Thursday, August 14, 2014

The Digital Dozen does Summer - Day 3: Tropical Print


I'm only half joking when I say that I am bound and determined to finish off this "Summer" Digital Dozen theme using dark polishes all week ;) The past two days have been a struggle for me to come up with something for day 3 of this theme...I did several manis the past few nights and hated them all. Isn't that the worst feeling when no matter how hard you try, you can't make it happen? 

I was wracking my brain all day at work (I promise I was also working!) summer concepts and kept coming up short. On the drive home tonight I was stuck at a stop light and happened to glance up at a row of palm trees swaying in the wind and everything sort of clicked into place. Tropical themed!!! Of course! Summer time means vacation time and who doesn't want to go some place tropical for their summer vacation? Crazy people, that's who!
This definitely reminds me of a 'Dad's hawaiian shirt' kind of design, but I love it! I love doing black bases with bright pops of color over it. I didn't use an actual print for reference on this look so my flowers are sort of colorful blobby things than an actual tropical flower. 
I used a base of American Apparel's Hassid (again!) and then painted the green palm fronds with 4 different green acrylic paints. I almost left just the fronds because I loved how they looked alone but figured they needed a little something else. I was worried that using red and green would seem too "christmas-y" but I just love the contrast and pop that the red flower creates! 
I'm 2 days behind on my posts for this week, but hopefully you'll all stick around and check out everyone's manis for Wednesday. Hopefully I'll have another look to share tomorrow as well :) 
Happy Polishing :)