Subtle stamping on shorties

Hi everyone!


I guess you already figured out from the title this is my manicure for the letter S in the ABC Challenge. I had a completely different idea but unfortunately my side job as official gravity tester interfered (note to self: do NOT try to catch stuff with your fingertips if you're sporting (too) long nails). The manicure I had in mind really called for long talons so I'll be saving that for later, when my nails are back to hardly-able-to-type-length and I decided to go for subtle stamping on my shorties:

indoors, no flash

I started out by painting all of my nails with two thin coats of OPI CIA = Color is Awesome, an absolutely gorgeous super dark blue leaning teal, and I chose a pretty damask image from MoYou London Fashionista 08 to stamp on my nails and the same image from MoYou London Fashionista 07 for my thumbs as those are too large for the smaller images, even after the hack job.

Take 1 for the nail art: I tried to stamp using OPI Matte Top Coat. Didn't work at all since the stamped image showed up white-ish instead of just the same color but matte and even waiting for it to dry completely didn't improve much. So I decided to paint my entire nails with the matte top coat and stamp with a glossy top coat.

Take 2: I tried to stamp with a glossy top coat. Turned out a little nicer than the matte top coat but the image I chose had too many thin lines that didn't transfer... so I covered my entire nail with the glossy top coat, waited for that to dry and painted another coat of matte top coat on top.

Take 3: I was looking through my stash to find a slightly darker or lighter color when it dawned on me: the most subtle stamp I could think of was by stamping with the base color! The base was matted already so the stamp would turn out glossy, assuming it would work as I envisioned it... and I think it worked out pretty good. Of course no top coat or the entire effect would be ruined ;)

Here's a picture of the one color I used:

OPI CIA = Color is Awesome

It's quite a step out of my comfort zone to have a mono colored manicure but I do kind of like it. I didn't expect it to be as visible as it is in the picture, but I'm not complaining. It definitely was less visible in real life unless the light hit it just right. And as there is no top coat on the stamped image I don't expect it to last very long so I can jump back into my comfort zone pretty soon, but I'm going to enjoy my almost-plain nails until then.

Do you like it? Or is it too subtle for you?

The other S manicures are these:

ABC-Challenge - S