But you're not here to hear about me - you want to see nails!!
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| Bright and sunny summer on my nails! |
You may have spotted these in my Instagram feed - but I hope you'll read this post and see how these looked in the different lights (spoiler alert - AWESOME)!
OK - so first question - can you guess how I did these?
Design Details
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| To me it looks like I used cake frosting or molding clay to make the suns... * |
If you guessed free-hand - I'm giving you a kiss. But, alas, no. For the first time, I gave nail vinyls/stencils a try!! Yup, I'm quite behind the times on this one. I've used tape and french-tip guides (or DIY version paper hole reinforcement stickers), but never a pre-cut design. Although, I did use a tiny brush for some minor touch-up.
The polishes that I used for this design, while they pack a HUGE PUNCH OF COLOR, they are horrible to try to paint with.
But I really wanted to - and I'm realizing I have a stubborn streak. You already knew that though, huh....They aren't made any longer, so I won't go into the details of the polishes - they do make for excellent gradients though. There is something in them that is different from "regular" polishes - they act like thick acrylic paints more than polish. And they dry very quickly and with a flat matte surface. Anyway - that's why I got the "look" I did here.
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| Getting neon colors AND skin tone to photograph well is nearly impossible - so I directed my energy primarily to make the nails look as they did in real life. I don't have alien skin. * |
I have read time and time again from others that you must make sure your base polish is very, very dry so that you don't ruin it or pull it up with the stencils. So, I took that advice seriously. I painted the blue layer on one day (and applied top-coat) so that it would dry. (Yeah, I smudged the end of my ring finger - oops.) Then, the next day I made the suns shine.
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| Photographing neons in the shade/indirect light can really help the colors GLOW!! * |
Another confession, since you're beating them out of me today, is that I am utterly useless at manning tweezers. Seriously! I have 3 pairs - all different - all hate me. Yes, take a moment to laugh. I'm OK with it.
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| Here is what the stencils look like. They come on a sheet, pre-cut (mostly). The little triangles that made the suns' rays were a bugger to remove before using the stencils (some on my palm). |
And notice - no evil tweezers in the picture - LOL. These stencils were made by the same company as the polishes (no longer in business) - but there are now TONS of sources for nail vinyls from very basic to very unique.
So - after I had applied, painted over and did that infamous peeling up of the vinyl stencils (using tweezers to do so while holding my breath, tongue out, feet curled...), I immediately took a bunch of pictures before applying the final top coat (which was matte). I was afraid I would mess up what took me an inordinate amount of time compared to normal humans who can manage tweezers. These pictures are marked with an * asterisk.
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| Now - look at the colors in household/artificial lighting! This is my favorite look - when the yellow is a warm almost orange. My family calls it Kodak yellow. (Top two pictures *) |
It was too darn hot & humid to go outside for long to take pictures with flowers on this day. How ironic - or appropriate? - since my design is the sun!
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| These nails were NOT to be ignored - even hiding in the tree. * |
Challenge Details
Yup, I created this design with the purpose of fulfilling a special challenge prompt on Instagram.- NEW! There is a very awesome challenge account called @SweetTNailExpressions.
- More details found on both my IG feed @kimettkolor and my personal page on Facebook (link below)
- Their latest challenge prompt was to create a nail design using only your favorite color and that of your "Bestie".
- I have sooo many nail buddies, choosing someone was hard! Looking forward to more challenges like this one!
- For these, I chose Natasha (@angelscaleb) as my nail-buddy, who as you'll read below is also very special.
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Alright. Back to the nails....
I really do like designs that are based on the half-moon style. There are so many possibilities; and they are really fun to wear. Even though these in particular are maybe not considered fashionable, this style feels very chic to me when looking down at my hands. It is also one of the types of designs that I don't mind all five fingers being the same.
Question number two: What do you think about the half-moon style? Yay or Nay? Some of you might remember me wearing this type of design here and here.
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| Some days I wish all my fingers had wide canvases like my thumb... |
OK - that's all I have for you today. Stay tuned - there's lots in the planning stages on my calendar for the rest of July...
Oh, yeah - did you notice this blog post title says Part One? I'm going to keep you in suspense for a little while before you see Part Two. Blogger's prerogative. :)
Till Next Time,
Kimett