Framed Leaves

When my friend V wants to come over and do her nails, but doesn't know what she wants done on them, we usually head to my Nail Art pinterest board and she'll pick out a handful that jump out at her for me to choose between for which one or ones I feel like doing that day. Usually we'll use that picture as an idea or place to start, but we seldom actually mimic them closely. I do that often for my manicures, but V usually has an idea where she wants "this, but with this, or that, or changed this way..." However, she loved this nail art so much, and the colors, that she wanted it just like this one. Or, you know, as close as I can come with my growing abilities. :)

So here is the nail art which she loved so much, from Finger Food Nails:

However, given the length of her various nails, we decided to put the accents on her index and thumb rather than ring finger.

I discovered first that drawing a border on nails? WAY harder than it looks! We didn't take pictures of her right hand because I did that one first, and her left hand, which I did second, came out so much better. I apologize for the tip wear - it was raining the day we did the manicure, and I no longer take pictures inside my house because the lighting is horrible, so the pictures were taken after a day of hard work at the office! I would make it more of a priority to make a light box if it weren't that the lighting in my office at work is actually pretty good, so when I can't take pictures outside, I just do it on my lunch hour, but V works on the other side of campus from me. A bit inconvenient for her to come over for pictures at lunch! :)

We used KleanColor Military Green for all the green nails and the framing and outlining, and the white base for the accent nails was my new go-to white, Sinful Shine Wisp. I used China Glaze Solar Power (I think I did, anyway; I failed to record which colors I used, but I'm sure of all the others besides the base yellow) to fill in the leaves, and topped them with a thin swipe of Sinful Colors This Is It for that nice shimmer.

As seems to often be my problem, I go too big. I don't leave enough white space (literally white in this case, but it means the empty background space in an image) when I'm creating a manicure. These would have been better if done with my thinnest detail brush (I have one that I have cut down to only about three or four bristles) and smaller leaves, more spread out. I really like how delicate the leaves were in FingerFood's manicure, but that's an area where I continually strive for improvement. I've been doing this nail art hobby of mine for nearly a year and a half now (I did my first ever nail art on the Winter Solstice of 2011) and I've come a long way, but I've got a long way to go to what I'd like to be. But since it really is still just a hobby, and not an obsession, I don't actually spend a lot of time practising any of this stuff. I just like to do my nails. I'd get better at it faster, I'm sure, if I put the time and effort into practising my manicure designs on my swatching wheels until I'm completely happy with them before putting them on my fingers, but I usually just jump right into it! Which keeps it fun, but makes me glare when I post these close up pictures on a blog. 

Still, it's a good record, and (I hope) inspiration to others out there who are having fun with it but not nearly as good as some of the amazing artists out there. If you look at too many of them, you can despair sometimes when you see your own work on your own hands. But having a record of my progress lets me and, I hope, others see just how far I've come over time. And if I can do it, anybody can do it!

Chunky Copper Chops

I'm sure most of you who share my hobby are aware of Copious and their habit of semi-regularly offering free credits to members (and, of course, if you haven't tried them out, click here to get a $10 credit for signing up!) I managed to catch the latest $10-credit being offered to existing members, and snagged two KleanColor polishes: Military Green and Chunky Copper. The day they came in the mail, I was so enamored of them, I had to use them right away.

Aren't those gorgeous?! I started with a base color of the Military Green, and covered the thumb and ring fingers with two coats of Chunky Copper. This glitter has two different colors of large hexes, gold and copper, as well as lots and lots of medium and small copper hexes. (If any of the smaller hexes are gold rather than copper, I can't see them.) I'm not sure why the same two coats came out with such a different amount of glitter on my thumb versus my ring finger, though I suspect I was spreading the same amount of glitter out on the larger surface area on the thumb, since this difference in density held true for my other hand as well.

I added a slanted french tip in China Glaze Exotic Encounters, added a stripe in Avon Lucky Penny, and then outlined the stripe in China Glaze Prey Tell. I also used dotting tools in three sizes to layer dots of Prey Tell, Exotic Encounters, and then topped with Lucky Penny. It doesn't show up as well in the pictures, but Lucky Penny is almost exactly the same color as the copper hexes in Chunky Copper.

Look at these pictures out in the sunlight - that Chunky Copper is practically on fire and you can see it actually reflecting the sunlight onto my middle finger!

Almost every one of my co-workers who oohed and aahed over this manicure had to run their finger over my ring fingernail because the glitter was so three dimensional! Even though in reality, it actually laid pretty flat, and two coats of Seche Vite on top means the surface of my nail is almost completely smooth, but even with that, the way the light shines on the copper hexes makes them look like they're curling upward. I don't know what makes them look that way, but it's very eye-catching!