Today's mani was done for an Instagram challenge for "vacation" nails. I decided to commemorate the summer vacation I took with my family to Seattle earlier this season.
Seattle, to me, is a beautiful mesh up of nature and city. I wanted to represent a little bit of each on this mani, so I have the woodgrain pattern to symbolize all the beautiful trees and forests we saw on our trip, and the gray and silver for the bustle of traffic and the city.
So, this mani starts off with a beige base (Sinful Colors Beaches and Cream) with a woodgrain pattern from this Bundle Monster "Botanicals" collection plate. This plate is one of my favorite in the collection- I find myself reaching for wood grain patterns quite often so it's nice to have some new ones to play with!
For the half gray/half wood grain nails, I decided to do the entire gray half as a decal on my silicone mat. I've done a kind of dip-dyed nail effect before, and it's one of my favorite manis, but I wanted to try adding a little detail to the seam this time.
So I started by stamping the straight leaf pattern from MoYou London's Mother Nature 14 plate onto my mat.
My next step was to paint a large area next to the leaf pattern with gray polish. I used the MoYou London Holy Shapes 05 plate to help me get a straight line to start, but then went over it with the nail polish brush to make sure it has good opacity. The leaf pattern has leaves on both sides, so I made sure to paint over half of the leaves since I only wanted them on one side of the gray area.
Next, I stamped the third pattern on the top row of this Bundle Monster plate that I got in the 20 plates for $20 sale recently. I thought that it had a bit of an industrial feel to it.
Finally, I used another of the Bundle Monster Botanicals plates to add Washington's State flower, the Rhodedendron. I always have loved seeing the beautiful Rhodies up in Seattle- just one more thing that makes that area so gorgeous.
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