Quilted & leaves

Hi everyone!


I've been contemplating skipping the Q as I don't like the result of my Sunday experiment one bit... but it has been on my nails (past tense, you didn't think it would last very long if I didn't like it, right?) so it's going to be on my blog. So without further ado I present my Q manicure: quilted nails (or rather one quilted nail as one is more than plenty ;)

indoors, no flash

I still don't know why I didn't think of something normal for the Q but for some reason I thought it would be nice to try out quilted nails so I checked out some tutorials and I was still under the impression it would be a good idea...

I started out by painting my middle finger with two thin coats of Barry M Prickly Pear and left that to dry while I painted my index with two coats of OPI Alpine Snow and my other three digits with two coats of El Corazon Prisma 423/32.

I continued with my middle finger by cutting six pieces of striping tape and stuck them to my nail in a diamond like pattern. When all that was done I slapped on a thick coat of Prickly Pear and removed the tape immediately. The first few seconds it looks pretty good but unfortunately Prickly Pear has great self leveling qualities so the gaps started to be filled with polish and I started poking at said polish with an orangewood stick to push it back. When it finally decided to stay put I put little dabs of clear polish on the intersections and pushed a tiny little silver bead in it to accentuate the quilted look.

I finished my manicure by double stamping my index with an image of small leaf-y vines from LilyAnna plate LA-03 using first Prisma 423/32 and after that Hit The Bottle As Black As Night and a coat of Seche Vite on all nails but the quilted one, to keep the effect as visible as possible (I added topcoat after I took pictures and it was definitely a good decision to take the pictures before doing that as my nail turned out all bumpy with some silver thingies stuck on it... not a good look!)

indoors, no flash

When the silver beads started to come off a couple of hours later I decided enough was enough. I removed the polish from my middle finger and repainted it using the pitch black creme Cirque Colors Memento Mori... much better!

The polishes I used (except for Memento Mori but I'm sure you know what that bottle looks like):

El Corazon Prisma 423/32, OPI Alpine Snow, Barry M Prickly Pear, Hit The Bottle As Black As Night

Creating quilted nails was a fun experiment but next time (IF there's going to be a next time) I'm going to use a one coater or maybe even a stamping polish so I won't have to use thick layers and hopefully the tape leaves some gaps without me poking and pushing and making a huge mess in general. The lighting in my pictures is weird though. In real life Prickly Pear and Prisma 423/32 are pretty close in color and definitely don't differ as much as they do on camera... oh well, I'll just add that to the list of miraculous things that camera of mine does ;)

What do you think? Nail fail or HUGE nail fail? ;)

The other ladies did a way better job at the Q. You can see them here:

ABC-Challenge - Q

Hit The Bottle As Black As Night and El Corazon Prisma 423/32 were bought from Hypnotic Polish.