FingerFood's Theme Buffet - Animal Print

Yes, I caved... another challenge. It keeps me on my toes *winks*. This one is hosted by Sam from FingerFood. I have already seen a few mani's for this week's theme, gorgeous. You can take a look for yourself by following the Inlinkz at the bottom of this post.

Rules:

• The only rule is that it must be your own work

Now, isn't that simple? So, animal print... I could've gone with a leopard mani, but I didn't. One of the Vivid Lacquer stamping plates I bought has a peacock inspired pattern, so that's what I used.

All the polishes, from left to right:

• Barry M - Gelly - Lychee
• Catrice - 800 Heavy Metallilac
• Catrice - 740 King Of Greens
• NYC - 014 Magic Earth
• Mundo de Uñas - 44 Old Pink
• Mundo de Uñas - 45 Metallic Violet

  And the peacock patterns from Vivid Lacquer VL006 (top left and top middle).

My base is 2 coats of Lychee, a lovely cream-coloured nude. First coat is slightly streaky, but the second coat is enough to cover even the blue stain on my ring finger. I am so glad I bought this during my trip to London last October. I wanted to do a stamping decal to add more colour into the pattern. The last time I bought some MoYou stamping plates I also bought a squishy stamper, which picks up images perfectly... except this peacock one. I tried with different polishes on paper first, it would pick up around the sides of the stamper, but not completely in the middle. Highly annoying. So I grabbed my old faux Konad stamper, which is not squishy at all. Guess what? That one picked up the image perfectly! Figures. So, it is beneficial to have several types of stampers, if one fails, another one might be better for the job.

I stamped the peacock pattern onto my cheapo stampers (I made two decals, one for the right hand as well) with Mundo de Uñas - 45 Metallic Violet. I let it dry upon the stamper. Next I used a dotting tool to colour the pattern with Heavy Metallilac and Magic Earth in one row, and Old Pink and King Of Greens in the next. When those dried I added a coat of Glisten & Glow HK Girl Topcoat. I have found that it is easiest to squeeze the stamper on the side lightly to get the decal to detach. You can squeeze until it's completely free from the stamper and then pick it up with tweezers. For more info on making decals, go here. I stamped the peacock feather straight onto my thumb nails. I just dabbed Heavy Metallilac and King Of Greens on the plate to get both colours in there.

On my other nails I am wearing 3mm square studs I bought on eBay. They're silver coloured, but I painted them with the stamping polishes Old Pink and Metallic Violet. I stuck them on with top coat and used two coats of top coat to seal them in. Because they are quite large and don't bend with my curved nail I had to use two to make sure they were sealed in properly. The polish did want to come off slightly from adding the top coat, so next time I think I will topcoat the painted studs first before sticking them on my nails.

I am very pleased with how this mani turned out, it was a lot of work, but worth it.

Go check out the other mani's in this week's theme as well!