Freehand Jacquard and Corset nail art - LNTC

Hey y'all!

Yesterday marked the Faff's one year wedding anniversary, and in good fashion, of course I spent a good part of the evening getting this post ready to publish while he took care of planting the evergreen sapling that was my gift to him (he gave me complete box sets of Heroes and Sherlock).  We're pretty low-key in this household, so festivities involved a "special" homecooked meal of slow-cooker steak in mushroom gravy and jacket sweet potato, a bit of wine, and some televisual feasting.  It's really, really, really hard to believe we've been married for a year now and that I haven't murdered him in his sleep.

Yet.  ;)

I digress.  Today's penultimate prompt for the Llama Nails Technique Challenge is Freehand design, and I was a bit flummoxed for ideas on this until I browsed my Pinterest inspiration board and remembered that I'd always wanted to give a corset nail another try.  Once that was set, the jacquard print fell into place and I had some nail art!

To start this look, I began with 3 coats of Company Polish Rita on my ring finger, and what ended up being 3-4 coats of Lana on all the others.  These two mini bottles had been sitting in my untrieds since Christmastime, when I got them free in a magazine, so I decided it was time to pull them out and get them tested.  Unfortunately I can't say that I love them.  The formula is fussy and needs far too many coats to be opaque, and the dry time was ridiculously long for something that needs that many coats.  If the colors were truly unique I might be able to overlook it, but frankly, it's a mint green and an oxblood.  Nothing extraordinary.  Moving along.

Once I finally had a dry base to work from,  I set to work on my accent nail.  I used Nail Pattern Boldness Clairvoyant Visitor to create the sides of my corset by stroking a line of polish down either side of the nail using the bottle brush.  Luckily this polish is a glitter bomb so I only had to do one coat.  I then lined the edges using my Kiss black striping polish and made eyelets using the Kiss silver polish and a dotting tool, and filled the centers with black again.  I created the lacing with that same black striper.  I considered making a lacy pattern along the edges of the corset but ultimately decided I didn't have enough space to make it work the way I envisioned it unless I was prepared to bust out my acrylics, which I wasn't.  Sorry. 

I created the quasi-jacquard pattern using my Models Own black nail art pen.  This pen is hella hard to control for me, but I was reasonably pleased that I was able to make some curly bits and keep everything almost a consistent thickness.  I finished the nail art by topping everything with HKG so it wouldn't smear, and then finished with Sally Hansen Big Matte topcoat.   I particularly love the way Clairvoyant Visitor comes alive under matte polish, so I grabbed a macro for you.  This polish will get its own swatch/review post in the somewhat near future, so you will see more of it. 

I hope you all enjoyed this look, and will return next Wednesday for the final prompt of the Technique Challenge.  In the mean time, be sure to check out the other Freehand designs in the inlinkz below.

Have a great week!

An InLinkz Link-up