Thursday, March 1, 2012

Monochromatic Medly

Hi again. It's still all kinds of pukey at my house, so we'll look at another blast from the past. Anything to distract me, yes?

This design is another monochromatic look. I was again looking to show that you don't need a ton of colors or tools to make pretty nail art. I think it worked decently!

The steps for this one are simple, and could be switched up easily based on whatever you have on hand. You don't need a lot to do this.

Supplies needed:
  • base coat
  • three shades of nail polish: a dark shade, a medium shade, and a light shade.
  • accent pieces
  • top coat
  • something to make blobs with
For accent pieces, you could use just about anything: glitter polish, glitter in various sizes or shapes, striping tape, rhinestones, flat-backed pearls, or stickers. This would be gorgeous with a line of tiny swarovski crystals accenting the line, or with little flower rhinestones. You could also accent a few of the light-colored blobs with glitter polish for a bit more shine. What can I say, I'm all about the glitter!

It breaks down something like this:
  1. Paint your nails with your base coat.
  2. Paint your nails with your darkest color. For this design I used black.
  3. Paint one corner with your midtone color. I used silver.
  4. Paint splotches of your lightest color over the darkest color. I used white.
  5. Add a line of accent pieces along the midtone color. I used silver holographic rhombus glitter from Born Pretty.
  6. Add topcoat.
A design like this can also be tweaked to fit different situations. You could replace the spotches with little hearts for valentine's day, use purple green and gold for Mardi Gras, use earth tones for fall or pastels for spring. You could use tiny flower stickers in place of the white blobs, or shiny hearts.

It really is up to you, and can be silly, bright or elegant. I worked up quite a few variations, just to give you an idea of just how versatile this type of design is!

 

 

 

So again, I feel like I can't say this often enough: experiment! Play with your polishes, try things out together. Try different colors together to see if they work, and if you like it, go for it! It's only nail polish, and no mistakes are permanent!

Til next time!

Rhombus glitter was provided by Born Pretty for consideration.
See my disclosure statement for more information.