Happy Independence Day to all my American followers. I wanted to do something fun and challenging for today to show my love. I hope you like it. :-)
I started by protecting my natural nails with a base coat of UNT's 'Ready for Take-Off' peel off base coat. This stuff is the bomb! I love how it just glides down my nail and leaves a nice even surface for painting. But the best part about this product is how my mani just peels right off easily, and in most cases fully intact. There is very little clean up and I love that I don't have to soak my nails with acetone!
After the base coat dried (about 2 minutes) I started by painting my middle and ring finger a light blue, (Don't be Shallow), then black (Black Creme) on my pointer and pinkie fingers and finally white (White Creme) on my thumb. I top coated all of my nails because I'll be using acrylic paints next and it's easier to "wash off" your mistakes.
When the Top Coat was fully dry I dotted in clouds on my ring and middle fingers with a dotting tool and white acrylic paint. When the clouds were fully dry I took black acrylic paint and my liner brush and painted an angled line across the ring and middle fingers. Then I painted inverted triangles off of that line for the bunting flags. I painted the bunting flags with red and blue acrylic paint, alternating the colours as I went. Then I took white acrylic paint and dotted white dots on the blue bunting to simulate stars and white stripes on the red bunting. I just love how cute the bunting turned out. :-)
For my pointer and pinkie fingers I wanted to paint some fireworks. I started out with a black base colour (Black Creme), then with my liner brush started from a point on my nail and drew curved lines coming outward from the center of that point with white acrylic paint. Next I took blue acrylic paint and painted the same design over top of the white design, (just a little smaller), making sure that I could still see the white lines underneath peeking through. For the red I did the same thing making sure to paint the design again smaller still and being sure to see both the white and blue lines peeking through.
☝ Remember what I said before about top coating before working with acrylic paints? Well I'm damn glad I Top Coated as I had to wash the paint off and start the fireworks over and over again a few times because I wasn't happy with their overall shape. This is the second mani that I've painted fireworks for and I'm noticing that both times I wasn't overly happy with them. I'm thinking there's a knack to painting these things and I must not be holding my mouth right!😳 lol
When I was finally happy -ish with the shape of the fireworks, I took some 'Fairy Dust' and sparingly dropped a drop of it in the center of the firework. I then I quickly took my liner brush and dragged the 'Fairy Dust' from the centre of the firework outward toward the tips of the firework to give them a little bit of a sparkle.
I expected to be challenged by the painting of the flag, (with the stars and stripes and all), but I was surprisingly mistaken. Usually
I'm not that great at painting stripes down my nail so I thought this was going to be a big mess, but these turned out to be
the best stripes I've ever done! So far. lol Now, on to the stars...
Ok, so the stripes aren't the challenge, then the stars must be! So I start out painting my first star and I find that it's not too bad, so I go on to the next and the next and before I knew it I was finished and they all looked great. I was expecting to have to "touch them up", but they turned out so great that I didn't want to mess with a good thing! Flag, done!
Products Used:
Base Coat:
UNT Ready for Take Off (peel off) Base Coat.
Polishes:
China Glaze - Don't Be Shallow (light blue), Fairy Dust (holo top coat);
+wetnwildbeauty - Black Creme, White Creme.
Top Coat:
Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat to seal and protect your design.
Tools
Used: Polishes - listed above; Acrylic Paints - Black, Blue, Red & White; Fine Detail Nail Art brush; Nail Art Liner brush; Dotting Tool.
My overall thoughts on this mani? I found this mani to be quite a bit of a surprise for me. What I initially thought would be challenges turned out to be easy and the parts I thought would be easy were challenging. I really did think my challenge was going to be that flag, with all those stripes, not to mention the stars! But I'm really very happy with both the stars and the stripes.
The challenge for me turned out to be those blasted fireworks. I totally expected that they would be the easiest thing for me to paint,
but I ended up re-doing them 4 times before I settled on what you see
now. I just couldn't get that grand curve going on or the overall shape
for the exploding firework.
Oh well, I guess I need to spend some more time on YouTube! Learning, yes learning. Oh hell, who am I kidding, I'll get distracted, then a few clicks later it'll be 4 am and I'll be watching a dancing chicken or some such nonsense, but I will have my paints out!👌 lol
Have a wonderful Independence Day and I'll see you soon. May all your fireworks explode! ;-)
