Nail Art Wednesday: Silly Octopus Nails

Sometimes, in the middle of a palette cleanse (typically for food you use 'palate' but I prefer to use 'palette' to denote its association with color), I get bored. I'll most likely be sporting a neutral toned creme but after a day or two, I'm itching for embellishment. So I end up reaching for my nail art supplies and play around a bit with ideas that I haven't quite done yet, mostly to see how they translate on the nail. Sometimes, they turn out great and I end up wearing the mani throughout the weekend. Other times, well, let's just say that's between me and my nail polish remover. But there are instances when it's so bad that it's good, if you get what I mean. Here's a great example of that:

To this day I can't help but giggle a little when I see photos of this design.

What I Used:
Grey creme base: NYC In A New York Minute Sidewalkers
Silver (for dotting): NYC In A New York Minute Tribeca Silver
Wine red (for dotting and stamping): China Glaze Prey Tell
Bundle Monster plate BM-307 for the octopus

How I Did It:

Step 1: After applying your favorite base coat, apply an opaque layer of your base color. For our purposes, we'll be using a warm toned grey. I used two coats for this manicure.

Step 2: Once the base color is dry, bust out your dotting tool! There's no need for fancy nail art tools. You can use everyday items like a bobby pin or toothpick. Just be wary that the size of your point will determine how big your dots will turn out. Next, on a piece of foil/plastic/paper plate, place a drop or two of the silver nail polish. Dip your chosen dotting tool in the wet polish and dot away! I chose my placement on the left side of the nail, as shown below:

Step 3: Here's the trickiest part of the design. We'll be dotting over the silver dots using the wine red nail polish to create silver-rimmed red dots. You can actually use the same dotting tool so long as you do it with a light tap to create a smaller dot. Otherwise, it might be easier to just get a dotter with a smaller point. Do the same procedure as with step 2.

Step 4: It's still looking a bit bare, right? Well, a bit of stamping should do the trick! Pick an accent nail or two and using the same wine red nail polish, stamp on an image (or two!) of an octopus. I used Bundle Monster plate #307. Wait a few minutes before slathering on your top coat and you're all set!

I haven't done any cutesy designs in the past few while (weirdly enough) and I thought that this provided a great opportunity to use a stamp design that I doubt I'd use often anyway. Hammie tells me that the new MASH plates also have a kooky octopus design, Mash 37 to be exact, so you don't even have to own the new Bundle Monster plates. Yay for options! Now, I wasn't really planning on using the octopus stamp, but after I did my dots, Hammie kept bugging me about how it reminded him of octopus tentacles. I'm not even sure if that was meant as a compliment, but I decided to run with and tah-dah! Possibly one of the sillier manis I've sported lately. To make it even funnier, it reminded me of that afternoon when I met up with the lovely Marta (Hey Marta, I wonder if you get the tentacle reference, hahaha!) so that made these even more fun. Inside joke, for the win!

Also, if you noticed, I used two NYC In A New York Minute polishes. They were buy 2 for $3 at WalMart and for the price, it was hard to resist. Especially when I saw new shades like this grey and silver. There's also a pretty blue creme that I think might be a dupe for Barry M Cyan Blue (an awesome bright blue!). Seeing new shades like these at a fantastic price point rekindle my love for drugstore polishes. Rimmel and NYC are still my picks for the best bang for your buck nail polishes that have great coverage and formula in the drugstore. Wet N Wild comes a close third but I digress. Back to the octopus nails!

 Here's a look at the whole hand. I had to add an extra dot on the thumb to compensate for nail size ratio.

 Did you know that (according to National Geographic) octopuses collect crustacean shells and rocks to construct fortresses or "gardens" in their lairs?

 Here's another interesting octopus tidbit: they have 3 hearts. Two pump blood to the gills and the other pumps blood to the rest of the body.

Trying out a different hand pose as an alternative to the claw but it doesn't quite feel natural to me, either.

Yay for Hump Day! I don't know about you, but the weekend cannot come sooner for me. After a couple of late, late nights (one of which was my fault for leaving the Discovery Channel on for ambient noise, and the other was to stay up with my hardworking better half to provide much needed morale support and midnight snacks), I am reminded that my days as a zombie in university doesn't sit as well with me now as it once did. I'm quickly realizing that I simply cannot function without my 8 hours of sleep. Anyway, I certainly hope your week has been looking better than mine! Do you do palette cleanses? Would you sport octopus-inspired nails? What's the silliest nail art that you've ever done?