St. Patrick’s Day Nails

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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