CucumPear's Onyx Phalanx: NotD – Of Lilacs and Geeks

Thursday, May 27, 2010

NotD – Of Lilacs and Geeks

Yes, I’m aware that I’m about a day too late. Wear the Lilac Day, Towel Day and Geek Pride Day were on the 25th and technically it’s 1 am on the 27th as I’m writing this. But hey, we celebrate Christmas on the 24th in Austria, so I feel entitled to slightly shift holidays as I please. ;-)
You probably guessed it from the title, I did a lilac manicure, even though I don’t care for lilacs at all. Their scent (like tulips) always smells like rotting flowers to me, and that kind of negates their prettiness.

This is what I used today, separated into base colour and nail art:

NailTek Foundation II
OPI Jade is the New Black
Seche Vite

Maybelline Colorama glossy nail color 23 dark chocolate
claire’s nail polish in an unnamed lilac shade
Eyeko Lilac Polish for lovely nails
OPI Green-wich Village
Konad Princess Top Coat (nasty thing bubbled on me today)

I started with three coats of the yummy Jade is the New Black over NailTek as my base colour and sealed it with Seche Vite.

Jade is the New Black is a gorgeous green as is found in both jadeite and malachite, both of which occur in a range of greens from very pale to almost black. It’s a smooth and fairly opaque crème polish, I could have gotten away with two coats, but tend to prefer three in case I overlook streaks in my less than stellar lighting.
The first coat of Jade is the New Black applied streaky, but it evened out nicely with another coat. It didn’t pool, levelled well and the brush is excellent. If you like greens, definitely check this one out.

This is Jade is the New Black in two coats without top coat, photographed with flash:

And here are two photos of Jade is the New Black in three coats, sealed with Seche Vite. The first one was taken with flash, the second one without flash under a ‘natural spectrum’ lamp:

And now let’s get to the tutorial part of this post. I started the lilac design by painting branches onto my nails using dark chocolate and a nail art brush.

Then I used a dotting tool and claire’s polish to add the rough shape of a lilac inflorescence.

I didn’t want to use too many different lilac polishes, so I chose only two and mixed them for this step. With this colour I repeated the previous step, covering most of the gaps between the first bunch of dots. I used a slightly smaller dotting tool, but you can of course use just one.

For the final step of creating the flowers I used Lilac Polish and an even smaller dotting tool and added another layer of dots.

Then it was time for the leaves. I feared those a bit, as the most logical technique to paint heart-shaped leaves is the dot-and-needle technique, which I still struggle with. But I think it worked quite well. I used Green-wich Village for this step.

Then I only had to seal the design. I used Konad top coat first to prevent smudging (though the bugger started bubbling recently, let’s hope thinning will fix it) and added a coat of Seche Vite for strength and shine.