what do you do when it's so hot outside even the birds don't want to twitter and the cats don't want to bask in the sunshine? I know what I did... I stayed inside and made decals (and made sure to drink lots of water of course :) And afterwards I used them to create this manicure:
I started out by painting several patches of OPI Top Coat (the normal kind, not the fast drying one) on my mat and waited for those to dry. I stamped one of them using the blue I'd decided on, OPI Keeping Suzi at Bay (KSaB), but that turned out to be a bit lighter in color than I liked so I searched through my stamping polishes for one with the right color. Colour Alike 45 Rainy Mood is close to KSaB but since it's a stamping polish it showed up on my mat just as it looked in the bottle... score! I used Rainy Mood to stamp a single flower from Born Pretty BP-L029 on the top coat patches and waited until it was dry. I filled in some of the flowers with piCture pOlish Bardot, a lovely peach with subtle scattered holo glitters, and the others were filled with KSaB that I diluted with a little bit of acetone so the stamped lines would still be visible and the result would look a bit like a watercolor painting (not sure if I succeeded but that's what I was aiming for ;) I finished my decals with a coat of OPI Alpine Snow to make them a bit easier to handle and to hide any bubbles that could appear while applying them to my nails.
<insert various unnamed activities while the decals were drying>
After about an hour or so, I continued my manicure by painting my thumb, index and pinky with two thin coats of KSaB, three thin coats of Bardot on my middle finger and two thin coats of Alpine Snow on my ring finger. A coat of Seche Vite helped dry everything and when that was done I peeled the decals off the mat, cut them to size and arranged them on my ring finger. A last coat of Seche Vite to melt everything together and voila... done!
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| piCture pOlish Bardot, OPI Alpine Snow, OPI Keeping Suzi at Bay, Colour Alike 45 Rainy Mood |
I really love making decals. When I'm working on them I can easily walk away to do something else that needs to be done without having to worry about denting or smudging. After I'm finished with whatever took priority the decal is still waiting on my desk for me to finish. And (added bonus) I can easily create the design for both hands with my dominant hand :) I've tried to make decals in advance and use them way later but by that time they were stuck to the zip lock bag I put them in... so that wasn't a big success. Do you like making and using decals? And have you figured out a way to keep them for longer periods of time?
piCture pOlish Bardot was bought from The Nailista Shop (now closed).
Colour Alike b.A Rainy Mood was bought from Hypnotic Polish.