Hello and welcome! This week’s design was a struggle and a half, but had some beautiful inspiration.
When I was at the last Indie Shop in Anaheim, I stocked up on tons of cute decals for upcoming manis. And this week’s design is all about these Dia de los Muertos animal designs that I got from Ribbitsstickits. So it obviously includes flowers, and bright colors over a dark base.
What I Used:
- Base Coat: Glisten & Glow – Base Coat
- 1st Color: Night Owl Lacquer – Luna
- 2nd Color: Twinkled T – Glow Up
- 3rd Color: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear – Pep-Plum
- 4th Color: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri – Blue Away!
- 5th Color: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri – ASAP Apple
- 6th Color: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear – Mellow Yellow
- Top Coat: Glisten & Glow – Top Coat
- Maniology Mini Lotus mat
- small cup of water
- Ribbitsstickits Dia de los Muertos Animals vinyl decal
- Maniology dual sided dotting tool & nail art brush
- Twinkled T clean up brush, size #2
- nail polish remover
I started with base coat, like usual. And then applied two coats of Night Owl Lacquer – Luna. I don’t normally reach for black polish, but it’s the best time of year for it. Plus a ton of gold flakies in the formula made it fun.
Next, before messing with the decals, I placed them under my clear silicone mat, and made a white shadow/outline of the chosen animals. This way, I didn’t have to worry about the decal being opaque enough to show up on a black base.
After that, I made some simple flowers with a dotting tool. I chose to do only two nails, and even then, they’re not big and prominent. I’m not the best free-hander and I didn’t want to push my luck. But, I think having the flowers so small, with a few dots around them, turned out to look very elegant.
Then came the decals. The wonderful, horrible decals. At first I treated them like waterslide decals, and they were NOT working. But once I looked at them closely, I realized they were normal vinyls. Even after that realization though, I couldn’t get them off of the white paper backing. No matter how hard I tried, they just kept coming out wrong. And once I did finally get some to work, I placed them on crooked. So I finally just restarted, and aimed to get just my ring fingers done.
Well, the decals didn’t quite work out how I wanted them, but I can try again next year! It was such a lovely idea, I really wish it had worked out, and I hope you can see what I was trying to do with the design.
Hope everyone enjoyed their week!
Update:
Oh boy, did I pick at these poor nails! But weirdly, I kept the picking to just my middle nails. I’m not sure that’s any better than picking lightly at all of them, though. And when the cat decal started lifting on my right hand, I’m surprised I didn’t absolutely attack that nail.
Weekly Nail 