Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Paisley China Plates - Photos and Video!


I'm so incredibly excited about today's post! I wasn't going to do nail art last night but I forced myself to at least try and I am so happy that I did. I've been wanting to do a design like this for awhile and when I saw an indigo and white paisley pattern in a Pottery Barn magazine, I went for it. While the design I saw spurred my creativity, the paisley patterns I ended up doing are just random patterns I thought would look good. I'm just so happy they actually managed to turn out! Paisley is tough! Warning: This is a picture heavy post. ;)
No Top Coat
With Matte Top Coat
I also have a really special treat for you guys - I made a video of me painting these! I had so much fun doing this that I might make it a regular thing. I sped the video up by 600% so these actually took me about an hour to do, but it's been consolidated down to a nifty 6 minute video. If you've got the time, let me know what you think of it. I have no clue what I'm doing with iMovie so it's still a major learning process for me, but I think it turned out alright. Would you enjoy seeing videos like this? I'd really appreciate your input :) 


I wasn't thinking when I created this video, but I used some of my iTunes music to play along with it...and youtube didn't like that. So there is not audio for now. I'll have to figure out how to remedy that in the future. This whole video upload thing made me want to pull my hair out...if you'd prefer to watch it on youtube directly, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfXdObiKvz0
The base for this look is OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls and I used a blue from my acrylic paint sets. I'm sure there are a few of you that are disappointed that I used acrylic for this, and I'm sorry! But it's so much easier to control and work with and I was looking for speed and precision last night and wasn't feeling up to potentially fighting the nail polish with each stroke.
I used a trimmed down paint brush for these. I purchased a (nicer) cheap brush from Michael's and trimmed it down to just a few bristles and I've been getting the hang of working with it. It can be tricky since the brush doesn't apply as evenly as a regular paint brush, but I'm getting used to have a lighter hand with it.
I took pictures of this with and without a top coat because the line-work REALLY softened once I added a top coat. I liked how crisp the lines were sans top coat, but since I'm wearing these today, I knew I needed to protect them with a top coat. (The second photo, near the top, is shown with the matte top coat).
While it does blur the lines a bit, I actually quite like how the matte top coat looks with these. Somehow they're more vibrant? 
Do you have a preference on matte vs no top coat? What's your vote on the video? Should I make more like them? 

Happy Polishing and hope everyone's week is going well!