MSMD - "Brushstroke" Technique

It's my very first Monkey See, Monkey Do Monday! I copy other people's ideas often enough anyway; I might as well make it official. ;)

I was so inspired by The Swatchaholic's entry to March Polish Days - Vintage that I did my own version of it that very evening! And then it took me a few weeks to find where I'd downloaded the pictures. Admittedly, sometimes I do the editing at work during lunch hours and sometimes I do it at home over the weekend, but I still don't know how these pictures got to the folder they ended up in, which was not the right place on either computer...

This was the Swatchaholic's absoloutely beautiful brushstroke technique manicure:

She was using a "vintage" polish to go with the March theme, but what really struck me was how much like gemstones her nails looked. So I went through my swatchsticks picking out polishes that shone and glowed and glittered like hers! My nails came out completely different, but I loved them. They were beautiful, and even my co-workers really oooh'ed and ahh'ed over these pretties.

I used a base of Sinful Colors Winterberry, though like TS's comment, I could really have gone without a base color at all, by the time I was done. I lined up the following bottles on my desk: Sinful Colors Daddy's Girl and Purple Diamond, China Glaze Ruby Pumps and Riveting, Avon Lucky Penny, Color Club Antiquated, and a little mini Lisa Frank Nail Magic with no name but is a sheer pink shimmer. I loosened them all up, and one at a time, scraped most of the polish off the brush and put just a swoosh on each nail in random places. I went across all ten nails with the first color, then followed immediately with the second color, etc. I went through the entire row of polishes twice, then hit it with a top coat of Seche Vite and this was the lovely result!

Given how little polish was going on in each brush, I didn't even have to wait for any layers to dry. By the time I finished my tenth nail with one color, the first one was mostly dry, and my next color tended not to go in the same place, anyway, so most of each stroke got to dry for two passes before it got touched by another color, really. It looks in these pictures like it's textured, but the top coat really was nicely smooth across it. This was one of those manicures where I kept stopping and just looking at the pretty sparkly nails from time to time!