31DC2012: Day 25, Inspired by Fashion

Morning! Today's challenge prompt is "inspired by fashion." Perfect timing, because New York Fashion Week just happened! I looked through what Betsey Johnson showed at NYFW and found this crazy fantastic dress. I knew it would totally translate to a nail and would also incorporate a technique I had been wanting to try anyway...

I began by painting my nails with two coats of OPI Alpine Snow. Once that had dried enough, I grabbed a trusty triangular makeup sponge and sponged on a bit of Orly Frolic around the edges of the nail. It was actually kind of challenging to get it to look right... round gradient-ing is tough.

Then, I grabbed Orly Skinny Dip and used the spun sugar technique to add some globby strings. They ended up working perfectly and mimicked the weird splatter on the dress really well. You can find a tutorial for this technique here.

While the technique worked out nicely for this specific look, I kind of disliked it otherwise. I definitely found it challenging to do. I had to practice a lot before I could get it to look like I wanted it to, and then once I got it down, I couldn't really topcoat it because it ruined the 3D look I was going for. Thick strings + no topcoat = never drying.

I've seen some great applications of this technique that looked good with topcoat though, so it's potentially just my inexperience or maybe the polish that I used.

Here's a full shot of the dress that I used for inspiration. The model has kind of a funny expression, but a lot of the photos from the Betsey show were like that. I'm sure they were encouraged to walk with personality!

(source)

I think I did a good job at capturing the dress, and it was nice to push myself to try something new.

You can check out last year's fashion manicure here, and upcoming challenge prompts here.