52 week nail art challenge - 11: Unused polish

Hi everyone!


This week's theme couldn't have come at a better time. The prompt is 'Unused polish' and my husband spoiled me rotten with a huge box of Masura polishes so the biggest problem was what polish to use :) I settled on some pretty holographic polishes that reminded me of Spring and ice cream:

I started this manicure by creating the accent nail. I picked up a raster from Born Pretty stamping plate BPL-041 using white Painted Polish Blanc Slate. When the image was on my stamper, I painted over the lines with a tiny brush and Blanc Slate to make sure there would be no tiny gaps or other imperfections in the final image.

When that had dried, I used the same tiny brush and pink Masura 1110 Dogwood Flowers, green Masura 1219 Reindeer Moss and lilac Masura 1118 Ariana to color in the squares of the raster. I went over the lilac squares twice as Ariana is a bit sheer so I could see through it at first when I held the stamper to the light and looked through it (the joys of a clear stamper :) When all was as I wanted it to be, I left it to dry completely as some squares now had little blobs on them and of course I didn't want those to smoosh into other parts when I would roll the image on my nail.

I finished the accent nail by painting a coat of base coat on my ring finger and carefully rolling the dried image over it. Some of the thicker squares tore loose from the complete image a bit so I used a small dotting tool to nudge them back to where they should be. I covered everything with a generous coat of Seche Vite.

I kept the other nails simple: two coats of Dogwood Flowers on my thumb and index, two coats of Reindeer Moss on my middle finger and three coats of Ariana on my pinky, and of course a coat of Seche Vite on all nails.

As my ring finger was still a bit bumpy, I added another coat of Seche Vite... and another one... and yet another one to make sure my nail felt smooth (I usually just use a coat of thickened Seche Vite but alas, that bottle is finished so I guess I have to "make" another one ;) and after a total of five coats, I was happy and ready to take pictures.


The line-up (I'm craving pistachio and blueberry ice cream all of a sudden):

Masura 1219 Reindeer Moss, Masura 1110 Dogwood Flowers, Masura 1118 Ariana, Painted Polish Blanc Slate

I've wanted to do a colored in raster for quite some time. In hindsight, it probably would have been easier to create a decal on my mat instead of a reverse stamp, but reverse stamping worked too so I'm not complaining. I love the result and that's what matters, right? I hope you like my ice cream nails too ;)