Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Guest Post from Kelli of The Nail Polish Challenge

So, even though I'm back from my vacation, I have one more fantastically amazing guest post to share with you all, this time from Kelli over at The Nail Polish Challenge. She is one of my favorite bloggers and she always has the most stunning swatches, the perfect nail shape, and spot on photography. While she typically sticks to swatching, I've seen her do phenomenal nail art so I thought I'd pester her to do a guest post for me. AND I AM SO GLAD I DID! I am floored by what she came up with and so honored that she pushed herself to create something this beautiful for my little ole blog! Please, join me in trying to convert her to the world of nail art because she needs to do more things like this! Thanks, Kelli! 
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Hello everyone! It's quite an honor to be guest posting on one of my favorite blogs! 

When Lindsey asked me to create a nail look for her blog, I immediately knew I wanted to try to recreate her incredible style of capturing realistic painting and fine details - but of course, I'm all about simple nail art, so I tried to pick a happy medium. I definitely went outside of my comfort zone for this manicure, so bear with me, but I'm pretty satisfied with the results ;)
This manicure is actually inspired by a painting in my boyfriend's house. I think its beautiful and I always wanted to try something similar on my nails, but I was never bold enough to actually make an attempt. But, it seemed like the perfect nail art for this guest post, so I snapped a (crappy) photo with my phone and decided to try to recreate it on my nails. Unfortunately, my boyfriend has no idea where he got the painting, and I can't find much information about it, but a quick Google search led me to an artist named Isabella Zacher Finet so I am guessing that it may be her work. Here is my crappy cell phone photo of it:
Sorry for the poor quality! (And lopsidedness. I was never good at taking photos with my phone!) Anyway, back to the nails:
I started with a base of KBShimmer My Life's Porpoise on all my nails, and once that was dry, I lightly brushed on strokes of OPI Alpine Snow and KBShimmer Eclipse. Then, with a fine brush, I drew the stems and the abstract flowers with Zoya Rocha and China Glaze Stoked to Be Soaked. I finished it off with a glossy top coat, and voila!
I really loved how the background turned out. I almost stopped after I was finished with it, because I thought it looked so cool and grungy! Well, I am glad I decided to keep going and paint the flowers, because I am pleased with those too. It was nice to push my boundaries a little bit and do some freehand nail art!

Something I like to do on my blog is have a "group photo" of all the polishes I use in my manicures, so my readers know which colors are which. Here's the polishes I used for this grungy floral nail art: 
Well, I hope you enjoyed my nail art! Special thanks to Lindsey for allowing me to post on her incredibly inspiring blog ;)