Rainbow Clouds with Butter London The Black Knight

While not participating in the 31 day challenge myself, seeing all the different and interesting designs people are coming up with is very inspiring! Recently, the theme was "Rainbow Nails", and I got the urge to do my own. This is a variation on the happy clouds mani I did before, and again, inspired by Jane from Nailside's rainbow design. Love!

Another name I have for this mani is "Bleeding Rainbow" (some dark parody of "Reading Rainbow" perhaps). The colours bled out from the arc into the clouds and rain - is what I was going for here.

My base is one coat of black with one coat of Butter London "The Black Knight". Then I painted the white arc first using the bottle brush, starting from the side of my nail and extending down to the tip in one stroke. For the rainbow clouds, it's easiest to get the rounded edges when you have a small bead of polish on the end of your brush (but not so that it's dripping). The raindrops were painted with a nail art brush.

Yellow - China Glaze "Lemon Fizz"
Purple - Zoya "Reagan"
Blue -China Glaze "For Audrey"
Light Purple - Nature Republic colour PP402

 

The Black Knight has a sheer black base with predominately blue, red, and fuchsia microglitter. If you look real closely, you can see even tinier silver, yellow, and green glitter in there. On it's own, it would take three coats to become opaque, but if you paint a black base, you'll only need one.

Closeup of the glitter - how amazing does that look??

Hope you enjoyed this! I'm sure I'll be inspired many more times while this 31 Day Challenge is going on.

Paint Splatter-esque Nails with OPI Don't Touch My Tutu & Rainbow Connection

I've been bitten by the DIY bug lately, and after cleaning out my closet, the itch only got worse. I found a couple pairs of jeans that I haven't worn in years, and instead of just giving them away, I thought why not try to breathe new life into them by splattering some paint on them? Yep, I'm talking paint splatter jeans and shorts. While the look isn't everyone's cup of tea, I quite like the "messy artist" idea. Or the "I-just-finished-painting-my-house-and-didn't-bother-to-change" look. Semantics.

I'll be splattering my jeans this weekend, and in the meantime, I wanted to have some paint splatter fun with my nails too. I didn't want to deal with the cleanup though, so I cheated.

This is two coats of OPI Don't Touch My Tutu, one coat of OPI Rainbow Connection, then one more coat of DTMT on top.

Don't Touch My Tutu is from OPI's New York City Ballet Collection for Spring 2012. It's a beautiful, soft white that gives your nails a very clean look. The formula is sheer and wonderfully workable, going on nice and evenly. This is two coats.

One coat of Rainbow Connection over two coats of Don't Touch My Tutu

One more coat of Don't Touch My Tutu over Rainbow Connection

One more coat of Don't Touch My Tutu over Rainbow Connection (matte)

I think this combination gives a pretty good paint splatter-esque effect, without any of the cleanup actual paint splatter nails would require. Even not, it's still very pretty.

What do you think? What nails are you wearing this weekend, and any DIY projects you're itching to try?