40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Orange Purple Green + Negative Space

This week I got a winning combo. I love negative space manis and the selection of hues was one of my favourites. As I read the prompt for the first time, I started recalling what exact polish I wanted to use for each colour. Orange  would be Revlon's Lady Luck, Purple would be the beautiful Plume and Green Room for er, the green, the last two from Topshop.  I know the orange looks like pink and the purple leans more towards the blue side  but I figure that this is more on the pastel side of the spectrum.

I started with no base. I know, right? What craziness is this, more on that a bit later. With some stripping tape in place, I painted on some shapes and stripes with some Max Factor's Purple Haze to give Plume a base as the latter can be a bit sheer by itself. Then painted on Green Room covering the purple with tape and finally applied Lady Luck using the same technique. Applied HK Girl Top Coat to smooth it all out and seal it in.

I managed to smudge on of the thin purple lines just after topcoating it but with the help of my trustworthy (and very frayed) striper brush I managed to fix it pretty well. It's hardly noticeable now. Can you tell which one it was? Hehe.

The photos above show my second attempt. My first mani (below) was actually freehanded but it felt too rough to put it up on the blog. I liked the fact that it had more polish and less free space but I figured it would take me forever to clean it up or do it with tape so I just enjoyed it for what it was and reattempted it. And because I was in such a hurry to get the next one done, I forgot to put base on. That's my story.

Till next time, 

Laura

33 Day Challenge: Shapes

Today's vague 'shapes' prompt was a little bit too much for my over thinking tendencies so I jumped on Google to give myself some direction. One search lead to another and I ended up with an idea completely different to what I had googled but it all turned out for the best. Have any of you girls played with a tangram at some point in your lives? I remember having a couple when I was younger and when I got my first smart phone, one of the first games I downloaded was a tangram. I finished 200 levels of this puzzle in less than a week and went ahead and got myself another app that had different shapes. Thinking about it, it's kinda lame how excited I am about tangrams and doing a mani about them. Well, lame I will be because I really liked putting the shapes of the tangram on my nails.

I started with two coats of Sally Hansen's White On and a coat of Seche Vite and let that dry completely. I then used striping taping on my fingers to create the shapes of the puzzle, one finger at the time. Most of the colours I wanted to use were a bit sheer, so instead of putting layer upon layer of the same polish, I used some undies on all fingers but my thumb. Colours used (base first, top colour second) on each finger:

Pinky:  Sinful Colours in Innocent and Topshop in Eclipse

Ring:    Max Factor Mini in Purple Haze and Topshop Plume

Middle: Essence in Flashy Pumpkin and Sally Hansen Lustre Shine in Lava

Index:   Max Factor Mini in Candy Blue and Sally Hansen Lustre Shine in Scarab

Thumb: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Golden-I and Revlon in Fire Fox 

I didn't use any topcoat after creating the shapes to keep the slight 3D effect they have. 

This is the picture I based the tangram shapes on. There are a lot of variations of this puzzle but this configuration is the one I remember playing with. Disclaimer: The shapes in my manicure are for illustrative purposes only. Scale may vary in real life . :)

Source

Only shot I got in sunlight. I think the colour's a bit off but it shows the shimmer well enough.

In a slightly related note, there is a Topshop opening tomorrow in my city and I am sooooo tempted to go raid their polish display but I'm thinking that may be a bad idea. I may end up poor and I hardly have any  polish rack space as it is... This story will continue.

Check out the other ladies' manicures for today's prompt. 

Till next time, 

Laura

33 Day Challenge: Artwork With Favourite Brand

Like most lacqueristas, I cannot pick a favourite brand. They all have their qualities and that's why we have them in our stash, right? However, when I quantified the qualities of some of my polishes, I decided Topshop came out a winner. Their polishes last forever on my digits, they hardly chip, they are reasonable priced for Australia and they tend to keep up with polish trends, sometimes even invent their own to-drool-for colours. I think the main reason why I chose this brand is because Topshop polishes mean a holiday for me. There is no Topshop in my city so every time I get a bottle is because I'm somewhere away from home; as I have gotten them in small batches, each one has a special time an d memory attached to it. 

 

I am aware I'm a day late for today's challenge but c'mon, I prioritised my uni work over nails for once. I had to come up with something quick and settled to loosely base my mani on this dress from Topshop, just to keep going with the theme. I figured dressmaking and designing is art, right? So I'm still responding to the prompt for the challenge.

Source

I used High Voltage (pink creme) as a base, then put Plume (glass flecked purple) and Blitz (gold shimmery pink) on a sponge to create the gradient and slowly tapped it on my finger. I repeated the sponge on process three times on each finger. Sealed the gradient with one coat of Seche Vite.

As soon I was ready to take the photos, the sun hid behind some clouds. This gradient is ssssparkly so I waited about 15 minutes in my backyard waving my arms around telling the clouds to go away. I wish this was a joke but I actually did it *Laura looks away slightly embarrassed*. The sun came out for about two minutes so I had to take photos quickly. 

I was concentrating on getting the sparkle to show and not so much on the colour accuracy. The next photo is not flattering but it shoes a much better representation of the  light spectrum reflected from my nails.

I actually did the gradient on my thumb first to see how many coats Plume would need as it can take four coats of the polish on the nails to look opaque. I was quite happy with the way it turned out because generally my gradients turn out super thick and uneven; I guess using the sheerer polishes helped me out.

I really like this mani and I wanna keep it for a long time, it's so pretty and sparkly. I know I didn't show it very well on the photos but take my word for it. It also reminds me of the half moon/french tip trend that was happening at the beginning of the year and it was completely unintentional.

Random photo that I took when I was waiting for the sun to come out. Anyone know what flower this is?

Check out the other 33DC participants' manis. 

Till next time,

Laura