Primarily Fluid

Hello! As promised, I’m back today with yet another blog post, and this one is picture-heavy. So without further ado, let’s dive right into it.

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know I have been participating in #fluidfridayfriends on Instagram, where each Friday, a group of people post fluid nail art using a predetermined colour palette. This was the colour palette of the week:

I will confess, I was a little wary when I first saw the palette. I’m not sure why that was because I loved how the colours worked together once I started playing. Here are some shots of the decals I made. I forgot to take pictures using my nifty macro lens and ended up cropping the pictures to get these so they are a little blurry. Amateur hour.

For this look, I used Sally Hansen Dark Hue-mor (one of my top polishes since 2015 and going strong), Style Is Eternal and In Full Blue-m, Rapid Red, and Cirque Colors Urbanized. To create the cells, I used my DIY transforming polish in white, made with Sinful Colors Snow Me White and a single pump of the Garnier Fructis hair serum (see this post for more details or watch this video).

I am still very new to fluid nail art and am trying to figure out different methods. I used a stamper to smoosh the colours together the last two times I did it. This time, I used a slightly different technique that I have seen used in fluid art painting. I started by putting down a base of the navy blue. Over that, I lined each colour up next to the other, then added a line of the white transforming polish next to either the first or the last polish. I then used a scraper (a gift or credit card will do fine) to gently spread the white over the other polishes, blending them slightly. I took a picture before adding the white (top picture). I cannot stress enough on the word gently. A little too firm and you end up with a piece of nothingness like the bottom picture:

I still need to work on my pressure but I like the results more than the stamper smoosh because the colours appear to hold their own and not get muddied. Also, I find the cells to be a bit larger with this technique.

Here’s what the final mani looked like:

I goes without saying that the navy base made this a nightmare to clean up, made worse by the fact that the scraper technique makes the decals rather thick. I have learnt from my mistake: the lightest colour should have been the base. Here are some macros, in order of how much I liked them (pinky, index, middle, ring and thumb respectively).

So, there you have it! I’m very happy with how this journey is playing out and look forward to learning more and hopefully getting better at this! If you have any tips for me, please do share! I’ll leave you with this final shot. Until the next post, toodles!