nail art for short nails: tropical stamping decals

Hello Sweeties!! Happy Friday!
Any nice plans for the weekend? We'll be having a very warm weekend ahead and we plan to enjoy it! We'll be having a condo BBQ tomorrow evening, otherwise we have no other plans so we'll go with the flow. What are your plans?
It's time for another nail art for the 40 Great Nail art Ideas Challenge, and the prompt this week is "Inspiration". Today I have another manicure for short nails, hoping you like it!

The topic "Inspiration" seemed very opened to me, and while there are 1 million manicures and nail artist that really inspire me, I was feeling quite inspired by the packaging of Essence latest Trend Edition Exit to Explore. I was very excited to try reproducing it on my short nails!

nail art for short nails: tropical stamping decals

For creating this manicure I started painting my nails with Essence Liana's in the Jungle, which is a beautiful metallic green from Essence Limited Edition that came out this month. You can see the swatch here. I let it dried and then stamped my background with Moyou Black night and MoYou London Tropical Collection #12. Then I created some stamping decals on my Bundle Monster silicon mat using a gold polish -Maybelline forever strong 820, which is discontinued- and designs from stamping plates MoYou London Tropical Collection #05 and Konad m29. I filled in the stamping designs with the following polishes: Born Pretty stamping polish 21, Essence Colour & go Wanna be your sunshine,  Moyou White knight.

nail art for short nails: tropical stamping decals


Making stamping decals is a great option for short nails because you have less room for free hand painting and the stamped designs are more accurate and easier to do than super tiny hand work.
How to achieve stamping decals? Well it is much easier than it looks, and although it is more time consuming that straight stamping it is much more beautiful and less time consuming than hand painting.

nail art for short nails: tropical stamping decals

  • Start laying a coat of topcoat on a silicon mat (a new ziplock bag would do too). You want to do squares that are a bit bigger than your own nail. Let them dry very well.
  • Stamp the desired images with your chosen colour on the clear squares you just made.
  • With a thin nail art brush, a thin dotting tool, a toothpick or even a bobby pin start filling in the stamped images with your chosen colours.
  • Let the decals dry well, but don't let them sit for too long or you will have trouble picking them up.
  • Using an orange stick start lifting up the corners of your clear square. Be careful not to tear the decals. Use either your fingers or tweezers to gently peel off the decals from the surface.
  • Apply them to your nail. You have two options: you can apply a thin coat of clear polish to your nails and then stick the decals, or the one I prefer which is position the decals on the nails first and then apply topcoat to fix them.


nail art for short nails: tropical stamping decals

So, what do you think of my Tropical nails inspired by makeup packaging? They are a bit over the top, but I like how cheerful and colourful they turn out!

Don't forget to pay a visit to my challenge pals listed here below, and have a wonderful weekend!!

Love,
Nati