Hello nail art enthusiasts! St. Patrick’s Day is upon us. It also happens to be a family members birthday. I don’t wear green often but each year at this time I do wear green nails. I knew I wanted clovers, gold and green in my design. Since I do my nails myself, and I’m not ambidextrous, I had to find a plate with a clover design so I could do both of my hands easily. I searched through all my plates and couldn’t find any clovers. AAHH! What was I going to do? Keep reading to see how I improvised.
Choosing the right plates
First I had to find out how I was going to achieve clovers without having a stamping plate with clovers on it. I’m good at free handing with my dominant hand, but with my non-dominant hand, forget it. Stamping takes care of this obstacle and makes it easier on me to do a more uniform design on both hands. So here I was digging through my plates wondering how to do this. Looking at a clover, it hit me. The sections look like a heart. How did I not notice this before? So then I started looking for heart designs that would be the right size and shape for what I had in mind.
Now, when looking for the hearts, I also had to find ones that didn’t have a whole lot of design to get rid of around it. When stamping, you have to be quick in getting the design on to the nail before the polish dries. Thankfully, I found two that would work.
Selecting the colors
On to the colors. I love using gel polish as it lasts longer and dries so much faster, but I didn’t have the right color green. I did have some bright green pigment so I added that to a light green gel polish I had. Using a tile, I put a couple dollops of the green gel on and mixed in a little bit of the pigment to get the color I wanted. Two thin coats of this color is what I used on my pinkies. For the gold I already knew I wanted to use Light Elegance #Glam. It’s the perfect gold for me, not too yellow and it’s so sparkly. This I applied to my middle fingers.
For my thumbs I wanted a green glitter but I didn’t have any green glitter gel. So I made my own. I just used some clear top coat gel and loose glitter from Michaels. I chose a dark green and a yellowy green glitter. Again, using the tile, I put some top coat down and mixed in the glitter. Two coats is all I needed to get pretty much full coverage.
Stamping
Now the stamping. I used a stamping polish by Born Pretty and Essie’s Good as Gold. I did a white base coat on my ring and index fingers. On my index fingers, I stamped small clovers in both green and gold. My ring fingers I stamped a larger clover design in green. I picked up the heart design and just rotated each stamp to form the “clover”. Then using a small striper brush, I added the mixed green glitter gel on top to fill in the clovers. I finished all nails with a gel top coat. I’m happy with how this look turned out. What are your thoughts? Let me know below.
Products Used
- Young Nails Protein Bond
- OPI Alpine Snow gel polish
- IBD Polo Can U Go gel polish
- Light Elegance #Glam
- Born Pretty stamping polish in #12
- Essie Good As Gold
- Born Pretty pigment
- Loose glitter
- Estemio Art Top Gel
- Maniology M023 plate for smaller clovers (I used the bottom of the radish)
- Maniology M075 plate for larger clover (I used the only one shaped like a heart)
- Clear stamper
- Tile for mixing
- Small striper brush
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