NOTD 2/10/15

First, let me start off by apologizing for my little five-day absence, I'm still getting used to this whole blogging thing :). Second, I need to put it out there that this is not my idea. I saw it on Instagram from @tartofraises and @u_nona (both AMAZING by the way) and wanted to try it for myself! And let me just say, I am OBSESSED.

Seriously, I had never in a million years thought to add gel polish to make 3D nail art.

Polishes used:

Essie For The Twill Of It (purple / green duochrome)

Gelish Top It Off top coat

I had already worn FTTOI for a day before I did these, to ensure the polish was completely dry. Last year in my art class, we did a series of eight pieces for our "Senior Thesis." I did little "murals" with polish on fake nails, and had purchased a gel top coat and a UV lamp to seal in my paintings in the middle of doing them in case I messed up (that way I could use a non-acetone remover to redo what I needed to without messing up the rest of the painting). I remember when researching if gel polish would work with regular polish, I found that it would, given that the normal polish has time to completely dry. That being said, I knew yesterday that I wanted to give these a try, and I'm so glad they worked out the way I had hoped!

First, I got my supplies ready: gel top coat, rubbing alcohol, mini UV lamp, cotton pads, and a nail art brush (I used the 00 size from this set that I got from Amazon). I quickly wiped down each nail with rubbing alcohol to cleanse the surface. Then I got my nail art brush, dabbed out some gel top coat onto some tin foil, and started blobbing random spots onto my nail. I worked in the sequence of doing one hand at a time, doing my thumb first, my index and middle fingers next, and my ring and pinky fingers last. After blobbing enough spots to my liking, I stuck the nails I just did under the UV lamp for three minutes to cure. I found that the spots weren't as thick as I wanted them to be after just one application, so I went over each one again and cured it for another three minutes. After curing, I wiped each nail down with more rubbing alcohol on a cotton pad. I did this over and over again until I got my desired effect on each hand.

The only thing I didn't do was add top coat. Well, I did yesterday, but that was when I was wearing FTTOI on its own. Adding top coat on top of the gel would smooth it out a bit, making the 3D effect less noticeable.

Overall, I'm SUPER happy with how these turned out. I love how it looks like there are little water droplets on my nails! The texture is really cool, too; I can't stop running my nails over each other haha. I'm definitely going to try some more designs with gel polish in the future!

Thanks for reading!