NAIL ART: Fiery Shifting Flakies Butterfly Nails

by - April 14, 2021


I've always loved the butterfly nail designs that I watch much more talented nail artists than myself do every spring and summer with the beautiful backgrounds and the hand painted butterfly wings, but... just never had the confidence. HOWEVER, that was solved for me in the way a lot of nail art dilemmas were solved - with stamping. I've been keeping this mani in the back of my head ever since I got the Whats Up Nails B025 stamping plate last fall, waiting for the warmer months when my very specific brain would decide it was time. And... it's time!

Keep reading for more!


When I say that I had this mani in mind, I don't mean all of the nuts and bolts, really. I actually went back and forth on what color to make my base for quite a while before I did it and even Googled butterfly images for inspiration. Ultimately, I decided I wanted a sort of fiery purple/orange look and got it in my head that I should do a sponged on flakie polish to get that really sort of shifty chrome type of look. I was going to go with just one polish, but decided sort of at the last time to add a second one. I went with KBShimmer's Eyes On The Pies and Polished For Days' Ruska. After three layers of sponging, I feel like you can tell it's a gradient, but it also just sort of looks like I have one more intensely shifty polish - and I'm kind of obsessed with that. It can be really, really hard to capture a shifty base in pictures, especially under my lights, and I think this pairing really sings both in real life and in photos.


For the stamping, I used my absolute, hands down favorite black stamping polish - Whats Up Nails' Neither Noir - because I knew it would really fill out the image and pick up well. I filled in the dots with white using a dotting tool for that really strong contrast. Once the image had dried down enough that it was ready to transfer, I applied a thin layer of sticky base coat to grab onto the image and let it dry down for about a minute before transferring the image to the nail. When I do reverse stamping of a full coverage image, I also apply a cuticle barrier and use a metal cuticle tool to trim the edges and make clean up a lot easier. 

Once I was finished with my stamping and all cleaned up, I sealed in the design with a water based top coat and then finished with a quick dry glossy top coat for volume and shine. And voila!


All Products Used
Polished For Days - Ruska
KBShimmer - Eyes On The Pies
Whats Up Nails - Neither Noir
OPI - Alpine Snow
Maniology Smudge Free Top Coat
Quo Flash Dry Top Coat
Whats Up Nails B025 Animalistic Nature Stamping Plate
Whats Up Nails Magnified Clear Stamper


I am not even going to pretend like I didn't take this mani all over the house and outside to check out the different shift and look in different light. I love how the colours behaved in this mani when I sponged them on and I love the intensity of the shift. Honestly, it's just impossible to really capture in photos and I highly recommend trying it for yourself!

Thanks so much for reading!

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