Purple negative space stamping - GOTPC

Hey y'all!

There's been a few rumblings through the internetz lately about negative-space manis making a rise in 2014.  Last month One Nail To Rule Them All did an awesome tutorial for her soft pink Valentine's heart mani which used negative space very effectively, and I've been pondering how I can play with the concept.  Today's challenge provided me with a perfect opportunity.  It's Golden Oldie Thursday, and this week's theme is my favorite and most common color in my stash - Purples!

The concept of negative space nail art is pretty simple - it's a manicure that exposes some of the bare nail underneath.  If you throw the term into a search engine, you'll be rewarded with loads of inspiration from some very talented artists.

From left:  Sally Hansen Pronto Purple, OPI Grape Wall of China, Kiss Silver Glitter

Since I've done loads of purple manicures over the years, I figured that this prompt would be an ideal chance to play with a new technique.  I'm not quite as bold (or talented) as a lot of nail artists out there, so I opted to use some of my French tip guide stickers to create my negative space.

I laid the guides diagonally across my nail bed, to give a curved path across them.  I then painted my ring finger in Pronto Purple, and all others with Grape Wall of China, and removed the guides before they dried, and gave everyone a good coat of SV.

Once dry, it was time to stamp!  My original stamp pattern did not work as intended, so I ended up using this quad-floral pattern from MoYou London Pro 02.  The stamping was fairly simple - I just used the same two colors in reverse on each nail. 

I like how the Grape Wall of China is nearly invisible as a stamp on my accent nail!

To finish off, I drew the open-heart design with a silver glitter striper polish, and these were finished!  I deliberately did not topcoat, because I didn't want to cover the texture of the final image (I feel like it helps them stand out a little better).

And here, have some macro shots so you can see what I mean about the texture of the stamps. 

All in all, I don't think this was a bad first outing with negative space.  It didn't go as I had originally intended but that's okay.  I've long since learned that sometimes things go a little ca-ca (thanks, Quantum Leap!).  The original design would've only had the stamping over the lower half of the polish, but that particular image did not want to play with these two polishes, and I was having a lot of trouble lining it up on the rare occasion I DID get a good pickup, so... that's how the cookie crumbles.

Love em or hate em, let me know down in the comments!

As always, be sure to check out the inlinkz below for other great purple manis created with old polish!



Hope you're all having a great week!