Summer Tribals

In my last post I swatched the 3 polishes from Essence's Tribal Summer LE collection I got in Berlin. With a collection named Tribal Summer what else could I do than tribal nail art? To get inspired I went on a Pinterest session and created a new board just for tribals. There are so many different tribal manicures out there, I probably got inspiration from quite a few *winks*.

I used the base of INTI INKA (yellow) I swatched last and had so much trouble with as you can read in my swatch post.  I also used a black striper polish, toothpicks, nail art brush, striping tape and a dotting tool. Basically I just tried what felt best.

Most long lines were made with my black striper, the wavey line on my middle finger was done with a toothpick. I've never been very good at drawing, it is not perfect, but from a distance it looks fine. I found the toothpick difficult to use because of the size, it is so thin to hold! Guess I'm too used to the thickness of a pen.

The triangles on my pinky were done with striping tape (that did not want to behave by the way), then using a toothpick to add the coloured zig-zag lines.

The pink dots on top of the purple stripe were dotted double to make the colour stand out more and not fade into the purple.

I also did my right hand, I wore this mani for two days. I did go for something slightly easier for my right hand using more striping tape and crafting scissors to cut tape into crazy edged lines. My favourite nail is the simplest by design, the middle finger. It was a lot of prep work getting the striping tape in place, but it was worth it.I think an entire mani with just a base colour and black would have been lovely as well.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I got a lot of compliments from people at work. They did stand out in a good way, even if there still is room for improvement. This mani grew on me, at first I only saw the imperfections, but after two days I liked it much more.