The Nail Challenge Collaborative - Pastels - Week 4

Hello!

On the last day of April, I want to show you the final manicure of this month's Challenge theme: pastels. Once more, I'm not sure if my colors are really pastel, but they're not bright either, so I guess it's fine. So for this last mani, I decided to tackle the One Stroke technique once more. My results so far have been rather mediocre, which I blamed on my acrylic paints for the most part. But maybe I was just too impatient and didn't practice enough... because I used the same paints this time too, and I think this time, it's a success. I watched a lot of youtube videos beforehand and praticed the brush movement on my palette. Should have done that earlier, huh.

So here's my newest installment of the one stroke... roses. Excuse the pic spam. I just really found it turned out pretty.

Of course, I noticed the stray hair too late...

For this mani, I once again used OPI My vampire is buff as the base. I'm still not convinced that I like this color on me, but as many others have written on their blogs, it's a great base for nail art. Except for the base and the topcoat, everything else is acrylic paint. I used an angled brush for the roses, a striper for details and a dotting tool for the dots.

Painting the roses turned out easier than I thought it would be. I didn't always manage at first, but you can just go over the whole thing and 'redo' it. I followed the brush movements like shown on the youtube videos and that worked fine. The brush movement for the leaves is still a enigma to me though. I tried. I really did. But I only manage half. For the 'downward' movement, I just can't figure out how to twist the brush. I need to pratice that.

All in all, this mani has a grandma-esque feeling to it, but why not once in a while. ^^ I took these pictures at dawn, when the sunlight was still soft. It added to the look, didn't it?
I enjoyed wearing this. I was constantly looking at the roses, still amazed by the smooth appearance and the details. What loading a brush with two colors at once can do, amazing. Hands down to all the ladies (and guys) who can really do this!

But it sure took some time to paint, so this won't be a technique for me to do on a regular basis, I think. And definitely no technique to just do on a whim. We'll see.

What do you think? Have you tried this technique?

Thanks for reading~