'Ikat a cold on 'oliday... LNTC - Ikat

Hey y'all!

The Faffs recently returned from a 2-week trip to Texas so I could visit family and friends and of course shop for a mess of nail art goodies, coffee, and other sundries.  Unfortunately, both of us came down pretty miserably sick at the beginning of the visit, so our vacation was definitely not what it could have or should have been.  I missed out on spending as much time with my peeps as I would've wanted, and we definitely didn't feel up to doing everything we had planned to do.  However, it's still nice to get away and of course Mommy Faff and I were happy to spend time together.  The Chibi monster also seemed happy to see me and was grateful to have someone else to play with.  He's definitely showing signs of slowing down though, and he gets exhausted very easily so we had to play in very short bursts.  The plus side of all of this is that there will be a haul post coming up very soon (if you follow me on Instagram you may have seen a rather huge nailmail picture I shared, but that didn't include my retail purchases!).  The down side is that while I managed to get 2 weeks worth of nail art up and scheduled before we left, I came back to an empty buffer again, so today's post has literally been photographed and edited today.  Whee for working on the fly!

This week's theme for the Llama Nails Techniques Challenge is Ikat - which I know very little about except that it's pronounced ee-kaht rather than eye-cat.  I'm quite sure there's a joke about Apple's newest pet product out there, but I'm still a bit too full of sinus stuff to possibly attempt more than one pun today, and the title of this post wore me plum out.  Anyway...

I decided to take advantage of some stamping for this look, and this vaguely ikat image from the MoYou London Pro Plate 01.  I started by giving all of my nails 2 coats of China Glaze White on White.  I created decals using Maybelline Onyx Black as the stamping polish, then leaving the stamp on the stamper head (yes, I needed several stamps to accomplish this look, but it was worth it in the long run.

Once the stamps were dry, I painted over them in the bright pink, lavender, and turquoise shades from my Kiss striping set and left them to dry again.  Once that was finished, I covered the stamp head in Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Hardener, which I can confirm makes an excellent clear coat for making decals.

I applied the decals by first putting on a thin coat of Hard as Nails and then affixing the decals over the top and smoothing out.  I trimmed off as much excess as possible, then used acetone and an angled brush to clean the remainder.

On my messy ring finger, I started by creating the black eye and ring using small strokes using Models Own Artistix black.  I then filled in the remainder of the pattern using the same colors I'd used in the decals.

You may have noticed something else in this post - I'm revealing a new nail shape!  I did SO well all during our trip with not breaking any of my nails... and then the day we got back, I was absolutely crushed when I got a huge corner break getting out of the car to pick Isis up from the kennel.  :(  However... silver linings and all that, I am not entirely unfond of the almond shape, and Easter being around the corner makes it a perfect time of year to have egg-shaped nails.  I'm sure I'll go back to my usual squaresies once these grow out, but for now, I hope we'll all enjoy the nail art I come up with for these.

Hope you all are having a wonderful week, and I'll see ya soon!  As always, be sure to check out the other ikat designs from the Llama ladies, below!

An InLinkz Link-up