A Rose Garden for Your Nails (Perfect for those who do not have a Green Thumb)

If you like nail art, you'll probably enjoy what I have to offer today. I've been toying with ways to make my Konad and Mash nail plate images a little more detailed. In the past I've been able to come up with some cute ideas, like my spiders and skulls (at right).

Or, my "High Roller" nails (at left).

But, more often than not, I felt like the images I could get with the Konad Plates were a bit... static and flat (at right).

I was always hoping to be able to create something more like the images I've been able to capture through my waterslide transfer method, like these "Graphic Novel" nails I did last year (above).

However, the other evening, I thought of a new way of layering. I was inspired by the stemless wine charms I'd made for my Etsy shop. Instead of layering the same image over itself, I thought of layering the image over a different color from the base color. I'm not a big Valentine's Day fan (our anniversary is right before February) so it didn't even occur to me that this would be a perfect manicure for February 14th, but it is. (As a side note, I'm not sure if this is true since I kill every plant I try to grow, but I'm told that February 14th is the ideal day for rose pruning. See? It works on so many levels.) 

And so, my Nail Art Rose Garden grew. 

1. I did a base coat in a light grey polish.

2. After that dried, I used the "vine" image from image plate Mash-10 with a shimmery green polish.

3. Then I made small dots (but large enough to accommodate the rose image) in random spots on my nails with the lavender polish.

Once the spots were dry, I added the "rose" image from KONAD plate m65 (I used my thumbnail to remove any part of the design from the stamper I didn't want to keep, but masking it off with tape would also work).

That's all there was to it!