Friday Triad: inspired by Urban Nail Art

Hi everyone,


yep, I've managed to drag myself away from all the real life stuff that has been keeping me uber busy to create a manicure inspired by this stunning design by Lou 'Urban Nail Art' that Juanita picked for us. I have to admit I actually thought about not posting my manicure as I totally didn't do the original any justice... but I've shown nail fails before and this probably won't be the last either ;)

I can almost hear you wondering what this has to do with the original inspiration. Well, more than you might think! Let me tell you: sparkly base (alright, mine isn't super sparkly as I don't have any of those fancy holo powders but it is very sparkly, so even my holo sparkle killing camera wasn't able to defeat this beauty), negative space floral image so the sparkly base actually becomes the color of the flowers, and reverse stamping to get the image on my nails. I just had to tone down the sparkles on my thumb, index and pinky because... you know, work and frowning managers.

Anyway, read on for the details!

I started out by painting my middle and ring finger with two coats of Different Dimension Kiss Me Under The Light Of A Thousand Stars, which is part of the I Do trio that my husband gave me as a late Valentine's gift... or was it an early anniversary gift? Whatever it was, the three polishes are gorgeous so you'll definitely see more of them ;) Kiss Me is a silver holo microglitter in a slightly tinted base so it leans towards gray and it dries with a textured surface, kind of like a very fine PixieDust.

After a coat of Seche Vite to smoothen the surface I painted my thumb, index and pinky with two thin coats of Hema 404 Hold the Dike, a medium gray creme and added a coat of Seche Vite as well to make sure I would smear nail polish everywhere when I was working on the art part of this manicure.

For the accent nails I used an image from Lina plate 4 Seasons Spring 01 and Hit the Bottle As Black As Night, the best black stamping polish I know. I picked up the image on my stamper, colored in the hearts of the flowers with Hit the Bottle Snowed In, As Black As Night's perfect white sister, and the leaves were done in Hold the Dike. I waited about half a minute to let it dry a bit and slowly rolled the image on my nail. I repeated the same process for the second accent and all it took after that was some clean up and another coat of Seche Vite and I was ready to grab my camera to take pictures.

Here's one with direct light to try and bring out the sparkles some more.

And of course I gave the polishes their place in the spotlight as well. As you can see, Kiss Me has a really strong holo effect, even in the bottle under normal light:

Different Dimension Kiss Me Under The Light Of A Thousand Stars,
Hema 404 Hold the Dike, Hit the Bottle As Black As Night, Hit the Bottle Snowed In

When I saw the picture Juanita picked I quickly decided to do a monochrome manicure because I knew I could never equal that gorgeous holo powder that Lou used. Looking at the pictures I wish I had used black instead of gray on my thumb, index and pinky but I just know the looks I would get if I showed up with mostly black nails at work, so gray it is ;) I can't wait to see what Michelle and Juanita created. I'm pretty sure both of them will have done bright colors and beautiful holo powder bases (I really have to get me some of that). Want to see if I'm right? Just click on Michelle or Juanita and you'll be transported to their site immediately!



Hit the Bottle As Black As Night and Snowed In were bought from Hypnotic Polish.