#31dc2014 Day 13 - Animal Print

I'm not particularly fond of snakes but I can appreciate them for their beauty. When I was about 7 years old I went out into the backyard to go bike riding and there sitting on top of my bike was an Australia green tree snake. I ran back into the house and my Dad called the snake people and off he went to live happily ever after back in the bush somewhere. That was to be the first of many snake encounters in my backyard, we lived on acreage so there was always a couple lurking around eating the neighbours' chook eggs, mostly carpet snakes. I once saw one eat a whole possum, I filmed it and to this day it is the most disturbing thing to watch.

I'm so pleased with how these nails turned out. They really are slinky and shimmery just like a snake.

 

Australia Green tree snake

Polish:

• Kleancolors - Metallic Green
• Konad Stamping Polish - Green

The snake print is from the Bundle Monster 200 series, plate BM 215

I love how subtle the print came out and in different light it shifts between yellow and green. I had to add a touch of yellow bling, cause you know every snake likes to look a little fabulous every now and then.  

An InLinkz Link-up

Mr and Mrs.

The past few weeks have whizzed by in a flash with lots of exciting things on the DQ calender. Last Saturday Jules and I had the pleasure of attending the wedding of our good friend and fellow DQer Miss Tamra, to the man of her dreams, Dan. It was a gorgeous ceremony and a super fun reception. Thank you both for inviting us, it was an honour to be a part of your special day.

So what do my nails have to do with the wedding? Well I did them to match my outfit of course!

To create this design was really simple. I started with a white base coat. I then painted messy rainbow stripes using my medium sized striping brush. The polishes I used were:

• OPI Red my fortune cookie (red)
• BC 22 (jade)
• BC 6 (purple)
• Barry M Lemon Icecream (yellow) 
• China Glaze Japanese Koi (orange)

To add the pattern I used a Pueen plate from their first generation stamping set: 25F Sumptuous Gallery which is available here.  Amazingly this was the exact pattern of my very OTT dress. I used Konad special polish in black to stamp with.

I didn't have any good photos of my outfit to share at the time that I wrote this post but I promise to add one soon. The holographic red heart is from a stud set which is available here. 

 

Thank you again Tamra and Dan for allowing us to be a part of your big day. Here's to a lifetime of happiness and good fortune for you, Dan and that little spunk Mr K.

More fun with striping brushes

One of the most versatile tools in a nail artists arsenal is the striping brush. They are a little like dotting tools in that they can do much more than just dots, or in the case of a striping brush more than just stripes. Now you could go out and buy a whole heap of striping polishes or you can buy one set of striping brushes which will allow you to use any of the polishes you already own. You may not get the precise perfect lines that you would achieve with striping tape or stamping but there is a whole lot less mucking around and its much quicker. So lets take a look at another design created with striping brushes. This design is inspired by Hey Nice Nails.

 

 

Freehand stripes are a great way to start experimenting with your striping brush. I did my accent finger in 2 minutes with none of the hassle of cutting and placing tape, not to mention being able to skip having to add a layer of topcoat before applying the tape so it doesn't pull your base colour up. The trick to using striping brushes is simple: Move your finger not the brush. Place the brush on the edge of your nail as and you pull the brush back roll your nail from one side to the other to create the stripe. This is my very first time doing freehand horizontal stripes with a brush and whilst they are far from perfect I found the technique easy and feel confident I can improve and get my lines to be a more consistent width.

 

To create the animal print I used the smallest striping brush in my set and made "c" shapes around the glitter dots with Barry M - Black. I placed the glitter dots randomly just using the brush from the polish bottle. I love animal print because its not meant to be perfect. If you don't have striping brushes you could create this print with dotting tools, or a striping polish. The striping polish in this picture is Le Chat Colour Madnic - Black.

 

 

The pink base is Essie - Not just a pretty face. Its is sheer jelly and it took 3 coats to get this colour. It could have done with another coat actually because there is a little bit of VNL on my middle finger, but the colour is so pretty and I don't have any cremes in this shade. The glitter is China Glaze - I'm not lion. So don't be afraid to give freehand stripes a go and experiment to see what else you can create.

Matchy matchy leopard print

Love it or hate it leopard print never seems to go out of style. You can keep it close to the original using beige, orange, white and black or mix it up to create something a little more colourful and fun. I bought a really fun ghetto fab watch on Friday and as I was sitting at the markets on Saturday I decided to recreate the pattern on my nails.

Leopard print is super easy to create and it doesn't matter if its a bit messy and irregular. It's a great design to start experimenting with if you are new to DIY nail art.

1. Paint a white base.
2. Use a small dotting tool to add coloured dots or jelly bean shapes all over the nail spreading your colours around.
3. Use the same dotting tool to add black "C" shapes around the coloured dots. Mix it up, turn the c shapes around and don't put them all in the same direction.
4. If you have any spots left add a few random black sqiggles or black dots.
5. Wait a good 5-10 min before applying topcoat so that you don't smudge the black.

The colours I used:

• Barry M - White
• China Glaze - Towel Boy Toy (blue)
• Barry M Gelly - Pink Flamingo (pink)
• Zoya - Pippa (yellow)
• Essie - Brooch the Subject (beige)
• Barry M - Black

Glitter Kitty

Animal print, you either love it or hate it. After months of sticking to stamping animal prints I have recently been experimenting with applying these designs free hand. Whilst I am yet to master the zebra print I'm feeling pretty confident with the cheetah print. The beauty of this print is that flaws make it more authentic, so try to make them uneven and messy, its looks much better.

The base colour is China Glaze Glistening Snow. This polish is a multi coloured silver glitter that develops some holographic qualities in sunlight. It has a rough sandy texture however smooths down with top coat. It made applying the animal print a little tricky due to the uneven bumpy texture however like I said, animals print isn't supposed to be perfect. For the coloured dots I used glequins (of course) then used a black nail art pen to draw random "c" shaped black lines around the glequins, then added a few dots and squiggles here and there. I used 2 coats of top coats for this design in an attempt to gloss up and smooth down the Glistening Snow. Reeeeow!