Tri Polish Tuesday: Pink Blue And Yellow Leopard Print

This is the last of the pink, blue and yellow Tri polish manis and it’s been a fun and versatile combination to work with. I was trying to think of a design or technique I hadn’t visited in a while and thought of leopard print. It’s always a design I worry might look a bit trashy but when I get it on my nails I really love it and don’t care if anyone thinks it’s trashy! I particularlyenjoy wearing it in bright colours so I thought I’d chose some bold shades of pink, blue and yellow for this one.

I also learnt a valuable lesson doing this mani. When I do a gradient I usually put down a white base, or the lightest colour in my gradient, but I sometimes get bored of waiting for all those layers to dry before I actually start on the gradient. So I thought maybe it would just be quicker to build up the layers of sponging without a base colour. It isn’t. It took ages! And the pink built up and became opaque much quicker than the yellow so I worried about it getting uneven. I have no idea how many layers of sponging I did but I am pretty positive that it was no shortcut!

Anyway… On to the nails!

I used: Candy Floss – Ciaté, Sumner Place – Nails Inc, Incognito in Sausalito – OPI

Twin post: Snakeskin nails with the Bubbly Brunette

For March’s twin post our theme was animal print and I was paired up with the lovely Christina from the Bubbly Brunette and assigned snakeskin nails. Christina’s blog is filled with a lot of swatches of a great range of polishes and some fantastic nail art – check her out!

I came across this video tutorial which shows four ways to get a snakeskin effect on your nails. We decided to go with natural colours with a metallic scaly feel and as we both owned Just Spotted the Lizard by OPI decided to incorporate that polish which seemed very appropriate.

I was really keen to try the mesh/netting technique and went out and bought a variety of meshes to try out. It looked so easy in the video but I had a bit more difficulty with it than I anticipated. Some meshes were too absorbent and the polish soaked into them. I tried lightly sponging the polish on but that tended to result in an extremely subtle and often patchy look which wasn’t what I was going for. When I used a brush the look was better but a lot of polish either soaked through the mesh or got underneath the mesh when I wasn’t careful enough with the bristles.

I was starting to get a bit frustrated so I ended up using a sponging method but then painting bits of it back in where it looked too feint or patchy. Once I had my brush out I couldn’t resist trying to improve the design by adding a rough brown outline to make the scales stand out a bit more. (I’d wanted to use a medium brown coloured polish as the base colour originally but just couldn’t get the scales to stand out over it, so sponged white and pale brown over the base and then sponged the scales on. Adding the brown outline made me happy to be bringing the brown I’d originally wanted to use back into the design.)

So it ended up a freehand design based on a pattern of sponging through mesh. I liked the result but didn’t feel it was instantly recognisable as snakeskin which is a shame.

Make sure you go and check out what Christina did for her snakeskin nails over at the Bubbly Brunette

And check out animal print twin posts from the other members of our group being posted this week here:

33DC: A Mani with 2 Patterns

I had several ideas for this mani but couldn’t get over the idea that two patterns on one nail would end up looking too busy and not very attractive. I thought about trying the “tribal” nail art again but while looking for animal print inspiration I stumbled upon this fab two pattern mani by Kayla Shevonne and it was exactly the balance I’d been dreaming of (2 interesting patterns that don’t end up clashing or making your eyes feel funny) so I decided to recreate it.

I still had the Zoya. Blu on from the day before and was enjoying wearing it so used it as my base colour. I really like the result with the two animal prints together and feel like all the searching for inspiration was definitely worth it this time!

I used: Blu – Zoya, Just Gorgeous – Anny, My Boyfriend Scales Walls – OPI, Black Taxi – Nails Inc.

April 30 Day Challenge: Day 11 – Animal Print

This is my first time trying animal print nails. I know it’s a popular one to do but I’ve never really been an animal print person. When I saw it was on the April challengeI thought I’d give it a go as challenges are all about trying new techniques and things you might not usually do yourself.

After my disappointing result for Ancient Greece in the Time Periods Challenge yesterday, I felt pretty pleased with these. For a first attempt I think they look good and were easy and not too time consuming to do. I got my inspiration from Beautopia Nails’ version of Rihanna’s tiger print mani.

I used: Top of the Ice-Stream – Essence, Kalahari Kiss – China Glaze, Cadogan Square – Nails Inc, Brazilian Bikini – Sephora, Black – Decorative Nail.