Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Nail Art Wednesday: Rainbow Zebra Patterned Nails

Whenever I see these pretty colorful nail art, I can't help but rave about them. It looks like so much fun! But you wouldn't catch me sporting them on my own nails. I guess I'm more of a "subtle nail art" kinda girl where I prefer tone on tone color combinations as compared to high contrast ones. I recently had a hankering for some rainbow goodness to combat the grey, dreary fall days and decided to go with high shine instead of high color saturation. I was thinking of layering it with a black crackle to tie it all together but remembered I've been meaning to play a bit more with the makeshift black stamping polish I discovered (thanks to stamper extraordinaire, Marta!). This is what I came up with:

Subtle but with enough oomph to pack a punch.


What I Used:
Pale blue foil: Color Club Lumin-icent
Pale pink foil: Color Club Foil Me Once
Green foil: Color Club Perfect Mol-ten
Gold foil: Orly Luxe
Black stamping polish: Wet N Wild Ebony Hates Chris
Design: Bundlemonster plate #223 (full nail zebra pattern)

How I Did It:
1. After applying a base coat to prime your nails (I used Orly Bonder), paint one thin coat of the blue foil, Lumin-icent.


2. Using the pink foil, Foil Me Once, paint the nails with another thin coat but leaving 1/4 of the blue showing on top.


3. With the gold foil, Luxe, do the same as the pink foil but this time, paint only 1/2 of the nail.


4. Lastly, layer the green foil, Perfect Mol-ten, and paint another thin layer just on the lower 1/4 part of the nail tips.


5. I added a layer of Nubar Opulent Pearl to add some flakies to the mix but you can barely see them with the shine from the foil finish. This layer is meant to consolidate all the foil layers prior to stamping.


6.Using your black stamping polish, stamp on the zebra pattern from BM plate #223. Don't forget to clean the edges!


Top it all off with some top coat to seal in the stamped design as well as for extra shine and there you have your rainbow zebra patterned nails!

In all its glittery awesomeness.

I found this dog plushie with a zebra pattern...

...so of course I had to pose with it!

Zebras and daisies, anyone?

Green wasn't the best background as the tips blended into it!

This turned out to be such a fun manicure! I'm definitely revisiting this next summer. Just imagining all that sparkle and shine under the sun is making me giddy!

Hammie asks: Do you prefer subtle or high contrast color combinations? Wouldn't it be cool if there really were rainbow zebras? What's your favorite animal print (please say hamster)?

6 comments:

  1. This is so gorgeous!! Thanks for sharing how you did it. Hopefully, I'll try to replicate it ;0)

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  2. Thanks, MariJo! I'd love to see your take on it! Please do link me when you do it. I'm sure it'll be awesome. :)

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  3. Carmela, this is my favourite manicure you've ever done! :D Love it so much especially because of the sweet, soft rainbow you did in the background. Great job!

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  4. *blushes* Big compliment, thanks Mary! :D

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  5. That rainbow--it reminds me of my favorite pastel gradients in Photoshop! I'm not a fan of zebra print, but it worked really well here.

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  6. I'm glad you like it, Anthea! :) I wasn't sure it was all going to work until I put all the elements together. I took some cues from Lisa Frank (remember Trapper Keepers?) with the rainbow and zebra print but in less subdued hues.

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