wild child

If you aren't acquainted with the fabulousness that is Mara Hoffman...get on it. Her designs are so fresh, bright, colorful and her patterns mesmerizing. While obsessing over some of her swimwear and wishing I had a budget that accommodated them...or anything really, I thought those colors and geometric designs would make for some sick nails. 

Inspired mostly by the angles and colors of this suit, I ended up creating a bit of an art deco styled design. I love the pop of the brights against the black so I wanted to outline everything heavily in black in the design, a little more so than in the Mara Hoffman inspo, which is why it ended up looking a little more art deco like in the end. 

To create the look I first painted the usual one coat of butter LONDON Horse Power Nail Fertilizer and another of Flawless Basecoat. Next to help make all the colors pop as much as possible I painted a base color of white using butter's Cotton Buds. To get the effect I wanted, I painted all the colored parts of the design first then outlined everything with the black. So to start I did the big V in the bright blue Keks. Next I painted the smaller purple inverted V in one of my favorite purples, Molly Coddled. I also used the purple starting about halfway down the nail on either side of the blue V and painting down to the tip of the nail. Next I painted another inverted V inside the purple one this time in hot pink using Cake-Hole. Similarly, I used Cake-Hole to paint from the outside top of the blue V to the halfway point to the nail where the purple started (so it was pink from the nail bed halfway down the nail then purple to the tip on the outside edges of the blue V). Next using the neon green, Jaded Jack, I painted from the inside tip of the blue V to about the halfway point of the nail, leaving a small white triangle under the pink inverted V. The last color I added was to fill in the top of the nail between the blue and purple V with the bright yellow PIMMS. 

Once all the colors had set a bit I got my favorite paten black, Union Jack Black, out to paint the outline. First I simply outlined all the lines I made with the different colors then I added some embellishments like diagonals varying in width in the purple half, a vertical stripe in the pink half, horizontal stripes in the green and triangles in the yellow. 

I am obsessed with the overall effect...most people assume they are stickers--don't know if thats good or bad but. I love how bright the colors are and how much they pop against the black. It is definitely a time consuming design but not impossible to do if you have a thin brush and some time on your hands. What do you think?