31DC2017Weekly 7: Black & White

Hello! As they say, when it rains, it pours; and so it is with my blogging this week. I not only posted thrice this week, but the two I did today were rather wordy. Mr. ACD is away for the weekend, and I haven’t really spoken much for two days now; my brain is not used to that!

I did my manicure for this week’s 31DC prompt like a good girl on Tuesday, so that I could post on Thursday as per the usual schedule. However, I ended up having too much fun, taking loads of pictures and trying out different variations of the same manicure. I also did a whole other manicure before this, but decided not to post it as my black & white nails because I accidentally did it again — white middle & ring fingers!!! I’ll post that one on Tuesday as my NOTW.

This post is rather lengthy & picture-heavy, so let’s begin:

On all fingers but the accent (ring) finger, I applied a base of three coats of the textured OPI Solitaire, a pearly white with silver microglitter. I stamped over that using Born Pretty black stamping polish. For the accent nail, I applied one coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out, followed by two coats of OPI Vesper (both of the OPI polises are from the Bond Girls Liquid Sand collection). Vesper is actually a deep purple polish with black microglitter, but it can pass off as black if enough coats are applied. I stamped over the accent nail with Pure Ice Superstar, my favourite white stamping polish.

Look how beautifully detailed the designs are & how well they picked up! The plate I used was Drk Nails XL Designer-2. Now, if you remember from this post, I was feeling really bummed out about having accidentally purchased two fake Drk Nails plates from Aliexpress. I have loved Drk Nails plates since before I even started stamping, and ever since I bought a couple last year, that love has only grown because they’re just so beautiful and well-etched. So, long story short, I recently noticed on the Drk Nails website that they were having a sale and were selling plates for 50% off. I grabbed this opportunity and bought a couple of XL plates, including the genuine versions of the two I got from Aliexpress (XL Designer 1 & 2). What kind of hurts is that I paid only $3 for the real ones over what I had paid on Aliexpress. I compared the real ones with the fake (which I’ll admit are very well-made too), but images such as the bird I used on my accent finger here are just not as detailed on the fake ones. These plates are just stunning, and if I could go back in time, I would probably spend on one or two Drk XL plates because you get much more bang for your buck; these designer plates are so rich in options and so beautifully etched, I think they are perfect for beginners who are just starting out stamping and/or don’t have an extensive selection of plates! [Nope, I did not get paid in any way to say all of this; I just really, really love these plates!]

Back to these nails, I took not one, but two Vogue shots this week! I actually took the one with the bee brooch first (I thought it was cute — flowers, bird, bee), but my sister thought the brooch was competing with the manicure, so I took another set of shots. Which do you like better? [Click on the picture to enlarge]

After I was done taking photos, I started playing around with some Sharpie markers to see how well they applied over the white polish. I thought these turned out very pretty & hope to do a full manicure using this technique sometime soon. I might even do it for the 31DC next week, when the prompt is rainbow. If you have been following my posts, you’ll know that rainbows make me very nervous, just like red polish. I think the last & only time I did rainbow nails was for the same prompt last year, and that was a bit of a nail-fail! I think this one is very pretty though, barring the accent finger:

What do you think of this manicure? Which version do you like better? Do you think I should do this for rainbow nails next week?

If you would like to join in this weekly nail art challenge, post your pictures on your blog or other social media, and tag the picture with the hashtag #31dc2017weekly. Also, you can check out all my entries for the 31DC2017Weekly under the nail art tab at Nails → Nail Art → 31DC2017, my other nail art adventures at Nails → Nail Art → NOTW, or follow me on Instagram (@altercontroldelight) which I use exclusively for nail art.