NOTD: Summer Splatter Mani!

Hello!!

I am so excited about today's mani. I love it, and can't wait to show it to you!!!

Today's challenge in PFC was 'summer splatter'. I've never done a splatter manicure before, even though I like the look, because it looked kinda messy. But that's why I love doing these challenges, because they get me to try things I wouldn't try otherwise. So, I picked my colors, grabbed my straw, and got down to it.

If you don't know, a splatter mani is a manicure where you blow polish onto your nails using a straw. Here's how mine came out:

Summer Splatter Manicure

Pay no attention to that band-aid

Look at those holos shine in the sun!

Linear holos unite!

I wanted to do something a little special and sparkly, so I decided to do the splatter over a gradient, and I thought I'd use holographic polishes to make it look extra pretty in the sun. And thankfully, the sun cooperated! My original idea was to splat the light purple over the dark part of the gradient, and the dark purple over the light part of the gradient, but I soon found out that precision is not a big part of splatter manicures, at least when  you're a beginner, lol.


Here's how I did it:
Step 1: Color Club Worth The Risque for my base color.
Step 2: Created a gradient with Color Club Revvvolution and Worth The Risque, using the method created by www.nailasaurus.com.
Step 3: Using a straw, I dipped into a pool of polish that I had put down onto a piece of plastic, and then blew through the straw to get the polish to splat onto the nail. I did this first using Color Club Fashion Addict (the light purple; hard to see in some pictures), and then Wild At Heart (the dark purple).
Step 4: Cleaned up the cuticles and covered in Seche Vite.

Some things I learned along the way:
1) This is messy! Make sure you have your work surface well covered.
2) The closer the end of the straw is to the nail, the easier it is to target your nail, but the bigger your splats will be.
3) I found that this worked best when I got a layer of polish that stretched across the whole opening of the straw, like you do when trying to blow bubbles through a bubble wand, rather than just one side--this resulted in more of a splatter than a splotch.
4) If you cut your straw down, make sure you use the end of the straw that you didn't cut, otherwise you'll likely be working with an uneven end. Or at least, that's what happened to me, lol.
5) Next time I may try dipping directly into the polish bottle rather than putting polish onto plastic first. I'm not sure if that will be better or worse, but I did notice that as the polish got thicker on the plastic, the harder it was to get a layer of polish over the whole end of the straw.

I really love this look, and I'm sure I'll do it again, although probably not often because it's a bit messy, and if you miss a lot (like I did) it uses a fair amount of polish. I don't ever want to take this manicure off...It's going to break my heart to change it!

Thanks for looking! Please check out the manicures done by the other challenge participants, linked via thumbnails below. :)

M.