Ruffian | Craftynail

Hey everyone! Today I’ve got a funky ruffian design for you! I got the idea from my friend Amy over at Ooh La La Nails who did this cool design a few weeks ago: Rainbow Mani. I decided to use a whole bunch of my Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Nail Colors for this ruffian. I went with colors that do not coordinate at all so it would look crazy and kinda fugly. In case you are wondering- yes, I did this on purpose! LOL

This mani took well over two hours and there’s 11 coats of polish including base and top coats! I only did two nails like this on my other hand since it was hard to paint with my left hand and it took forever. I learned an important lesson while working on this ruffian- I need to tie my hair up in a ponytail before working on my nails! My long hair was hanging all over the place while I was painting so my boyfriend kindly put a headband in my hair to help me out. But the headband didn’t cut it, and my hanging hair strands got stuck on my thumb nail while waiting for my topcoat to dry. UGH!! My thumb design got messed up so I painted it blue along with the other fingers on my right hand that didn’t have ruffian painted on them. The trials and tribulations of a nail painter!!

I made sure to alternate application of creams and shimmer polishes so the colors contrasted against each other. I think it worked, as this may be my craziest mani yet! Here’s the colors I used….

Gold ♥ Golden-I

Red ♥ Cherry Red

Silver ♥ Gunmetal

Pink ♥ Bubblegum Pink

Green ♥ Emerald City

Yellow ♥ Mellow Yellow

Purple ♥ Plum Power

Blue ♥ Blue Me Away!

Day 13 of the Nail Challenge is Ruffian ! I freakin love Ruffian manis! I also love that it makes me wanna speak with a Jamaican accent. Not sure why… maybe because it reminds me of the word Ragamuffin which makes me think of Reggae music and stuff IDK? RRRUFFIAN MON!

This mani was pretty simple- here’s what I did: I started with a black base of Ebony Hates Chris by wet n wild. Then I taped my nails off with some french manicure nail guide stickers and applied my contrasting 2nd polish called Sweet Pea Dream by AVON. I peeled the nail guide stickers off slowly to reveal the ruffian. A topcoat smoothed it all out and bam- a sexy ruffian!

Even though the technique is pretty simple- I actually did this mani over the course of two days. See, I’ll admit that I’m very impatient when it comes to waiting for nails to dry. When I start painting, I wanna paint all the way through to the end without stopping. And since I planned to do my ruffian with tape, that means that my black base needs to be completely dry before I apply the nail guide stickers. The thought of waiting for my black to dry and hoping I don’t mess up my tape job due to still-tacky paint causes me undue stress. So to avoid all the anxiety and sitting around waiting….I painted my nails black, slapped some quick-drying seche vite on top and called it a day. I rocked the black nail polish by itself for a day and got some compliments on it so that’s cool! The next day I applied my nail guide stickers and then painted my 2nd color to finish my ruffian. This process worked well for me since it eliminated the risk of screwing up my tape job and it allowed me to wear two different manis over the course of two days. Win, win!