Monarch Butterfly Wings Nail Art

I did my girlfriend’s nails last night- it was a fun and relaxing way to spend a friday night!  I had the idea to do monarch butterfly wings.  Which is kinda funny considering the first time I tried that technique was almost exactly one year ago (seen here).  I guess the beginning of spring must make me think of butterflies!

Her base color is OPI Live.Love.Carnival.. Then we sponged some Butter London Snog (raspberry) on to the tips to give the color more dimension.  The black was painted on with a striper brush and China Glaze Liquid Leather.  We used Zoya Purity for white dots.  We also added some flakies (Zoya Chloe) to add sparkle, but unfortunately the pics don’t show it.  But in real like the flakies add a hint of magic to this springtime manicure. 🙂

I think Vanessa loved her nails!  I sure do.   Next time I’d like to try this with duochrome polishes- I bet it would mimic the iridescent effect that you see on bugs in nature.

Enjoy your weekend, talk soon ! 🙂

Butterfly Wings

I had a lot of free time last night and sat down with my box of very old polishes that I never use.  I rummaged through them and tried out all my spring-iest colors.  The AVON Retro Rose floored me!  In the bottle it looked matronly, but once applied it morphed into this stunning peachy pink with gold shimmer!  I sponged on some Sinful Colors Lagoon which is a sheer orange shimmer.  This polish must be very old- check out the retro bottle in my bottom pic!  The peach and orange looked great together and then it hit me- MONARCH WINGS!  Yes!  Time for me to try out butterfly nails!

Butterfly wing nails have been one of my favorite looks ever since I got interested in nail art.  They’re breathtaking and have been on my to-do list for a while.  I’m so glad I finally tackled this project last nite.  I guess I just needed the perfect base color to inspire me!

I used some black wet n wild polish and a sephora nail art brush to freehand the black wing outline.  The design was very forgiving… I didn’t even have to wipe it off and start all over again –  you girls know what I’m talking about, right?  Here’s the list of polishes and tools that I used….

I love it.  It will break my heart to have to take it off once it starts chipping!  And in case you are wondering… yes, that IS snow in the background of my pics.  We got another bad storm last night in NY.  Will it ever be spring?  Probably not.