Delightful Daisies Nail Art

*press samples*

It must really be spring for real, now: I'm fixated on floral patterns!

Playful Pink Floral Nail Art

I'm still here! Illness, work, and some other things have really been kicking my butt lately and eating up my blogging time, but I swear I'm still here. I have had a chance to do a bit of nail art, though, so that's something, right?

Today I have some freehand floral nails to share with you. I haven't done a great many floral patterns in my time as a nail blogger: not because I don't like them, but because I just don't have a lot of confidence that I can execute them well. I recently dug up some inspirational images that I'd saved, though, so I finally decided to take a shot at recreating one of them.

Easiest Gradient Ever

Gradient manicures are one of my absolute favorite things, but sometimes they're just a little too much work, y'know? Waiting for the base layer to dry, painstakingly sponging on layers, dealing with cleanup—it can take forever! That's why all the thermal polishes popping up these days are so great: if your nails are long enough, you can (sometimes) get that gradient look without all the hassle.

Dotted Birthday Daisies

I went out of town recently for a little birthday getaway, and before I left, I decided to try my hand at some quick floral nail art. I should probably know better than to try a new technique when I'm already in a rush, but... what can I say. I'm just stubborn like that! (Fitting for a Taurus, huh?)

OPI Sheer Tinted Stamping

As soon as I saw the press release for the OPI Sheer Tints line, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these unique polishes. I've seen people execute all kinds of creative looks with them, but what I really wanted to try was painting them over some white-on-black stamping—i.e., the same technique I used for my Painting the Roses Red Valentine's Day manicure.

Much to my delight, it worked fabulously!

Painting the Roses Red

I had a bit of a hard time coming up with (another) Valentine's Day manicure idea that I was really excited about this year. I actually love Valentine's Day—any excuse to pick out a gift for the Mr. and eat chocolate, after all!—but the traditional pink/hearts/sparkles just weren't inspiring me. Eventually I hit upon the idea of focusing on my favorite Valentine's Day flower, roses, and I stumbled upon this look while messing around with my stamping plates and a bunch of different color combinations.

I really wanted red roses on a black background, but I don't have a stamping plate that has an image of the negative space around a rose, and none of my reds stamped well at all on top of black. As a last resort, I stamped on some roses in white onto my black base and then painted over the whole nail with one of my more sheer reds, and—bingo! It worked! Red roses on a background that still looks black.

I used Essie Licorice for my base, and then stamped on the roses using essence white stamping polish and the Messy Mansion MM07 plate. (By the way, everyone probably already knows this, but Messy Mansion plates are amazing—they're really well etched and every single stamp came out perfectly. I can't recommend them highly enough!) Then I added a thin coat of tenoverten Carmine to each nail and sealed everything with topcoat. And once I realized what I was doing, I couldn't help but hum the "Painting the Roses Red" song from Alice in Wonderland to myself the entire time.

I really love how this turned out—the roses looks so deep and rich because of how the stamping is sandwiched between the two colors. I'll definitely be trying this technique again the next time I want to stamp a color onto black! I wish I'd dragged out my light box to shoot a few of the pictures so that the lamp glare wasn't such an issue (the dark colors and extremely shiny finish from the HK Girl top coat I used make the glare especially obvious), but that's my only minor regret here. Lesson learned for next time!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!