52wkCrumpet20: hearts and purple

This is week twenty of Crumpet's 52 week challenge! The "rules" are very flexible and you have all week to accomplish the mani. As always, must be done on your own nails, using the colours suggested (or parts thereof).
This week's prompt: hearts and purple (either each alone or combined). I chose both as it is Valentine week and I like purple. I also wanted to try out some of new Neiru techniques, though in normal polish vs gel.

This is an alternating accents mani. The four accents were done in the galaxy marbling technique. The remaining six nails were painted in the beautiful OPI A Grape Fit. Two coats on the purple.

For the accents I started with a white base. Then I added drops of Layla Purple Galaxy and A Grape Fit to the nail. I used acetone-free remover and a somewhat larger brush to dab the liquid on to the polish drops. You keep adding drops of the liquid and the polish colours until you are basically happy with the flow. I added some white as well. It all comes together with top coat – before it just looks like a big mess! For these I top coated with Poshé – I find that thicker yet still very quick drying.

One one accent nail I decided to do negative hearts. While I like my hearts I am really not happy with the white back(fore)ground. Find it too harsh. But I was going off a Japanese nail art lesson and was trying to follow that. There, though, the marbled background was softer and more pastel. I drew two hearts with a fine line brush – one going up and one down – and the bottom of hearts on the sides to fill in the gaps.

Then I painted all the spaces around the hearts in white using a finer brush. I had to go over a couple of times. This is where the design would be much easier with gel. On the side spaces I added some glitter (China Glaze Prism, a purple-silver mix) and over the white and in the whites of the galaxy nails some OPI Pirouette my Whistle (a fine dusty silver-white glitter). Good coat of Poshé finished it off.

It is nice to wear purple for a change. One of my fab colours but never seem to get it out much. So big thx to Crumpie for selecting purple!! This has been a week of marbling; from Sharpie marbling to acetone marbling to galaxy marbling. Is fun, and relatively easy and effective. Cheers girls!! Happy V-Day!

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