't have straight gold nail polish, so I used "S-Age is Just a Number", by Sephora by OPI. It comes out of the bottle gold (so disappointing! It's a nice gold, but the bottle was so gorgeous...), but it turns a very subtle green when viewed at an angle. It seemed appropriate for this. (:
You want to paint each triangle separately, like so:
-> /\ ->
sweeping the brush *across* the tips of the large triangle. This ends up with things being more even.

According to chevron-painting, once you've painted it, you should pull off the tape while it's still wet to prevent tearing. Well, I'm not that fast. I very carefully pulled the tape off at a 45 degree angle (it's the magical angle for pulling things off of things. Stickers, ripping paper, decals, tape, everything. It's pretty great.), and it came off alright. I went very slowly, though, and prayed a lot.

Once you've done all that, top coat it! And don't forget to wrap the tips! I use Revlon's "Quick Dry Top Coat". It's been a week now, and one nail has a tiny chip from my picking at things.
So really, top coat+wrapped tips is awesome.

Enjoy your newly Triforced nails!