Neon Leopard birthday nail art

Hey y'all!

As you may have read, Saturday was my birthday, and of course I had to give myself a pretty manicure to celebrate, right?  After a lot of hemming and hawing, I finally decided on this bright, sparkly, and fun neon leopard print with black diamond crystals and silver glitter accent.

I started this look with two coats of Rimmel Space Dust Shooting Star on my ring finger, and two coats of China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy on all other nails.  There's a reason people rave about Flip Flop Fantasy - it's a fantastically bright neon coral polish that rides the perfect line between orange and pink.  I grabbed it as part of my Texas haul last month and was itching to wear it, and you can see why!

To create my leopard print nails, I thought about freehanding them, but then I remembered that I had ordered a neon leopard print nail foil roll from BPS a couple months ago, and thought I'd give it a test run.  Unfortunately it did smear and smudge quite a bit when I top-coated, and quite a few bits of the print didn't transfer with the rest of the image, so I did have to doctor it up with some black polish (and also added the small dot/spots because the foil only had the c-shape print - bummer).  After I'd applied it, I wished I had done a gradient underneath because I think adding a pop of neon orange or yellow or pink or even white would have added some dimension to the look. 

My last step was to bling out my thumb and pinky, so I pulled out the Swarovski flat-backs that I got off eBay a couple weeks ago and picked out these black diamond crystals in 3 sizes.  Whereas I had originally set them into top coat, I realized within a couple of hours that I was losing stones, so I popped them off and reset them with nail glue.

I am so in love with these stones!  They're really bright and sparkly, but the smoky color makes them more interesting than a standard clear crystal, to me.

I didn't have a big elaborate birthday by any means.  Hubby got me a new fancy coffee maker with a clock and a timer that doesn't come apart and leak water all over the back like my old one did, and the box set of the TV show Angel, which now completes my box set collection replacement (that is, all my DVDs were Region 1, which of course makes them worthless now that I live in Region 2).  After breakfast, we went into the city and I did a tiny bit of shopping (and I really do mean tiny - bought myself one polish, one top coat, and a pair of sunglasses) and then came home for Chinese takeaway and a movie.  He also got me a cake - technically it's an Easter cake - and my first-ever hot cross bun.  I got to Skype with one of my girlfriends back home who is recovering from surgery, so that was nice.  Otherwise it was a nice, quite little day.  I find this to be an acceptable way to spend my first annual 39th birthday.  Maybe next year we'll do something a bit more grand.

I hope you all had a nice Easter, and I will see you Wednesday!