Glow in the dark bridge nail art (painted with polish)

Includes press samples 

Hey gorgeousness! Are you doing okay? If not, I hope this will cheer you up a bit :) I've been wanting to paint a picture that is fully visible in the light, as well as in the dark. Do you think I succeeded? Click to see my video and my version from a year ago!

Painting with just polish is HARD! I couldn't use acrylic paint for this because duhhh it doesn't glow :-p I used a whole bunch of different polishes for this:
- Indigo Bananas Roll In Ze Hay (background)
- Serum No. 5 Indi-Glo (clouds)
- Serum No. 5 Blue Blazes (clouds)
- Serum No. 5 Atomic Peach (glow from the lanterns)
- Serum No. 5 Solar Power (lanterns)
- Serum No. 5 Day Glow (lanterns)
- Above The Curve Patronus Charm (clouds)
- Above The Curve Lite Brite (glow from the lanterns)
- Parrot Polish Glow Bleen (glow on top of the tree)

Whew! That's a lot of glow polish! I painted all of this using my Pure Color Glamour #1, my Basic One Gold detail brush from Christrio Scotland and some black acrylic paint. And I have a surprise....

... I did this nail art once before, a little over a year ago! I've been wanting to do a Then & Now design for forEVER but it had to be the right time. Now is that time. This was one of the rare instances I used daylight to photograph my nails. Back then, I did most of it in my 'brand new' light box, with two crappy halogen lamps than made my fingers look like they were dipped in acid. So I was glad to find a picture that looked slightly okay.

I used Girly Bits Denim Diva for the base and to my surprise, they used one of my swatches from a year ago in the listing! Looking at the picture, I don't even recognize my nails :-p

A year ago, I was still painting with polish. I used a DVD marker for the bridge because I couldn't paint thin lines (it smeared while putting on top coat). I also had a top coat that didn't dry properly so I got dents, scratches & sheet marks all the time... And most of this art was done using just the brush of the polish bottle itself, instead of a decent detail brush. My oh my, things have changed!!!

I never blogged about this design... It was in a time that I wasn't doing well and I couldn't blog, but doing nails was still my 'thang'.

I know I keep preaching... but I just really want to show you that you shouldn't give up, if it's close to your heart and you want to become better, then become better! Practice your butt off and you'll get there! Look at people who inspire you, find out what it is that they're doing right and find the things that suit you. And you'll be awesome :D

Ofcourse I couldn't let you down, so I recorded a video of this design too!!! There's a trick to painting with polish: Put a few drops of your polish on a palette (I'm using the lid of a box of nuts) and mix that with a drop of nail polish thinner. Don't use remover for it,because it has the wrong properties and will make your polish clump up. Do one color at a time because it dries up fast.

Let's paint! Paint some basic cloud shapes. Outline your clouds with a silver lining :) Paint some other cloud outlines a bit lower on the nail. First you'll do this with a light blue, and paint thin stripes of blue from the outline upwards. This gives it a cool effect in the dark. Then, paint your lines again, but use the silver that you used for the other clouds as well.

When those are dry, take some black acrylic paint and paint your rock formations, your bridge and your tree. Now, let's paint the lanterns. Make dots/squares using a bright yellow polish, and dot a lighter shade of yellow inside those blobs. Now, everywhere you've painted a basic lantern shape, you're gonna paint the glow that would cast off of the rocks, the tree, the hanging bridge, everywhere. Just take a liiiittle bit of thinned polish onto your brush, and just wipe it off. Do this everywhere you might expect the light to bounce off of. If you're done with that, you can paint the outlines of your lanterns with black acrylic paint.

Lastly, paint the light bouncing off of the top of the tree using a glow top coat. Let everything dry, top coat and you're done!




Music "Dreamy Solace Of Rivers And Bridges" by Westy Reflector
Available on the Free Music Archive freemusicarchive.org/
Under CC BY license  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I received Serum No. 5 Day Glow & Atomic Peach and Parrot Polish Glow Bleen as a press sample for an honest review. Opinions expressed are 100% my own and not influenced in any way other than the quality of the product itself.