Limited Stripes

Hello!
I had no idea what to call this design. I did it a while ago for a mani swap with talented Swiftpolish (picture of the swap at the end of this post) and I got a lot of positive reactions - and I also liked it very much myself.

Keep reading to find out more about the process!

Watercolor: pink and framed

Heey, remember the Outlined Marble nails I did in September? (yea, how could you :D) This time I did pretty much the same thing but in pink.
(I still struggle with taking photos under artificial light)

left hand

I have a tutorial for this technique: Outlined Marble Tutorial.

Matching Waterfall

I wanted to outline my nails the other day so I looked for a design that would look good outlined. I ended up with waterfall mani, as The Nailasaurus calls it.

Originally I wanted to outline all nails but I liked the way they looked without outline too much.

(My photos get sometimes greyish for no reason, blogger makes them go wrong, especialy white parts. Do you know how to fix this?)

Outlined Marble Tutorial

Heey, I have the Outlined Marble tutorial for you today!

final result

You'll need black (and white, not necessary, though) acrylic paint, water, normal nail art brush, flat paint brush (optional) and white polish. And top coat, obviously.

The Process:
1. Paint your nails white (with polish) and let it dry. Now you need to cover it in water, but the water most probably won't stay where you want it (because of the glossy polish finish). To make it work, dip your brush in a little bit of white paint (you can dip it in any other colour), then in water, and cover your nail in paint dissolved in water. Wipe it off. Your nails should be ready to be covered in pure water now.
2. Cover your nails in water, dip brush in colour you want to dissolve and touch your nail with it gently. Regular watercolour.
3. Keep doing n. 2.
4. If the colour gets where you don't want it, just grab a piece of tissue and soak it off. But carefully, this can ruin all you've done.
5.-7. Experiment. The result depends on your tools and will always be different. Add colour(s) and water and see where it gets you.
8. Outline.
9. Finish outlining. Wait for it to dry and seal it with top coat.

Additional Tips:
Get rid of the water left around cuticles before you move to outlining.
If you don't like what you created you can always wipe it off while it's still wet.
I can always see some sort of cracks in the top coat after sealing my design, don't worry if that happens to you too, just add another layer of top coat.
If you're thinking of buying acrylics but you're not entirely sure yet, stop that hesitating and get them, I can't imagine doing this with polish.

The Brushes:
In this mani, I use flat paint brush from craft store, it has hard hair and I cut down its size. It is not a one stroke brush, not at all.

dipped in paint

For outlining I use the longer brush from the photo below:

Alternatives:
I really like this technique as it is quite quick and simple, I've used it three times so far, it always turns out different. (Photos are linked to original posts.)

Outlined Galaxy

Don't Panic

Outlined Marble

I did my best to explain the process, but I feel like it wasn't enough anyway, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask! I'll be happy to answer them.
If you recreate this sort-of-watercolour, be sure to let me know (even in the comments), I'd love to see it! :)
And, just to remind you, @nailuminium is on Instagram now, check it out and follow for more up-to-date mani photos.
Take care!

Outlined Marble keeps glowing

Hello there, finally I have time to write. I'm back to neutral colours, black and white today. There were two things on my mind when I planned this: glowing polish and outlining. But outlining pure white space would be far too simple for me and that's why I decided to go with acrylic watercolor effect, also used in Outlined Galaxy and Don't Panic manis.

I painted my nails Gabriella Salvete 148 white and then two coats of Essence 18 fly firefly fly glow in the night top coat before adding the black (black topped with this glowing top coat looks off, it ruins the contrast). Then I did this acrylic-watercolor technique and when that dried, I outlined my nails with black acrylic paint. Everything is sealed with NYC Turbo Dry top coat.

You can see my right hand above, this time I didn't have much trouble outlining with my non-dominant hand (unlike the first time).
I even menaged to properly capture brightness of the glowing:

 Yea, funny shapes.

On the other hand, both hands photos turned out rather weird. I blame the colour scheme.
To the title - don't these remind you of marble rock? They do to me.

I have one more thing to ask you: would you like to see a tutorial? Tutorial on how I do this watercolor with acrylics, cause you can find a lot of tutorials on outlining out there. Also, would you like to see a tutorial for any other of my designs? (And seriously, what preposition does tutorial come with? Tutorial on st/ tutorial for st? I wasn't able to find it on the internet.)
Bye!

NOTD - Bad Ass

Hey! Yesterday I went through nail art inspiration photos I have in my phone and I decided to recreate one of them.

NOTD - Outlined Galaxy

Hello.

I'm wearing this right now and it feels nice. I felt uninspired yesterday, so I went through my do-it-later designs and tried this one from Spector's Nails. I didn't really follow the tutorial as I worked with acrylic paint (plus with Gabriella Salvete 148 white polish and water).

The design inside reminds me of pictures you find, when you google "galaxy", so that's where the title comes from. I didn't intend it to look galaxy-like, so I didn't add any stars or dust.

Now this it "the other hand", which wasn't hard to do. It didn't take me long to do both hands - compared to usual.

As a top coat I used Essence BTGN Top Sealer.