Mardi Gras French Tips and Beads - TPTC

Hey y'all!

I'm SO EXCITED for it to be the first Tuesday of March.  Why?  Because the Tri-Polish Challenge colors have turned to purple, blue, and green!  This makes me happy in my heart and my brain because those are absolutely the most prominent colors in my stash, and I LURVE playing matchmaker with them!

The timing also couldn't be better for starting today, because it's Mardi Gras, whose traditional colors feature two of this month's TPTC colors, purple and green!  Today I've got a festive beaded look for you that is a fun and elegant way to celebrate Fat Tuesday in style!

Mardi Gras, (French for Fat Tuesday), is celebrated on the Tuesday Lent begins, so named because it's a last day of gorging on heavy foods before fasting for Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday.  In the US, it's typically seen as a day and night of hedonistic celebrations, and is traditionally associated with New Orleans because of its rich French heritage.  New Orleans Mardi Gras customs involve a lot of heavy drinking and parades with bright costuming, as well as throwing out goodies to the crowd, usually in the form of plastic beads.  The typical color scheme for Mardi Gras is purple, green, and gold, and those are the colors I've chosen for this look.

From left: elf Royal Purple, Barry M Gold Foil, elf Green Machine

Now, I say this is Royal Purple, but the truth is that my bottle is mislabeled as Metal Madness, which is a shimmery gunmetal gray.  As near as I can tell from looking at swatches, it's actually Royal Purple, but any dark shimmery purple will achieve the same effect.

I started by creating my French Tips (which is only appropriate for a French-named celebration, right?) using Royal Purple, and Gold Foil on my accent ring finger, and then sealed those in with a coat of SV to protect them.

I then set about the very careful placement of my microbeads in purple, green, and gold.  To set them, I used a Kiss nail art top coat, which stays tacky for a bit longer than SV so I would be able to get them placed before it dried. 

Working one color at a time, I began with the gold and laid a danging loopy chain of them across my nail bed.  This was probably the most important one to get shaped correctly because it would be my guide for the other two colors.  Essentially, I laid out my path with a swipe of the Kiss top coat, set my beads, and then waited for it to dry a bit before repeating the process with green, followed by purple.

As I laid each strand of beads, I crossed them over to more closely resemble the actual plastic beaded necklaces.

Once I had my beads placed and was happy with them, I sealed them in carefully with SV, basically dabbing it over the top of the beads, and then stroking it up over the bare nail and down onto the gold tip.  Microbeads are a bit tricky to topcoat, because if you aren't careful, you can easily bleed the color off of them and into your polish, so you have to use a very gentle hand and mind how you're applying it.

With my accent nail finished, I then stamped the curly little design off of my Allura P33 plate, in Green Machine.  This was what I had available, but you could easily substitute this with a fleur-de-lis or other pretty pattern. 

My final step was to use a striping brush and carefully add a line of Gold Foil along the edge of the French tips, which basically joined the floating stamp into the tip design.  I should mention here that I'd just finished my second ginormous cup of coffee for the day, so this free-handed portion of the design isn't quite as steady as I would like.  However, since I had topcoated everything earlier, it was fairly easy to go in with a small brush and some acetone to gently clean up that line.

I hope you love these nails as much as I do!  I think they would be perfect for going out to celebrate tonight on Bourbon street, and you could always claim that you got your beads without having to flash your girly bits at anyone!

As always, don't forget to check out all the other blue/purple/green looks from the Tri-Polish collaborators, below, and be sure to come back next Tuesday for another hot look with these tones!

Have a great day!