tribal

33DC: 3 Colour Gradient + Pattern

I’d seen these stunning nails by Coewless Polish a while back and thought of them immediately for this day of the challenge. I recently bought a matte topcoat and thought this was the perfect opportunity to try it out.
After my disaster with tribal nails earlier in this challenge I was really pleased with how these turned out and I love the matte top coat and can’t wait to use it again soon!

I used: Westferry Circus – Nails Inc, Mojito – Rituals, Pineapple Juice – Rituals, black acrylic paint, matte top coat – OPI

33DC: Tribal

I hadn’t really tried tribal nails before as it’s not a style that particularly appeals to me, although I’ve seen some really fabulous tribal nail art. Before I took my little break from nail art over the summer I thought my free hand painting skills were really improving. Now I’m not so sure…

I can’t say this is one of my best efforts and I guess tribal is something I’ll have to revisit one day with a steadier hand and better brush control. I tried to base it on this design but I think my red and orange were too close in colour and the design I chose was a bit too complex for me this time.

Never mind, looking forward to wiping this one off my nails and moving onto the next one in the challenge!

I used: Bright Psychedelic Orange – Rimmell, 1930 – Bourjois, Where’s my Chauffeur -Essie, Draycott Place – Nails Inc, Black Taxi – Nails Inc, Floral Street – Nails Inc.

Time Periods Challenge: 4 – Ancient Mayan

I was excited about this day of Llama Nails’ time periods challenge but found it really tricky. I lived in Mexico for two years and visited a lot of ruins while I lived there. Palenque is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever been to and left a lasting impression on me. I wanted to incorporate some ideas from Palenque but everything I came up with was way too detailed and difficult to do on such tiny little canvases (and they’re even tinier than they used to be – a week of sunshine, camping and scuba diving was not kind to my nails and they are in a horrific state!)

In the end I looked for border patterns used to decorate the edges of fabrics, stone etc and thought that they would work well on nails. I also borrowed the design idea from a tribal design on Lucy’s Stash. I used the colours red, yellow, white and black as these are representative of the ordinal directions in Mayan culture.

So here it is! (Excuse the short, not so pretty looking nails!)