Patriotic Nail Art: FingerFood Theme Buffet Challenge

Hey y'all!

One of the challenges that I had been wanting to join up into is the FingerFood Theme Buffet, because I consider Sam a net.buddy and I really admire the work she does, and her themes always look so fun!  Now that I'm easing up on feeling obligated to participate every single week/prompt across all of my challenges, this affords me an opportunity to take part in more challenges but on my terms.  In short, I'm not going to stress myself to get something done in a rush and post it anyway, even if I hate it.  Luckily, my first FFTB attempt is something that I actually do quite like, so I feel no shame in posting this for you as my nail art for the Patriotic prompt.

You may recognize the base for this nail art from yesterday's Hey, Swatch It! post.  I started with Octopus Party's Star Tar over three coats of Claire's Cobalt which gave me a sparkly, glittery blue base on which to build. 

I made a pattern by cutting masking tape with some crafting scissors to give me a flowy, sort of ruffly edge and taped off the lower corner of each nail (except my ring finger - we'll get to that in a minute).  I think covered the top of the nail out to the tip with Pure Ice Superstar! and removed the tape.  Unfortunately the tape didn't pull off clean, so I did have to go in and clean up some bits with a brush and acetone.   Once my pattern was set, I was able to mimic the same lines using a detail brush, first using Barry M Blood Orange for the red stripes, and Blackberry for the blue stripes.

On my ring finger, I laid pieces of striping tape horizontally across the nail, evenly spaced, and applied Superstar! to the whole nail.  Removing the tape left me with straight lines of blue breaking up the white.  I then used my detail brush to add Blood Orange over the white bar nearest my cuticle and on the "french tip." I sealed everything with SV, and while it was still wet I applied these clear star-shaped rhinestones in a band over the accent nail and a single star to the blue fields on all the other nails.

There are definitely MANY coats of polish on each finger here, but I don't care.  I think this look is about as 'MURIKA IN YO FACE as possible and that makes my expat side giggle endlessly.  For the record, I'm an expatriate, not an ex-patriot!

SOUNDOFF!  Leave me a comment below answering one of the following questions, as it applies to you:

American readers:  Did you do anything fun for the 4th?

Everyone else:  How do you celebrate your patriotism?

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