China Porcelain Nails :)

So you may (or may not have) noticed an increase in the number and hopefully quality of my hand painted nail art recently. Lindsay from Wondrously Polished kindly gave me some advice on good brushes to use for nail art. I had previously been using just the cheap brushes available on ebay, which were ok for when your starting out, but aren't quite as fine as you can get. She suggested a brand called La Corneille which make liner brushes in sizes as low as 18/0 and 10/0. I haven't the foggiest what the sizes mean (perhaps it's 1/18th of an inch?... oops that was an oxymoron) but the 18/0 seems to be the smallest brush size I've been able to find anywhere. Anyway I ordered some from an American website (here) as the brand seems to be available only from American websites. The brushes were cheap (About $3-4 USD each) but I got hit bad on the shipping which was $21.00USD.  I have since found other brush brands that make brushes that small, so if I need more I'll get them from Australia for a bit cheaper.

Anyway, I have another hand painted design to share with you that I'm very happy with :)

As usual I had only a vague idea of what I wanted to do- something blue and white like China Porcelain. I contemplaited trying to paint dragons on my nails and gave up on that idea and decided on a floral. I actually used a stamp first (I took some pictures, but they weren't that great so I decided not to post them). I then decided to try recreate some Helen Dardik style flowers, which I guess aren't very Chinese, but they look cute in my opinion. Here is her blog....if you are ever feeling uninspired in the nail art department have a browse ;)

I feel like I should also say I first found Helen Dardik's website and art through a nail art blogger Try My hand who did a bunch of really amazing nail art based on Helen's work.

 The polishes I used were:

OPI Alpine snow (as the feature nail and also a base under the blue)

and Essie Bouncer It's me! for the blue nails and to paint the flowers.

I feel I need to write a small spiel on the Essie polish..

First of all it is the most amazing, vibrant, neon, blue polish I own (and I have quite a few).

However, as I said I had to layer it over the white polish to make it 'pop' and I needed about 4 coats to cover the white. So I did all this and when I woke up in the morning the top layer had shrunk leaving a rim of white around the blue at the edges of my nails..... meaning I had to remove all the white with a brush.....what a headache!   And yet it was worth it. Anyway I guess my point is use it/buy it at your own risk!

 

Thanks for reading or looking at this post :)