Hidden Neon Tribal Nail Art

Hey there!

I've been spending the last month or so working to finish up my Master's degree and moving from upstate New York to Knoxville, Tennessee.  It's been an extraordinarily stressful transition, but I'm finally beginning to settle in.  One of the first things I unpacked, naturally, was my nail polish and nail art supplies!  For this manicure, I wanted to do something summery, but unexpected, and I had an image in my head of a tribal pattern with a hidden pop of neon.  This is what I came up with:

If you're thinking, "Wow, your nails look really yellowed," nope!  Here's a different angle:

I was picturing a different take on the Louboutin manicure that was so popular about a year or so ago, but updated for the season.  I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out! 

For this manicure, I stamped Konad Black over Red Carpet Manicure SOG in White Out.  The neon under the tips is China Glaze Sun Worshiper, courtesy of my lovely friend Mary!  I used the Cheeky Viva Mexico! plate for these designs.

Have you ever updated an old trend for summer?  Let me know in the comments! :^)

Bunny Prints Skittle Pond Nail Art with OPI Sheer Tints

A few weeks ago I purchased the mini OPI Sheer Tints set.  I couldn't justify spending US $36 on polishes I probably wouldn't use that often, so I ended up springing (ha! no pun intended!) for the mini set (OPI Sheer Tints, Sheer Mini Hint of Tint).  There are two manicures I've been dying to try lately:  a pond manicure (see some amazing examples here and here) and a syrup manicure (here and here).  I've done the former here:

Please ignore my desiccated cuticles.

I've seen  lot of pond manicures that do dots or flowers, but with Easter coming up, I wanted to do something a bit different... enter, bunny prints!  For this manicure I used the Bundle Monster plate BM-424 to create the "bunny prints" between layers of OPI Sheer Tints topcoat.  Above, from pinky to thumb:  'I'm Never Amberrassed', 'Be Magentale With Me', 'I Can Teal You Like Me', 'Don't Violet Me Down', and 'I Can Teal You Like Me' again.

If you're not familiar with the concept of a pond manicure, it's similar to a jelly sandwich:  jelly/glitter/jelly; except triple or quadruple decker, and with light colored polish designs rather than glitter.  To make this design, I stamped little paws haphazardly and sparsely across bare nail.  I then topped it off with one of the sheer tints, and waited for it to dry.  I then layered more paw prints in other areas of the nail, and topped it off with another layer of sheer tint.  I repeated the stamp-tint step one more time (for a total of three layers of OPI sheer tint) and added one more set of paw prints to fill in any gaps and add another layer of dimension.  I then topped it off with a clear top coat.

Lefty.

For this manicure, I used the following products:

• Base coat:  Sally Hansen Hard as Nails - Hard as Wraps
• L'Oreal  French Tip White
• OPI Sheer Tints minis in 'I'm Never Amberrassed', 'Be Magentale With Me', 'I Can Teal You Like Me', and 'Don't Violet Me Down'
• Bundle Monster Stamping Plate in BM-424
• Konad stamper
• Top coat: Salon Perfect Top Coat

These worked great for a pond manicure, but I think they would be too sheer for a syrup manicure (unless you used like seven coats).  These definitely have a top coat formula; they smell similar to Seche Vite and Salon Perfect top coats and have similar qualities in terms of texture and drying time (i.e. glop it on like there's no tomorrow).  This was convenient, because the number of steps for this manicure would have made it a prohibitively long process if I had to wait ten to fifteen minutes before stamping each time.  As it was, I had to wait about 30 seconds.  On the negative side, it dried SO fast that I kept getting little polish strings everywhere, and if I used more than three strokes to cover the nail it started getting bumpy and draggy.

Squiiiiiishy!

Weirdly, I think my favorite color of the set is the yellow.  While I usually associate sheer, yellow nail color with stained or diseased nailbeds, the orangey-gold tone to this yellow translates more as "bright squishy marigold" rather than "witch fingers."  They are all pretty similar in terms of application, so it's really a matter of color preference.  In these photos, all of the colors except 'I Can Teal You Like Me' are represented pretty accurately; in real life, 'I Can Teal You Like Me' is much more of a teal (go figure) than a blue as it is shown here

Overall, I am really enjoying this mani.  I used this set once previously for a pond pedi and enjoyed that as well!  For the price (I paid $10.35 for the set of minis on Amazon), I think these are a great value and were definitely worth adding to my collection.

Have you ever done a pond manicure?

Bonus spring pedi picture!  Lookit my weird toes!