ABC Nail Art Challenge: X is for eXotic

Hello Readers!

For the letter "x", I decided to follow the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law (pun not intended). So my mani doesn't technically start with "X", but it does start with the "x" sound, and I say that's close enough!

As a throwback to summer, I have created an manicure themed around an exotic location- Hawaii. I actually ended up throwing the exotic flowers on at the last minute because when I had finished my original plan I felt that it was too plain and there wasn't enough color.

To fill in the flowers, I started with a base of Devil's Stare and the added "hottie" underneath that and a touch of "Sleigh Me" to the flower's center. It's hard to really see those colors under Devil's Stare, but it does add a slight highlight/shadow effect.

I used a few Bundle Monster plates from the Secret Garden Collection:

...and finally a MoYou London plate from the tropical collection for the pineapple and pineapple leaves:

My original idea for this mani was to use the kind of fruit salad image from this plate on my pinky/pointer fingers, but honestly when I sat down to do it I got a little bit intimidated because of the style of the image. I puzzled over whether I should stamp it in black and try to color the images in, because some of the fruits would be almost entirely black and I wondered if that would be ok. I considered trying to do the trick where you add different colors to different areas of the image, but in the end I decided to go a different direction. I still wanted to try out the image though, so I tested it out over different colors on my Cindy hand for a simple skittle mani and I liked the way it turned out:

Excuse the nails on this hand, ha ha... it takes a lot of abuse.

Well, I hope you weren't outraged by my cheating for this letter- I can't wait to see what great things the other ladies come up with for X! Check them out for yourself in the link-up below!

An InLinkz Link-up