cheer cheer

Wake up the echoes...football season means HERE COME THE IRISH. I understand some people don't like college football (though I'm not going to pretend to understand you), and even more so I understand most people either love or hate Notre Dame...usually its hate, but if you went to Notre Dame it's a whole different story. If you fit into either of the first two categories listed above you may want to skip this post all together because it's a little heavy on the blue and gold (just don't skip out on me all together yeah?). 

So I had the absolute pleasure of heading back to the bend to meet up with some college friends for the weekend to cheer on the Irish against UMass. Not a huge game all together but every game at Notre Dame Stadium is treated with the same enthusiasm and spectacle as the playoffs so it's always a good time--not to mention staying in a house just off campus with twenty-some alumni friends is never a bad thing. Naturally to be decked out head to toe for the Fighting Irish, a nail blogger would have to have some nails to compliment the look. I have done a few ND nails in the past [Here Comes the Irish & Gleams they Gold and Blue] so I wanted to do something different this time (ie. forgo the monogram and clover). I decided to revisit a technique I hadn't used in ages--splatter painting. 

An in-depth tutorial for the splatter painting technique I used can be found on the above link for my previous splatter painting post, but I will outline the basics below. 

I started with one coat of butter LONDON Horse Power Nail Fertilizer and followed that with one coat of butter LONDON Nail Foundation Flawless Basecoat. 

Next I painted my main coat of Royal Navy for a solid navy blue foundation. Next I poured a small amount of the three accent colors I chose, Big Smoke, The Full Monty, and West End Wonderland, onto a paper plate. 

              Royal Navy          Big Smoke           The Full Monty   West End Wonderland

Using a plastic straw, i dipped one end into a color so the polish created a film over the end of the straw and then positioned the end about an inch or two over my nail and blew through the straw. The resulting effect was a splatter of the polish onto my nail and unavoidably my fingers. I repeated this process on all the nails, varying the colors. It ended up creating a marbled sort of effect.

After I was satisfied with all the splatter painting, I painted a coat of SV topcoat and let it dry. Using a small makeup brush and nail polish remover, I cleaned up all the excess splatter.

Not my favorite look--personally I liked it better with the neon colors. It's a difficult technique because you don't have much control and being a bit of a perfectionist it can get frustrating if a nail turns out looking wonky--also a huge waste of polish! 

Anyway, I got what I wanted which was blue and gold nails for my Notre Dame game and they sure looked good from the 30 yard line when we absolutely crushed UMass! 

What do you think? Oh...and GO IRISH!!