52 week nail art challenge - 1: Birds

Hi everyone!


A new weekly nail art challenge has started and I'm going to try and participate every week. Not making any promises though as I don't know what 2020 will throw at me ;)

The first prompt is Birds. I decided to take it easy and use an image with birds from one of my favorite stamping plates. Combined with some wintery colors, this is my take on it:

I started out by painting my thumb, index and pinky with two coats of Barry M Gelly Elderberry, a lovely grayish-blue that looks like the sky outside when it's not cloudy :) The other two nails were painted with two coats of OPI I Cannoli Wear OPI (ICWO), a pale gray that needs at least three coats for full opacity so it's kind of sheer but it's a pure gray, not leaning towards any other color so I like it... a lot.

When all that had dried, I created a gradient of Elderberry and ICWO by sponging on the colors. I had to do three rounds of dabbing until I was happy with the result. A coat of Seche Vite to help blend the colors even more and when all that was dry to the touch, I stamped parts of an image from Emily de Molly plate EDM19 using Colour Alike Sargasso Sea, a beautiful not-entirely-navy dark blue holo stamping polish. And even if you can't see it very well in the picture, please trust me when I say the holo is very visible in real life, even in the small details of the image!


The line up:

OPI I Cannoli Wear OPI, Barry M Gelly Elderberry, Colour Alike Sargasso Sea

You can't see it (of course) but I actually had to do the accent nails twice. I stamped the birds upside down! And since I didn't want to flip the image I grabbed cotton pads and acetone and started over. I'm glad I did as I really like my nails so I intend to wear this manicure for a while :)

What do you think? Would you do your nails again if you accidentally created them upside down?