31 Day Challenge: Day Fourteen ~ Flowers

Picture found on Google Images. No idea who photographed it
but it wasn't me.

The Stargazer Lily is one of my fav flowers, but was rather tricky to replicate in a manicure. My original idea was to do a background color of some pastel and free hand the lily in the corner of each nail. Freehand has not been kind to me lately, however. I almost had to scrap the whole idea when I stumbled across one of my BundleMonster plates, BM314. Hang on, is that a lily? Woot! But wait, there is a whole bunch of stuff on this image. I just want the lily to be in the corner. How can I isolate the flower and color it in to look like a Stargazer Lily? The answer was stamper decals. Now I'm still perfecting the art of stamper decals. Some decals get this hard edge that sticks up, or don't want to lay right on the nail. It was a bit of a risk, but that's what a challenge is for. So I stamp the image, scrape away the parts of the image I don't want and color in what's left.

When making a stamper decal you kinda need to think about it from the top down. The topmost layer when you put it on your nail will be the bottommost layer when you paint it. So first is the outline provided by the stamp in Wet n Wild "Black Creme" and a layer of topcoat to protect it while you color it in. The next is the spots I added with a dotting tool using Sinful Colors "Energetic Red" and the paler pink strip in the center of each petal in Sinful Colors "Cotton Candy".

Last is Wet n Wild "French White Creme" to fill in the flower and a final coat of topcoat to strengthen the decal. Let it dry a bit and place it on your nail. Topcoat it in place. I did one and took pictures incase I messed up the other 3. Good thing I did because the first one turned out so wonderfully and the next 3, not so much.

AMAZING! I love, love, LOVE this! Oh, and a quick note about the background color. I was gonna slap on just some random pastel, but last week I read about a technique I'd never tried before called watercoloring nail polish. I'll write more about it later, but basically what I did was paint my nails with Sinful Colors "Unicorn" a pastel yellow, then put a teeny, tiny drop of Orly "Blue Collar" and Sally Hansen "In Record Lime" on one nail and with a large paintbrush (not huge, but bigger than you usually use for nail art) dab acetone over it to dilute it and make it run over the nail. When it dries it makes these subtle water rings of color. I adore how it turned out.

But then I got carried away and made a decal for all my fingers. I should have stopped when I was ahead. The next 3 didn't turn out as well and the combination of all the decals made it look too busy. You also lose the look of the watercolor below all the decals. Also the air bubble problem I've been fighting decided to show up again. No idea why, I'm not using any of the same polishes or topcoat that I did for my temporary tattoo manicure.