Franken Sheers & Splatter Stamp

The 80's have taken up residence on my nails this week.  I have no words for how happy this manicure makes me.  Personally, I feel like I haven't rocked a manicure this gnarly in a long time.  It's SO mondo.

I was totally inspired by  Punky Polish's phenomenal Watercolor Sugar Skulls manicure.  If you haven't already, you NEED to see it.  When I read that she made her own sheer tint polishes for this, I couldn't even contain my excitement.  I ran over to my stash and started yanking out jellies and a practically unused 2.5oz bottle of Beauty Secrets Hardener High Gloss Top Coat.  I poured some of it into five empty bottles that I had stashed in the back of the cabinet and then sent in a few drops of pink, royal blue, purple, green and yellow jelly-ish polishes.  It felt great to make that bottle of topcoat useful, since I never really liked it for topcoat.  I read somewhere that it does well as base coat, so I'll try that with the half bottle I have left.  

The results of my franken frenzy (pictures are clickable):

I hear that the OPI Sheer Tints have a really honey-like consistency.  These are really quite runny, but the effect was exciting.  I made my tints tintier than the OPI, purely because I couldn't believe that the pale cloudy solutions in the bottles would do a tinty enough job.  Turns out a little would have gone a long way, but I still REALLY like the result.  I don't mind that the final product isn't quite a sheer as the OPI.  I had the presence of mind to snap a picture before a splatter stamp leapt onto my nails :

I began with two coats of white creme.  I dabbed on the pink and purple corners first, then the blue and green corners and finished with yellow int he center.  The colours hadn't dried quite yet so they pooled together in acid-swirls and "moved" each other around just like watercolour!  SO HAPPY!

This is a snippet of my scrap paper.  I use white printer paper and paint on a bunch of colours and then stamp over with a bunch of different colours to see what I get.  Sometimes I will cover entire sheets with this.  I have even gone so far as to label a few.  Lower right:  I was trying to decide if I wanted to use the ampersands (BM-311) or the splatter (BM-416).  The competition was tight.  They are two of my favorite Bundle Monster images.

2 coats Pure Ice Superstar!

Dabs of all five franken sheers

Stamp: BM 416 Splatter and SH Hard as Nails Black Heart 

Seche Vite

The splatter won out by a smidge.  Can you see how the yellow overlapped with that pretty pink to make a peachy coral color?  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Just for the record?  I still REALLY REALLY want to get my hands on the OPI Sheer Tints, because I think I will get an insane amount use out of them.  Check out Phoenix Beauty Lounge for some amazing ways you can use them!  

Thanks for peeking!

♥

JQ

I scrub and scrub but they'll never come clean!

HIDEOUS! AND AWESOME!

My germs and bacterium manicure:


I don't even know where to start on explaining these bad boys. Suffice to say my friend Alikat came over for a girl's night and well...things got a bit silly!


I had been browsing my new bundle monster set and noticing all the cool little stamps that look like germs or bacteria. Lo there was also a french tip that looked like it would combine nicely. I painted my nails with 2 coats of Sally Hansen Insta Dri Whirlwind White, and when that was dry I went to town. I grabbed a whole schwack of sheer/iridescent polishes from my stash including: Sinful Colors Fiji, Love Nails and Bali Mist, Sally Hansen HD Resolution and Hi-Def (both green) and Digital (bright pink sheer), Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Lime Lights, And Nicole By OPI Respect the World.


I planned to french tip all nails except my ring finger on each hand, using the tip image, so before I stamped I wanted to ensure some sparkling colours would come through the stamp. I blotched on daubs of random sheer polishes across the tips of each nail. I then used more sheers and the stone stamp from BM211 to add subtle colour to the remaining white nail.


I used GOSH Nero and the bacteria tip from BM217 to stamp over the tips once everything was dry. On my ring fingers I blotched sheers all over the nail instead of just the tips. Then I used Nero and the germie images off BM211 and 212.


Then I switched to red. I used OPI Off With Her Red to stamp those same images from my ring finger onto the whites of the remaining nails. I was totally random about it. It was a lot of fun!


Time to dig out the dotting tools!
I used brighter more pigmented colours and dotted all over the place. I used a bright yellow and more Off With Her Red inside some of the bacteria. I used GOSH Nero here as well.


And I just spammed you with sooo many pictures! But this was totally fun. Not really an attractive manicure, and it has a LOT going on, but from a distance it has a kind of abstract art/graffiti effect that I really enjoy. :)

Thanks for visiting me and having a nail painting session Alikat!

Has everyone had a chance to take a peek at my 200 Follower Giveaway?

Cheers!
♥
JQ