African Patterned - Nicole by OPI Tink Nail Art

Nicole by OPI's new Tink Collection celebrates everyone's favorite feisty fairy with a color palette that sizzles with all the heat of Tink's fury summer. Two colors jumped out at me immediately, and I used them to create this African patterned nail art.

I've never done an African inspired design before. When doing my searches I saw a lot of thin lines, triangles, chevrons, and dots. I did my best to try to capture the right "feel" in this look. I think the combination of colors helps solidify the idea, too.

I used three polishes in this nail art. The base is Nicole by OPI Half Charming/Half Alarming, a fiery red-orange that applied more like a jelly than a creme. I needed three coats. It's a really flattering shade on me, I wore it for a day alone before I added the pattern! The lime green is Nicole by OPI Sweet On Pete, a pretty creme shade with just a touch of dustiness to it. It worked nicely in the nail art, needing barely two coats for opacity over the red shade. The final touch was adding the detailing in black.

Of course I also tried the design mattified. I used OPI Matte Topcoat in this case. I was really pleased with the quality of it! It dries very matte, very quickly, and of course you get the benefit of OPI's awesome ProWide brush (my fav).

I'm pretty pleased with the way this design came out, and I especially love the red with the lime. While I like it matte, I think I prefer it glossy in this case. What do you think?

Nicole by OPI's Tink Collection is available beginning this month in select Walgreens locations. Each polish retails for $7.99.

Press Sample