Stripey Flowery manicure (aka the one Michelle made me do)

Hi everyone!


I had so much fun doing the 52 Week Nail Art Challenge last year, so I had planned to join again this year. Unfortunately between the kitchen woes, work and all other stress inducing things, I didn't have the time to do so (or even to post here on a regular basis... 😢)

Recently when Michelle (from Ordinary Misfit) and I were chatting, she showed me the gift bag that was the inspiration for the Spring/Autumn manicure that she wanted to do for week 38. I googled the image and I think this is it: <link> (and if it isn't, it looks an awful lot like it). I immediately loved it and asked her if I she would mind if I gave it a try too. I didn't intend to post it but she told me I definitely had to and so I'm doing just that... may I present my Stripey Flowery manicure:

I started out by picking the plate for the stripes. In the image, the stripes aren't perfect so I looked for a plate with stripes like that. I chose Lina x @shannasnailadventures collab plate. The butterflies were easy as well, they're from Lina 4 Seasons Spring 01. The flowers... are you ready for this? The flowers are freehanded!!!

Yep, you read that right. I freehanded the flowers! For years I've seen manicures with small freehanded roses and I've always wanted to try it myself. And as I had an entire afternoon of monitoring a running process and not much else to do I decided to finally give it a go.

I started out with the base: two coats of offwhite Barry M Cotton and the stripes from Lina x @shannasnailadventures collab plate stamped with black Painted Polish Midnight Mischief. A coat of Seche Vite to protect it and I was ready to try my hand at the flowers.

I started by creating little irregular but somewhat circular patches using Zoya Liza, a soft red creme. I then grabbed a nail art brush and carefully painted C-shapes in the patches using Zoya Veronica, a dark red cream. Last but not least I mixed a drop of Liza with a drop of Cotton to get a lighter shade to paint in some highlights. The leaves were painted with Zoya Jace. I finished my gift bag nails with stamped butterflies from Lina 4 Seasons Spring 01 using p2 Techno Chrome 090 Golden Edge.

I originally intended to paint my thumb, index and pinky with black but when I had finished my accent nails, I felt that would be too dark. So I used Veronica in two coats to finish my manicure (apart from sealing everything with Seche Vite of course). And as the gift bag Michelle showed me wasn't shiny, I added a coat of KIKO Matte Effect to remove the shine and create a satin finish.

Here's a picture of the shiny version:

I absolutely love my nails!! I simply can't stop watching them and I'm SO happy I finally tried to do these. Looking at the pictures I can see several imperfections so I definitely have to get more experience in painting them. Also, I think next time I'm going to make them slightly bigger as the lines were pretty hard to do in these tiny patches. But at least I now know they aren't scary at all. It did become a bit messy when I did my Cinderella hand but that was to be expected as I was painting with my non-dominant hand. That should also improve with practice.

What do you think? Have you tried roses like these?

---

And talking about challenges... I still have some prompts from the SBB Nail Challenge to do. I think this manicure fits #50: Mani featuring 2 patterns, so that's one less :)