31DC2012: Day 28, Inspired by a Flag

Morning! For "inspired by a flag" I chose to depict the Arizona state flag. This prompt seems kind of out of place to me… a flag is so random. I feel like the person that created this challenge had a specific idea in mind for some nail art they wanted to do and then wrote this prompt to fit it. 

Since I know you came here to learn, here's some history on our flag. There are thirteen rays on the top half, and they represent the original thirteen colonies. The colors are also representative of the awesome sunsets that we have here. The copper star represents the Arizona copper mining industry, and the blue stands for liberty.

(source)

For this manicure I used two different tape techniques. On the star nails, I used the same technique that I outlined in my Fourth of July tutorial: hole punch some painters tape and use it as a stencil. On the ray nails, I cut super skinny triangles of tape and then arranged them on my nail so the points all met at at the base of the design. Then, I painted over the nail with my second color and slowly removed the pieces of tape.

As with any tape manicure, make sure your base is completely dry before taping. I like to use Seche Vite Fast Dry Topcoat to speed up the process.

The navy in this manicure is China Glaze Man Hunt. I used two coats for opacity. It's a really great shade & applied evenly. The stars are OPI Legs Celebrate, an older OPI that my sister gave to me.

The yellow is China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, my go-to yellow creme. The red is China Glaze Velvet Bow, which was a little streaky and required an additional half coat before removing the tape.

My choice of red may have ended up being a little dark, but I wanted to avoid the McDonald's look again since I was separating those colors from the blue nails entirely. I'm happy with it, anyway!

Here's a handy pinnable combo image if you're interested... :)

Last year's inspired by a flag can be found here, and challenge prompts here.