psychedelic nail art

I knew I wanted to do something bright and psychedelic for the 1960s day of the challenge and I thought of the artist Peter Max and ended up basing my design on the psychedelic rays and stars in this trippy painting.

It was a bit of a challenging one as it required two gradients and using tape. I love gradients but I’m not particularly skilled with tape so I was a bit worried about how it would turn out. As usual my taped lines aren’t as sharp as I would have liked but I’m really happy with the overall effect and the double gradient especially!

I used: Mellow Yellow – Sally Hansen, Sensation – Color Addict, Def Defying – China Glaze, Matt Aqua – BYS, Papaya Punch – China Glaze, Take it Mint – Catrice, Do You Lilac It? – OPI, My Boyfriend Scales Walls – OPI.

The very first nail art tutorial video i ever watched was a water marbling one. I had several reactions to it – “I will never be able to do that”; “it looks amazing!” and “it looks kind of time consuming and messy…”

So I never tried it. I put it off, thinking it was difficult, messy, time consuming, out of my league. Finally I decided that on a rainy Friday afternoon when I had nothing better to do would be the perfect time to give it a try.

I watched a ton of tutorial videos! My favourites were cutepolish’s video (she must be one of my most referenced video tutorial makers!) and simplelittlepleasures’ video. nail art 101 also does a great photo tutorial.

So here are the results from my first try!

I was so thrilled! I had one nail which came out a bit bubbly and another that looked a bit dull (maybe I hadn’t cleaned all the excess polish off the water surface when I took my finger out of the water) but otherwise they looked great!

I was so excited that I wanted to have another try a couple of days later – so my Sunday afternoon was spent water marbling too!

So it turned out I was mainly wrong with my initial reactions to water marbling – I can do them, they’re no messier than sponging if you tape them well and not that time consuming – I’ve spent far longer on other designs! I was right about one thing: They look amazing!!!

I used: Mellow Yellow – Sally Hansen, Do you Lilac It? – OPI, For Audrey – China Glaze (first pic)
Baker Street – Nails Inc, Papaya Punch – China Glaze, The Last Trial – Anny (second pic)