33 Day Challenge: Favourite Pattern

Day 29 of the 33 Day Challenge is here. I seem to have gotten on the 'creating OK nail art bandwagon' again and I'm pretty glad because I'd been looking forward to the favourite pattern prompt for a while. I didn't even have to think about this one. I  love houndstooth anything, even this Lady Gaga ensemble (I wouldn't wear any of it but it's cool) and I'd been wanting to do a nude/neon houndstooth manicure for ages after seeing it in a blog (the name, I cannot remember and I can't find it on Google) and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world. However, I didn't own a good nude or an opaque enough neon colour to recreate what I had seen but thanks to my little haul last week, I have finally created a mani inspired on that one I saw many moons ago.

I started with two coats of My Island Home (MIH), a great-nude-for-my-skin-tone, textured polish from Face Of Australia, and let it dry for about an hour before I started stamping. It didn't need to dry for that long but I find the texture shows a lot better when the polish has fully dried. And I wanted to be absolutely sure I wouldn't have to redo the base from stamper pressure smudges. I have ruined bases many times that way and it looks like I have learnt a lesson. :)

For the houndstooth pattern I used the BM-322 plate and one coater polishes. From green to orange I used: 

• Essence in The Green & the Grunge
• Sinful Colours in Blue By You
• Max Factor Mini in Purple Haze
• Konad Special Polish in Red
• Essence in Flashy Pumpkin

Hold on, wasn't this supposed to be a nude AND neon manicure? Well, yes but... The one coater-ish neon pink I have didn't stamp that well and it looked like a greyed out pink over MIH. Plain black houndstooth was gonna be boring so I created a sort of rainbow effect with two of my new polishes and some old ones I knew were one coaters and had the potential to stamp well over the nude. I even gambled a little and brought out the shimmer Blue By You because I wanted sparkle. Look at it below, it worked and it looks so pretty in the sun.

Sun. I finally had the opportunity to do my mani early in the day and come out to the sun to take photos. I get to sit on the grass, enjoy the birds singing, the wind in my face, listen to the peace and quiet of the outdoors and not feel guilty that I'm procrastinating uni work. Yay for summer holidays!

On with the manicure... I didn't use any topcoat because I LOVE the texture of MIH but it makes me sad the stamping will come off quicker because of that. 

Did anyone notice that the pattern on the index finger is upside down compared to the rest of the fingers? Applying the colours to the plate to create the rainbow was sort of automatic but when I thought about it and was about to stamp the index finger, I thought I had it the wrong way on the stamper and redid it. I only noticed it when I was taking photos. I'm gonna say that's an accent finger. That'll work. ;)

I also noticed this mani fitted that prompt for Friday very well but I have no idea what I'm gonna do for that one. I'll have to do some brainstorming. Until then, check out the other ladies' manicures.

Till next time, 

Laura