Nail Art Nail-Off: Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Nail Art Nail-Off: Two Takes on One Nail Art Technique!

Our theme for today: St. Patrick's Day!  Let's break out the green polish!

Hi!  It's Arden here.  For my St. Patrick's Day nails, I went with a simple gradient, plus a crosshatch pattern on my accent nail.  (Lisl: it's just so amazing).

This wasn't my first attempt at gradient nails, but it was definitely the most successful!  This time, I followed the instructions from the Nailasaurus' gradient tutorial and they worked like a dream!  I definitely recommend swirling the two colors together before putting them on the sponge-- that might be the secret to making it work!

Colors used:
Essie Absolutely Shore
Sinful Colors Rise and Shine
Essie Good as Gold 

 
For the gradient nails, I painted a base color of Absolutely Shore (3 coats), used a fast drying top coat, and then sponged on both Absolutely Shore and Rise and Shine.  I ended up loving the gradient wayyy more than I thought I would--- will definitely be doing it again!  Maybe for an under the sea theme? 

For my accent nail, I used a base coat of Absolutely Shore, then applied striping tape in a cross hatch pattern, and used a dotting tool to paint in each little diamond.  

Here at Casa de Polish we love our terrariums!

Ok, it's Lisl writing now.

So for MY St. Patrick's day manicure, I was inspired by Lucky Charms (the cereal).  You know, hearts stars, and horseshoes, clovers and blue moons, pots of gold and rainbows, and me red balloons. Like this:

These marshmallows are not in the right order

I started out with a "cereal-colored" nude background that I borrowed from Arden, then made a bunch of tape-stencils for the marshmallows.  I either cut the shapes out with scissors, like in this tutorial (I used regular scotch tape), or I pressed the tape on a cardboard box and cut them out with a box cutter  (this was not particularly effective for the curvier shapes).  And this is what I got.  On the left hand...

The heart came out the best, and also the star.  I don't know what is up with the star-marshmallow in the cereal, it is barely star-ish.  The horseshoe looks like the bottom half of footie-pajamas.  We'll call it abstract.  

I used an Color Club - Art Club striper for the green dots and the clover.   So that's hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers...

and blue moons! (Arden: My favorite is definitely the blue moon.  It looks JUST LIKE the marshmallow!) On the right hand.  At this point I was getting clumsy and impatient.  Plus I used the box-cutter stencil method for all of these except my ring finger and the pink in the rainbow, which I free-handed.  The cutter does not like curves! It does not like them!

The pot of gold is not in the right place.  I tried to rectify that...

And for the colors:

Cereal (background): Essie - Playa de Platinum (Arden is sleeping now, and her nail polish is squirreled away in her room)

Heart, and the pink part of the rainbow: Zoya - Kara

Star: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - White Out, Essie - Fear Of Desire

Horseshoe: Zoya - Mira

Clover: Revlon - Minted, Color Club Art Club Striper - Green

Blue Moon, and the pink part of the rainbow: Zoya - Wednesday 

Pot of Gold, and the yellow part of the rainbow: Sally Hansen Insta Dri - Lightening Color Club Art Club Striper - Yellow

Red Balloon: Essie - Geranium