NOTD Before & After: Surfin' USA!

Hello!

Today's theme in CNT is Surfin' USA! I had a bit of manicure-block on this, and wasn't quite sure what to do...well, that's not exactly true. I wasn't sure what to do that didn't involve freehand of some sort. Everything I came up with that didn't require freehand was just plain lame...so I decided to say 'what the heck' and freehand it.

I started with Sinful Color's Ciao Bella, which is a gorgeous deep blue with lighter blue glass flecks in it. You should click on this pictures to enlarge them, because they don't do it justice in this smaller size:

Sinful Colors Ciao Bella!

Sinful Colors Ciao Bella!

Sinful Colors Ciao Bella in direct sunlight (sort of)

I decided I wanted to do a glitter sandwich for my ocean, and I wanted to make a surf board on my accent nail. So I removed the blue from my ring finger, and put on a neutral beige. Then I put Orly Mermaid Tale over the remaining blue fingers:

Sinful Colors Ciao Bella! + Orly Mermaid Tale

At this point I started to wonder if something was wrong wit my camera, because I could not get a good picture of the glitter on top of Ciao Bella. I took these at a different time of day than I normally do, but still, it seemed odd that I had a problem with the focus. If this keeps up, I may have to get a new camera...:(

Anyway. My next step was to put a coat of L.A. Color's Radiation over the blue nails, to create the glitter sandwich. This made the blue a little less deep, and made it more sparkly like the surface of the water (or, that's what I'm telling myself). Then I freehanded the surfboard and the wave tube...Here's how it came out:

Let's go surfin' now, everybody's learning how

Come on and safari with meeeeeeee

To make the surfboard, I put a stripe of Spoiled Pumping Gas down the middle, and then four thinner stripes of Sally Hansen Night Flight, two next to the first stripe, and two down the edges of the nail (barely visible here). To create the wave tube, I started drawing parts of the wave with Sonia Kashuk Fairy Princess, and then tried to put accent white caps on with Sally Hansen White On.

I'm pretty happy with how it came out...I'm clearly still learning how to freehand well, but you can tell it's a wave tube, and it's kinda cool. I love how the glitter sandwich came out, and if you ignore issues of proper perspective, that part is very cool. And yes, if you're wondering why my surfboard is standing straight up in the air? Well, we're not all very good surfers even here in California, and sometimes we just wipe out...hee  hee hee.

Thanks for taking a look, and please check out the other surfing manicures done by the other participants, linked below. :)

M.