Friday Triad: inspired by @manicure.d

Hi everyone!


The last Friday (and actually the last day) of January so the fourth year of Triads has begun. Can you believe Juanita, Michelle and I have been doing this for three years already? Juanita picked the inspiration for this month: marble and rose gold by Marta from manicure.d. And after some (read: a lot!!) struggling this is what I came up with:

I started out by painting my thumb, ring finger and pinky with Il était un vernis HOLO(VE), a stunning holo that is stuffed with flakies that shift orangey-gold so the end result isn't really burgundy or berry but is closer to marsala, if that makes any sense. Whatever it's called, it's drop-dead gorgeous ;) It's a bit on the sheer side so I needed three coats for full opacity. My index and middle finger were painted with two coats of OPI Alpine Snow.

I liked the idea of having part of a nail marbled and part of it in the "special" polish but ruffians are absolutely on my list of designs I really don't like. After some experimenting I decided to do a sort of sideways ruffian but since HOLO(VE) wasn't opaque enough to stamp with, I had to do the marble on top of it.

I started by stamping part of the egg shape from MoYou Frenchy 18 using Alpine Snow. That wasn't opaque enough so I carefully painted more Alpine Snow over it until I couldn't see the darker polish underneath shining through.

While that was drying, I experimented with the marble on my index and middle finger. I tried to do it the same way as Marta did, first saran wrap followed by the water spotted technique, but no matter how many times I tried the polish didn't want to spread and make cells the way I wanted it to and the spots from the saran wrap were either too much or too little. In the end I gave up and decided to go for stamping. More frustration as I couldn't find a marble image that I liked. So that was another dead end. Finally I decided to just do a smoosh and that's what you see in the picture. I used Alpine Snow, HOLO(VE) and gray OPI Cement The Deal.

To finish my ring finger I painted liquid latex around my nail and on the part of my nail that I wanted to stay without any marble on it (which is the reason why it had to be really really REALLY dry). When that had dried, I smooshed the marble on my nail and immediately removed the latex when I was done. And after that more waiting until I felt it was dry enough to be able to top coat it without running the risk of smearing it over HOLO(VE). A generous coat of Seche Vite guaranteed all my nails were smooth and glossy, and that was it!

Il était un vernis HOLO(VE), OPI Alpine Snow, OPI Cement The Deal

I'm not sure if I really did justice to the original manicure. Mine was definitely inspired by it, but the delicate marble effect is... ehm... vanished ;) I do like the result though and I hope you do too.

If you want to see what Michelle and Juanita did, please visit their blogs by clicking their names.