Something funny happened on the way to the mermaid...

Hello everyone!

Today's challenge in CNTs is to do a mermaid manicure. Since I just did a traditional one of these a while back for an MSMD monday, I wanted to do something a little different for this one. After bouncing some ideas off of my awesome buddy Dina (of Secretary's Nail Art), I decided both to use some non-traditional colors and to do a flakie mermaid rather than a glitter mermaid.

I started off with a coat of Barielle's Secret Encounter, a deep wine purple shimmer. Then, I topped it with two thin coats of Hits Can Can, a purple jelly with blue and green flakies. :) The look was subtle, so I didn't want to go for a stark contrast by using silver or gold to stamp the 'scales', so I tried China Glaze's Metallic Muse, a light blue metallic that stamps like a dream.  Here is what that looked like:

It's definitely pretty, yes, but it takes away from the flakies a bit more than I'd hoped, making them seem sparse and putting the focus on the scales. At this point, I'd normally either remove the stamp, or start over (I often use my thumb as my testing ground).

But, having just been thinking a lot about glitter sandwiches, another solution occurred to me.

What about a stamping sandwhich?? Where, instead of the glitter being between two layers of polish, the stamp was?

So, I put another layer of Hits Can Can on top of it, and here's how it turned out:

That's much better! Now the is more contrast between the flakies and the stamp, but the stamping still shines through loud and clear.

I love this manicure, but what I love more are the thoughts running though my head of how I can play with this stamp-sandwich concept...

Thanks for reading! Please check out the other mermaid manis by my fellow CNTs below. :)

M.