splatter your world with color

SO MUCH COLOR!!!! This design was inspired by an article I read recently about a German artist named Martin Kilmas and his photography project to depict what music looks like. The picture to the right is a picture of someone playing Steve Reich's "Drumming" (another reason why I love this photo so much--because I used to be a drummer). So when my dear roommate (although the "dear" is somewhat questionable considering she locked me out of my room today in nothing but a towel...) asked me to do her nails, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Using colors from Kilmas' photograph, I used a splatter technique on her nails. Initially I thought I could simply flick the polish brush to get a good splatter effect...all that did was coat my hand in polish. Fortunately I found a great splatter tutorial on The Polish Aholic's blog, and the trick to splatter painting nails is a straw--who knew! Her tutorial is great but if you want the quick and dirty version (literally) here you go: 

1. Prep your nails with a nail foundation. I used one coat of Butter London's Foundation Flawless Basecoat. 
2. The Polish Aholic recommends using some scotch tape to tape the edges of your nails to minimize mess, but I found that to be too time consuming. All I did was lay something (the church bulletin to be exact) underneath my roomie's nails so I didn't splatter all over our futon. 
3. Next paint a basecoat on your nails. I used Urban Outfitter's Eyes Wide shut, because I thought a black background would be most dramatic with the splatter over top. 
4. Once the basecoat is dry, you can begin splattering. Take a straw and brush the end of of the straw with the first polish you want to splatter with. There should be a bubble of paint across the straw opening. 
5. Here's the fun part...position the straw above the desired nail and blow through the straw. 
6. Continue this process with each desired color. 
7. As warned, this is messy, so if you didn't use tape, or just have terrible aim, use nail polish remover, or just take a shower to clean up the skin covered with polish. 
8. Finish off with a topcoat for a glossy shine. I used SV topcoat.

To get the effect of the splatter in Kilmas' photo, I used six different colors. I used Illamasqua's Jo'mina (purple), Butter London's Minger (orange) Primrose Hill Picnick (pink) Cheeky Chops (yellow) and Slapper (teal), and Essie's Mezmerised (blue).  

                                                                                               SO MESSY!!!

p.s. if you haven't already, be sure to enter my giveaway for a free bottle of Butter London's Snog!