Nail Crazies Unite - Modern Art

I combined 3 prompts for this so I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself.
April is a busy month - it's year end at work, it's a mad mani month when hundreds of people seem to have birthdays and oh yeah! Me - I am going to be 50 - if I have time I need to fit in some celebrating!
Anyway, I started with a base of A England Puck A Fairy, just one coat was enough for good coverage but beware, I didn't have gels on and this did stain a little, so gel base or double base coat next time.
I then did my fanbrush mani with Attitude Masking Tape (most silly name ever) and Barry M Flamingo.
Then I made decals on my Uber Mat with those same three colours. I tried a technique I had seen Kyong Lee do recently, and not dissimilar to the way I sometimes do my fanbrush manis but just using the polish brushes. I cut the decals into thin strips and added them to the center of each nail so the streaks were at 90 degrees to the fanbrush strokes.
Finally I stamped a scribbly image from Lina Make Your Mark 02 with A England Proserpine.
My son is doing GCSE art but I don't think he was really impressed with my efforts..never mind, I really liked them.

Lina Make Your Mark 02 with A England Proserpine.

 

 

 

 

Stamping! St David's Day mani with Pueen SE01B and TarasTalons Holo Sunshine

Well, today is St David's Day and as my husband is Welsh I thought I'd better do a St David's Day mani. After all, the internet will be filled with manis on 17th March for St Patrick's Day.
When I googled I could only find 2 St David's Day manis, I am sure there are more but here is my contribution.
In the past I have gone to some lengths to find daffodils for 1st March, so I decided that's what I'd do for this mani. I scanned all my plates to find a daffodil, and came up with just one suitable image on Pueen SE01B.
I started with a base of Attitue Masking Tape, and then painted 2 fingers and thumb of each hand with 2 coats of TaraTalons Holo Sunshine. As you know, I am not a fan of yellow, but I think now that I am experimenting more and being a bit braver, yellow is creeping out of the helmer more often!
This is quite  a soft yellow but coverage over the creamy base was good with 2 coats. I then added a dash of TarasTalons Spring which is a pale, pretty green holo.
I then stamped the daffodil image on all my nails with A England Camelot, and topcoated them.
The final step was to use the lead light technique to colour in the middle and ring fingers with TarasTalons Holo Sunshine, I coloured a small leafy area with Spring  and I did the centres of the daffs with Kleancolour Holo Orange.
It looked just a touch pale so I added some colour to the centre of the petals with an yellow gold Sharpie and that completed the look.
Despite it being yellow, I am pretty pleased with these and my husband was impressed so that's a major achievement!

St David's Day mani
with Pueen SE01B and TarasTalons Holo Sunshine

 

 

 

 

 

A2Z Series - P is for Pale

It's Thursday, so it's time for the next letter in the A2Z series, this week is P for Pale.
I am not really a pale polish wearer, except for nudes but I recently had the opportunity to buy a polish which is pale and yellow - not at all in my comfort zone but sometimes you just have to try!
Above the Curve Hufflepuff is a pale creamy yellow with tiny black glitters and a few larger black hexes. This is from the Harry Potter collection, Hufflepuff being one of the houses, apparently.
The polish is a crelly so I opted for undies rather than a huge number of coats. I used the amusingly named Attitude Masking Tape as my base - this is a warm cream, a buttermilk sort of shade which I have had in my stash for ages - it really only gets used as base but it's a nice quality and dries well.
I then added 2 coats of Hufflepuff. The larger hexes were a bit shy, but I don't particularly mind - not a huge fan of big glitters, and if they'd all stayed in the bottle I'd have been quite happy. However, despite my hatred of yellow I really like this polish, I think the fine black glitters that pepper the polish make all the difference, and the yellow is a really nice soft creamy colour. I wouldn't rank it as an all time fave in the ATC range but I like it a lot more than I expected to.
I completed the mani by stamping a sort of swirly tessellating triangle pattern from Pueen Buffet Leisure 79 in pale black - yes pale black! It might look grey, but it's just a rather wishy washy black. Perfect for the look I wanted! Saffron London polishes were recommended for stamping but the formula changed so they aren't really opaque enough. However, sometimes you want something a bit more subtle so I still think there is a place for them in my stamping box.
Overall I am really pleased with my Pale mani, not my best A2Z but certainly an improvement on last week's. I like the subtle look of the stamping combined with the glitters obscured by the crelly, and I like the grey and creamy yellow combination.

A2Z Series - P is for Pale
Above the Curve Hufflepuff, with Pueen Buffet Leisure 79

 

 

Above the Curve Hufflepuff

 

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