Hey guys! I have to admit, finding the motivation to blog these days has been a little bit difficult. I don't know how many people are feeling this way but I'm finding that there's a bit of a block when it comes to getting stuff done - even if I have a lot of extra time. That said, sitting down to play with nail at hasn't been an issue and I'm super excited about today's nails because I'm pretty sure that I invented them! (I don't say that often, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone do fluid art nails this way.) Anyway, enough of my chest puffing, let's get to the nails!

Keep reading for more!

The inspiration for this mani came when I saw a mani that had sort of strips of galaxy on a black base and I started percolating on doing these sort of geometric shards of fluid art. Ultimately, it seemed like it would work. Why not just adhere triangles of the fluid art decals over a part of the nail rather than over the entire nail, right? 

So I started with two coats of Polished For Days' Echo, which is this gorgeous sort of periwinkle colour that's chocked full of holo, irridescent and shifty flakes that really compliment that colours in the fluid art. To create the decals, I used 4 pastel shades from Colour Club (a purple, a pink, a blue, and a peachy coral) along with my DIY white fluid art polish. I just applied dots of this onto my nail art mat until I had enough for a good sized decal and then squeezed it together to mesh the colours and start bringing out the cells. Using these really soft colours without something deeper to add contrast really created a sort of watercolour look to the decals and I kind of love it. I made 4 decals total, but only ended up using two for this mani. 

Once the decals were dry enough to peel up from the mat, I used scissors to cut them into triangles, trying to focus on the parts of the design that I liked the most. Next, I applied a coat of Chen Xi Star Glue to all of my nails and let it dry down until it was clear and tacky and then used a large, clear stamper to transfer the decals to my nails, turning the images so that each nail had a distinctly different look.

Finally, I wanted to really add some definition, so I stamped really thin lines along the edges of each decal in white (stamping these straight lines was... a little bit of a nightmare) while trying really hard to keep the tips of the triangles fairly sharp. Once I was happy with the design, I finished with a generous coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Clearly Quick - which did actually take away some of the definition from the decals, but what can you do? - and voila!

All Products Used

Polished For Days Echo

Color Club Take A Chill Pill

Color Club Can You Not?

Color Club Totally Worth It

Color Club East Austin

DIY White Fluid Art Polish

Born Pretty Store White Stamping Polish

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Clearly Quick

Chen Xi Star Glue

Nicole Diary L04 Stamping Plate

Born Pretty Store Nail Art Mat