Sparkly Safari Sunset

Hey space turtles :) I'm a bit behind with blogging at the moment so playing catch up. This one is for a Glam Nails Challenge prompt of Sunset. I had liked the idea of trying sharpies over reflective glitter for a while and thought this would be a good opportunity to try it in gradient form.

I started with a peel off base followed by two coats of reflective glitter and a quick dry top coat. I then used yellow, orange and red sharpies to draw three stripes of colour directly onto my nails. I then took a wide nail art brush and some nail polish remover which I used to blend the colours together. Next I added some tree, giraffe, bird and rhino images in black using Mo You London's Mother Nature 08 stamping plate. I finished the look with another glossy top coat.

I'm super happy with these. The reflective glitter sparkles so nicely through the gradient. I've had a few good compliments on them too :)

Colours used: Platinum Diamond - Fun Lacquer, Various Sharpies, Black Stamping Polish - Dance Legend

Safari Sunset Nails

Hey everyone, happy Friday! Some more catch up nails today, my first really summery nails of the year. I have had a safari nail design with a water reflection on my to do list for about two years, and even bought a small stamping plate on eBay especially for it, and have finally got round to it! I was inspired by Cassis P on YouTube, who has done a how to video for this effect.

I started with a base of white on all nails, then used black stamping polish for the zebra print pattern on my little and index fingernails. On my other nails I printed the safari image the right way up around the middle of my nails. For the reverse pattern I had to make decals so that the images could be placed the right way round (if I had stamped them they wouldn't have matched up with the pattern above). I did this by stamping the images onto some clear polish on my Uber Mat, painting some more clear polish over the top, and peeling up once dry. Once I'd placed the images on my nails I applied a clear top coat to all nails to seal the images in.

Once dry I used some of OPI color paints to paint pink over the zebra print nails, and for the orange and yellow sunset, I used small pieces of sponge for this. For the blue I used a lovely sheer blue from Urban Outfitters (colours listed below the pictures) but I don't think it was quite dark enough for this design, so I did have to layer it up a bit. Originally I had been planning to just use black on the zebra print nails but ended up wanting something brighter. I have mixed feelings about that as I do love a bit of contrast! Loved the safari nails though and would like to do them again.
Colours used: Floral Street - Nails Inc, Flipper - Urban Outfitters, Chromatic Orange - OPI, Primarily Yellow - OPI, Midnight Mischief, Pen & Pink - OPI