DIGIT-AL DOZEN WEEK: Black & White Music Notes

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Hello lovelies!

SO BEGINS DIGIT-AL DOZEN WEEK #2.

This week, we're doing black and white manis. This is exciting to me. I love constraints like this, I find it helps me to imagine nail art possibilities better than being told to do anything.

For Day 1, I opted to combine my Digit-al Dozen prompt with my ABC Challenge prompt, which was M for Music. This mani started with two coats of White On and one coat of HK Girl on all fingers.

I then put two thick coats of Moonlight on my thumb and ring fingers as accent nails. To be honest, this is one place where I rubbed against my Digit-al Dozen prompt a bit. This would have looked so BOSS with a brightly coloured glitter topper, and I had just the one in mind (Moosh by Happy Hands). Argh! Oh well.

The designs were all done with Camelot and my trimmed-down long liner brush and tiny detail brush.

Polishes used:

Sally Hansen - White On

Indigo Bananas - Moonlight

A England - Camelot

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

Glisten & Glow - HK Girl (top coat -- trying it out, have heard good things, will report back soon)

tiny long liner brush

tiny detail brush

I'm really happy with how the lines came out in this mani! They would have been even better if I'd used a fluid acrylic paint, but for something done with nail polish, I'm quite pleased. :) Come back tomorrow for another black & white mani!

xo,

J.

CHECK OUT WHAT THE OTHER TALENTED LADIES OF THE DIGIT-AL DOZEN ARE UP TO:

Green Lace Moons

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GUYS. I might have a problem. I can't stop doing lace moons.

These are a little messier than I'd like, but they're killer from a distance!

These are done in the style of Tenshi no Hana -- a queen of nail art, as far as I'm concerned, and the one who (above all else) makes me want to learn how to one-stroke. Go follow her blog. Don't worry about it being in French; if nothing else, go to drool over the images.

For this, I began with a base of Earthshine. (Whoa, Google tells me that's a real word! I had no idea!) It's a beautiful and complex polish. It reminds me of a green version of my beloved custom Tryst Lacquer, Aqueous, but also of a darkened sister to Cirque's Hellebore because it's green with silver flake shimmer and faint but noticeable fuchsia microshimmer. That said, Earthshine requires major patience, as it's a four-coater. You might be able to get away with three thick coats, but then I'd worry about it never drying. As it was, with four thin coats and my trusty 2013 top coat, it still took a while to fully harden up.

The design was all done with white acrylic paint and my omniuseful tiny detail brush. Here is a zoom in on Earthshine on my unadorned Cinderella hand, just in case you needed convincing that it's worth the four coats:

Polishes used:

Indigo Bananas - Earthshine

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

white acrylic paint

tiny detail brush

I have my Follow the Devil ABC prompt still to do tomorrow (but I don't want to take these off!!! HELP). Then it's Digit-al Dozen week! I still have one mani to do for that one, so I'm thinking of maybe combining the two prompts... am I a terrible nail person if I do that? Maybe, hey?

xo,

J.

Megamendung Mani

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Hello lovelies! Told ya I'd be back today. ;)

After the strenuousness of the last mani, I thought it'd be nice to do something more relaxed. So we have clouds à la Indonesian batik. Rainclouds, specifically -- or, in their native language, the megamendung motif.

These were easy to achieve. Paint on broad bands of watered-down acrylic paint, then line the outsides with a liner brush in full-opacity paint. In an ideal world, this print would be perfect one-stroke practice. But I cannot one-stroke to save my life.

I've included the below photo of my left thumb under direct light so that you can see the holographic shards in Dream, the base polish, sort of in action (it's very cloudy here today, no chance of sunlight):

Polishes used:

Zoya - Dream

butter LONDON - Nail Foundation (base coat)

la couleur couture - 2013 (top coat)

white acrylic paint

flat brush

liner brush

I've actually put in an order for special one-stroke brushes and acrylics from France, which I will talk more of when they arrive in a couple of weeks. It's a technique I really want to master, and the only way to do that is to practice! ;) Until I want to bang my head against things! ;) ;) Yeah!

xo,

J.