My first leopard print

Hi everyone!


Yep, you read that right... before this manicure I've never worn leopard print on my nails. Sure, I tried a few times but even a plain house cat wouldn't want the results on it's fur... but the saying goes that practice makes perfect so I decided to try again. I couldn't decide on what colors to use so I did what I always do in a situation like that: I asked my husband. He told me I should do a purple manicure, even though I wanted to do leopard print... Being the sweet wife that I am, I pulled out about 15-20 different purples and made him choose. He picked a lilac and a darker purple and that was my starting point. This is the result:

indoors, no flash

On my thumb, index and pinky you see two thin coats of OPI Funkey Dunkey, but I think I could have used one medium thick coat as it's quite opaque. My ring finger is painted with three thin coats of Colors by Llarowe Fairy Dust, a lovely pale gray scattered holo that has slightly larger bits in it that catch the light even indoors. That was the easy part of the manicure...

I think I tried to freehand leopard spots on my middle finger at least four times (make larger dots, scribble c-shapes around the dots with a different color). I definitely know the theory but as I can't even freehand a straight line the results were less than desirable to use the politically correct term, so a cotton pad and some remover gave me a clean canvas each and every time. After the last attempt I was so sick and tired of it, I actually contemplated stamping something floral on it, but fortunately my eye fell on Bundle Monster plate BM-XL08... there was leopard print on it! So I grabbed my silicone baking mat (did you get one already, Lizzy?), painted two squares with top coat, left that to dry, stamped the leopard print on the square with Hit The Bottle As Black As Night, waited for that to dry again, filled in the "spots" with Funkey Dunkey, should have waited for that to dry completely but was too impatient, smudged the spots a little by painting over the entire square with OPI Rumple's Wiggin', waited some more until that was dried, peeled it off and cut it roughly to size. I finished by painting one coat of Rumple's Wiggin' on my middle finger and as soon as that was tacky I put the decal on my nail, removed the bits that were sticking out with a brush and acetone and finished by adding a generous coat of Seche Vite on all my nails.

Here's the usual line-up:

OPI Rumple's Wiggin', OPI Funkey Dunkey, Colors by Llarowe Fairy Dust, Hit The Bottle As Black As Night

And guess what? I remembered to check out the SBBNailChallenge to see if my manicure qualified and lo and behold, 11 (Animal Print) was still unchecked... not anymore though :)

I have to admit that I felt I was kind of cheating, but I like my nails anyway :)
So what do you think? Would you consider this cheating? ;)



Colors by Llarowe Fairy Dust was bought from Nailland Hungary.
Hit The Bottle As Black As Night was bought from Hypnotic Polish.