Raindrops That Turned Into Spots!

Hi again! I'm back so soon as I have more nail art to enter into this weeks Holo Taco challenge. This was definitely the less successful of my two entries, but I like how it looks as nail art on it's own, just didn't really fit with the theme as much as I'd hoped! So the theme is Optical Illusions, and my intention with this one was to create the illusion of sparkly raindrops on my nails.

I started with a dark blue base, and then a matte top coat, to make the shiny raindrops stand out against it. I decided to go with round spots, more like rain on a window, rather than classic raindrop shapes, and I think this is the first part where I went wrong! The colour I used for the raindrops was way too dense, meaning they look just like silver spots rather than clear glittery droplets. I really should have tested it out on my Uber Mat first! I should have used a finer scattered glitter, this one is too linear I think. All the same I used a dotting tool to add dots of clear top coat over the spots, but unfortunately this didn't really make much difference, they're still just silver spots!

So in conclusion I do like the way these look, but they certainly didn't go as planned. Might try it again some time and approach it differently. I had a bit less time after spending so long on the turtle nail art on my other hand! I'm going to enter this into this weeks challenge anyway because why not!
Colours used: Indigo - Barry M. Harp On It - Color Club

A Turtle Nail Illusion

Hi everyone. I'm back with another Holo Taco weekly competition prompt, this weeks is Optical Illusion. I certainly wasn't expecting this one and it caused me to leave my comfort zone of  stamping! My boyfriend suggested I do something where I paint my nails the same as their background so they blend in. I also had some other ideas so did something else on by other hand, which I will post next, but I liked his idea best.

We did some thinking about the subject and chose this cardboard turtle which was part of a birthday card. I started with a base of Barry M's Mani Mask, to make my nails look a bit nicer underneath if there were any gaps in the green polish. Turned out there were no gaps, but it was a really good smooth base for painting on. I used a small nail art brush to paint the colours onto my nails, trying my best to line up with the pattern on the turtle. It's not perfect but I'm quite pleased with it, as it came out neater than I expected it to! I didn't quite have the right shades but I had enough of a range. Unfortunately I wasn't very good at lining up my middle finger in the pictures! I finished of with a matte top coat to try and match the turtle a bit more, and there we have it! It looks like quite an unusual earthy manicure on it's own!
Colours used: Key Lime - Barry M, Green Park - Nails Inc, British Racing Green - Butter London, Spring Green - Barry M, Basil Street - Nails Inc, Cappuccino - Barry M, Cocoa - Barry M, Laguna - Barry M