Monday, April 11, 2011

Spring Flowers!

Hello!

Today I have the manicure that I did Friday night and ended up wearing all weekend, out of laziness. This is my favorite mani so far that I posted (my favorite so far is the one I'm wearing right now and might post tomorrow... it'll be up eventually!!) This was inspired by Stacie at Kawaii Nail Art who is awesome and very sweet and does amazing nail artwork and her spring flowers design here. I loved this sooo much when I saw it and knew I had to try it since it looked easy enough. I didn't have the same colors she had (I like her color scheme better actually) so I used my new peach colored franken, a mix of the franken and a yellow, pink and blue with a similar base color as she did. For my franken, which I'm calling Pretty in Peach, I used the remainder of my bottle of Sinful Snow Me White (which is CRAP) and added a good amount of Sinful Boogie Nights (a bright coral jelly), a few drops of my yellow (the Color Institute Singin' Like a Canary) and about the same amount as Boogie Nights of SH XW Sun Kissed, when it was looking too pink. I'm very happy with what came out, its sheer but I like it. I was going for a dupe of China Glaze Peachy Keen...

For my base color, I used 2 coats of SH ID Blue-Away (I bet you're all sick of this color!!!) and dotted on the flowers using Pretty in Peach and Wn'W Tickled Pink. I did the centers with a mix of Singin' Like a Canary and Pretty in Peach. After finishing one hand, I decided the flowers didn't really stand out at all and decided to re-do the pink ones using a darker pink with blue centers for the peach ones. I grabbed Sinful Boom Boom and Fly Away from Amanda and added a few drops of Tickled Pink to Boom Boom and a few drops of Blue-Away to Fly Away (hahaha!!) to get a lighter pink and blue which I used to redo the pink flowers, leaving the centers as they were. And then I re-dotted the peach flower centers with the blue. *Whew* Hope you all followed that okay! Then I did 2 coats of my favorite top coat to smooth it out.

(You don't have to read this... this is just tips on doing the flowers.) This is actually very easy to do if you have a steady hand (which I don't, surprisingly enough, I have a tremor like one of those little dogs, haha!!) I find that if you grip the dotting tool very low down on the handle, you get a lot more control which make this easier as well as using a palette (I use the plastic container lid from my polish box) to put a puddle of polish first and then dip your dotting tool in it. I also dip in the puddle, swirl it a little, and then make a few dots on the palette to get rid of the big blob of polish you'll get on the tip. The trick is a lot of practice (groan) and learning what is the right amount of polish to get on the tool. Also, try supporting the finger you are painting with your other fingers to hold it steady and try to bring the nail as close as you can to your face.

So here's how these came out:


Oh and these are all in natural light (there was no sun) and please try to ignore the chip on my index and the roughness around my cuticles...


See, I hid the chip here, haha!


My thumb turned out to be my favorite (excuse my gross skin)


And then this was my right hand which came out pretty well. I think I'm pretty close to being ambidextrous... my ring just had a smudge which I tried to smooth out and it ended up looked lumpy.

I got quite a few compliments on these since I went to my cousin's party Friday night and people kept grabbing my hands and asking how I did it!! I also got a lot questions asking whether my nails were real which is funny since they're not very long...

My mom loved this so much that she wanted the same thing. I did a similar design on her using a lilac colored base with pink, purple and blue flowers with white centers but forgot to take a picture and I'm back at school now... :(

Oh and here's a funny picture of my kitty Synyster in my dog's crate/cage, sleeping.


I just found him there... excuse all my dad's junk in the foreground...

Hope you have a great day/night and thanks for looking!!

Fiona

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you so much for your comment! It really means a lot to us and we cherish each one. We read and will try to respond each and every one. Please feel free to ask questions (we don't bite!) but please no spamming. Thank you!