ABC Challenge: X is for X-ray

I was racking my brain over what to do for the letter X when it hit me: X-rays! I own a stamping plate with images of the human skeleton, and have been meaning to try smoke nails with nail polish instead of Sharpies. Put them together, and you get this:

On my pinky & index fingers, I’m wearing Sinful Colors in Nice Guise, a gorgeous navy blue jelly with green and blue shimmer in it. On the rest of my fingers, I’m wearing Sally Hansen CSM in Dark Hue-mor, possibly my most-used nail polish! Over that, I stamped using my Major Dijit-13 plate and Pure Ice Superstar. [This stamping plate is really well-etched, and I can pick up the tiniest of details and the finest of lines with no trouble at all everytime.] Even though I intended to do the smoke effect over it, I did take a couple of pictures at this point, in case that didn’t work out! Here’s how it looked at this stage (don’t you just love that shimmery polish?):

I applied two coats of regular top coat over that, and once it had dried completely, I made the smoke effect using Essie Limo-scene and pure acetone. Here is a great tutorial by Chalkboard Nails for achieving the smoky look. I topped everything with a matte top coat, mostly because it’s a compulsion and a tiny bit because it was really, really difficult to photograph otherwise! 

Let me know what you think of this mani! Also, check out my other ABC Challenge posts under the nail art tab [Nails → Nail Art → ABC Challenge].

Click on the blue button below to check out what the others have done with this difficult letter!