Friday Triad: inspired by @Vernimage

Hi everyone!


It's that time of the month again when Michelle, Juanita and I show you what our imagination does with (or to ;) a manicure one of us picked out. This month we're doing my choice, a beautiful manicure by @Vernimage. Of course Michelle and Juanita are way more organized than I am so they finished their manicure weeks ahead of the deadline but I didn't do so bad either as I managed to complete my nails last weekend. I even took pictures which was a good thing as I woke up the next morning with a snapped off tip of my middle finger on my pillow and a nasty scratch on my cheek from the remaining pointy edge <insert some choice words that my mom would not approve of>

Anyway... this is my result, a coral-and-peach version:

I started out by test stamping a bajillion flowers, butterflies etc. with a ridiculous amount of brown, black, blackened brown and even the darkest blackened red polishes to find

1. the perfect picture to use (as the picture I intended to use was way too big for my nails, no matter which way I turned it),
2. the perfect polish to stamp with.

When I'd driven my poor husband just about mad with test stamps for him to look at I finally settled on Moyra plate 06 Florality 1 (yep, the image used in the original manicure, just a slightly different part of it) and OPI Shh... It's Top Secret! as stamping polish.

Of course after that I had to pick out colors for the leaves and the flowers so more and more polish bottles were pulled from their storage. I'll spare you all the details of the polishes I considered and just name the ones I picked: Fancy Gloss Raging Monster for the leaves, Colors by Llarowe Hello Starfish, China Glaze Not In This Galaxy and Glam Polish Frost Flower for the flowers and Catrice Zensibility C03 Zensible Rose and Catrice Zensibility C02 Sheer Silence for the base. Oh, and ILNP My Private Rainbow (L) for extra sparkles.

Here's a picture of my nails with flash, so you can see the sparkles a bit more:

indoors, with flash

First I did the decals. I painted nail sized rectangles of OPI Top Coat (my go to polish when making decals) on my mat and let that dry. After it was completely dry I stamped the image I picked using Shh... It's Top Secret, a lovely dark dark dark chocolate brown that is opaque enough to be used for stamping. When that was dry I colored in the leaves with Raging Monster, an oh so pretty green holo, and a teeny tiny brush. The outer parts of the flowers were filled in with Hello Starfish, an almost neon coral holo. I used Frost Flower, peach holo, and Not In This Galaxy, peach-coral holo, to fill in the remaining part of the flowers and trying to create some sort of gradient in it. The stems in the center of the flowers were filled in with Shh... It's Top Secret! as I couldn't think of another color I liked with the ones I'd already used. Usually I would finish with a layer of the polish the decal was supposed to be placed on but since I wanted to use a gradient as a base I painted a generous layer of top coat (the not quick dry kind) to make it a bit sturdier and pushed the mat-with-decals to an empty space on my desk to let the decals dry completely.

The sort of gradient in the flower is better visible in this macro, taken with flash:

indoors, with flash

The actual painting started with two thin coats of Zensible Rose on my pinky, a lovely peach polish that could probably cover in one thick coat but I don't do thick unless it concerns Seche Vite ;) The bottle (as you can see below) has a very long thin cap that may seem awkward to work with but when I was painting my nails I kind of wished more polishes would have a cap like this as it worked great. My other nails were all painted with two thin coats of Sheer Silence, the pale peach sister of Zensible Rose, with the same great formula and weird-but-wonderful brush. I used a sponge to create a gradient with Zensible Rose (at my cuticle) and Sheer Silence (at my tip) on my ring finger, painted two coats of ILNP My Private Rainbow (L) on all fingers and applied the decal on top of the gradient. One last coat of Seche Vite and my nails were ready for their photoshoot.

Here are the bottle shots. I had to split them up in two as I couldn't fit all bottles next to each other in my light box.

The polishes I used in the decal:

OPI Shh... It's Top Secret!, Fancy Gloss Raging Monster, Colors by Llarowe Hello Starfish,
China Glaze Not In This Galaxy, Glam Polish Frost Flower

And the ones that made up the base:

ILNP My Private Rainbow (L), Catrice Zensibility C02 Sheer Silence, Catrice Zensibility C03 Zensible Rose

I was so happy with this manicure! I'd been thinking about it for weeks and I'd decided early on I wanted to do different colors than blue and green. But that's where my inspiration stopped and I was just about ready to throw in the towel when I had only days left to come up with something. It was only when I figured out what image to use that everything just seemed to come together and I could picture the finished manicure in my head. Maybe next time I should just sit down and start painting and see what happens... or maybe not as I don't think this turned out too shabby, right?

I have to remember to be more careful while sleeping though because I would have loved to wear this manicure a lot longer than one evening...

If you're like me, wondering what Juanita and Michelle did, just click their names and all will be revealed :)


China Glaze Not In This Galaxy was bought from Pretty Polish.
Fancy Gloss Raging Monster was bought from Mei Mei's Signatures.
Colors by Llarowe Hello Starfish, Glam Polish Frost Flower, ILNP My Private Rainbow (L) were bought from Hypnotic Polish.