Friday, April 11, 2014

NAGG - Day 2: Jewel Tones


Hello, all! I'm so glad it's Friday. I had a rough work week and fell behind on my Nail-Art-A-Go-Go posts almost immediately! How sad is that? Haha I hope this doesn't happen too often in the future, but sometimes you just can't force nail art. Luckily, Mireia is still on track!

Day two of NAGG is Jewel Tones (Nail-Art-A-Go-Go is SO long and there are hyphens in there and ugh, I'm lazy so it's acronym time!). I think this theme was part of why I couldn't get motivated after work Wednesday and Thursday. This was also the theme that was the nail in the coffin for me last time I tried this challenge as I could not come up with anything for it (yes, day 2 was my breaking point). While I love jewel tones individually, I don't really love them together - it feels a bit overwhelming to me - so I had no clue what to do. 

After much hemming and hawing, I decided that I was going to do a stained glass inspired look. I liked the idea of black with the jewel tones and figured it would be therapeutic and enjoyable to create. After a silly amount of browsing the web, I found this fantastic square and rectangular stained glass image and knew right away I would paint it. 
I started out as I have with all my other stained glass looks, and did the outline of the squares and rectangles in black acrylic paint first. I then went back in with each of the polishes and filled in the shapes (it's like a coloring book and I love it). For those interested, here are the colors I used: 

Blue: Essie's Butler Please
Teal: OPI's Amazon...Amazoff 
Magenta: Habit's Sweet Life (reviewed here)
Pink: China Glaze's Rich & Famous
Mint: China Glaze's At Vase Value 
 When I first started painting these, I didn't like them at all...but I was at the point of needing to get it done as I had been putting them off for several days. Then, I made one slight adjustment and decided to outline my entire nail in the black paint and OH MY GOSH. It completely changed my opinion of these! I instantly loved how they looked. 

Anyway, sometimes it's good to push a design further than you originally anticipated because good things happen! I really like how these came out and they reminded me of Mod styling. A little bit retro but hopefully still fresh. 
What do you think of this look? Be sure to check out Mireia's mani over on The Nail Art Show or click the inlinkz below :) 

Happy Polishing!