Friday Triad: inspired by @gert_nails

Hi everyone!


It's the last Friday of February so that means it's time for another Friday Triad, where Michelle, Juanita and I take turns in picking a manicure that serves as inspiration for a manicure we do ourselves. We chose to name it an inspiration as sometimes the result doesn't even look like the original but that's fine as long as it was inspired by it. This month was my turn to choose and I picked this black-n-white minimalist beauty by Tatiana from @gert_nails. The catch is that the original was done using sliders, so I decided to try and recreate the manicure with stamping. Here's the result:

One of the things I really liked about the original manicure, is the velvety look of the black nails. I tried a plain black polish with a matte topcoat first but that didn't give me the effect I was looking for, so I switched that for Zoya Dovima, a charcoal polish that dries to a stunning suede finish that feels great to the touch. If you add a glossy top coat zillions of shimmers show up but of course I kept it matte. I used two coats of Dovima on my thumb, ring finger and pinky.

My index and middle finger were painted with three thin coats of OPI Funny Bunny, a soft, slightly yellowed white jelly that has pretty nice self-leveling qualities. There is some faint VNL but with the stamps that I planned on top, I don't mind that much.

I then took a little break for lunch and when finished eating, I came back and tried stamping on the white nails. The image didn't want to stick to my nail so I figured there was some oil on my nails. I washed my hands and rubbed my nails with some alcohol. It didn't change how the black nails looked, but the two white nails were left with a satiny finish that I really liked, so I decided to leave them like that. Now I could try stamping again and this time it worked as it should.

I started with my index finger and stamped a thin horizontal line from Clear Jelly Stamper plate CJS 52 in black Painted Polish Midnight Mischief. After that dried a bit, I stamped images of leaves from MoYou Botanical 01 at the tip of my nail and at my cuticle, again using Midnight Mischief.

Next were the white squares on my middle finger. Unfortunately I don't have the right size squares on a stamping plate so I used part of the rectangle on MoYou Frenchy 18 and white Painted Polish Blanc Slate to create three sides of the first square and the same part but rotated to add the fourth side. I did the same thing for the second square. I then stamped a vertical line from CJS-52 in Midnight Mischief and last but not least the leaf image from MoYou Fall in Love 03. And that's how I left it, no top coat!


The polishes I used:

Zoya Dovima, OPI Funny Bunny, Painted Polish Midnight Mischief, Painted Polish Blanc Slate

The pictures were taken when I had not used any topcoat on my nails. I wanted to wear the manicure a bit longer so I covered all nails with a coat of Seche Vite, followed by a coat of OPI Matte Top Coat. The satiny finish and the feel of the suede finish are gone now but at least I won't rub off the stamped images ;)

I absolutely love the original and I hope I did it a bit of justice. What do you think?
Also, if you happen to know of a stamping plate with squares, please let me know. I have plenty of ideas where I can use a plate like that :)