Gray mani with floral nail art

I love gray nail polishes! Even more, I love this kind of cool-toned gray. I think it looks really good with my skin tone and I knew I wanted to use it as a base for my mani. The rest of the design was a bit seat of my pants.

I started off with one coat (yes!!) of Sinful Colors – Cool Gray. This made me especially happy because I knew there was going to be a fair amount of nail art on my nails, and I don’t like it when they end up looking really thick because I have a gazillion layers. I put one coat of ORL – Mirrorball on my ring finger – this polish isn’t really meant to be matted. It loses all of its holographic oomph.

I dotted my middle nail and then started in on the roses using Sally Hansen – Pink Coconut as a base. Using a narrow striping brush, I used Sally Hansen – White On and Sinful Shine – Devious to add tiny crescent accents to the roses. The leaves were then painted on with green.

It is at this point where I thought things were looking a little sparse and (still flying by the seat of my pants) mixed some Cool Gray and White On together to make a much lighter shade of gray. Still using the striping brush, I painted on some swirl designs on my pinky and index. In retrospect, it would have been better to paint that part on first. Oops!

When all of my art was done I topped it first with Seche Vite and once it was sufficiently dry I put a matte topcoat over everything because I simply love matte floral manicures!

POLISHES:

• Sally Hansen Nail Nutrition – Green Tea + Olive Growth
• Sinful Colors – Cool Gray
• Sally Hansen – White On
• Sally Hansen – Pink Coconut
• Sinful Shine – Devious
• Sinful Colors – Garden Party
• Seche Vite – Dry Fast Top Coat
• NYC – Matte Me Crazy Top Coat

So happy with how these turned out! Totally palette cleanser mani with a little pop of color. I’m really behind on getting my new Cici & Sisi review done. I don’t want to post it until I have done a couple of sample manis with the new plates  which probably won’t be until Monday at the earliest, since I reallllly want to keep this mani on for a few days at least!