Cloud Nail Art Inspired by the film Sin City

Its the weekend again yay!  It's been crazy busy the last couple of days so I haven't had a chance to post, but it's Sunday morning now, and all is peaceful at the moment, so here I am!  Finally I have a week off work now, first (and probably last) one this year, so we will probably take ourselves away for a few days, not sure where to yet though!

So, on Friday night there wasn't much on TV, and I was flicking around Netflix to see what I could watch.  Other half was upstairs on his PC doing who knows what, so I had the TV all to myself.  Anyway, I came across Sin City and thought to myself, oh, I haven't seen that in a while, so I switched it on, and within about 5 minutes I realised that I'd forgotten what a super cool film it was!  The way it's shot, and how colour is used all the way through is just so epic, I must have dreamt about it when I went to bed, because I woke up in the morning with a brilliant manicure idea!  I love it when that happens.  Pretty much anything interesting that happens to me ends up on my nails in one form or another.

I've been wanting to do a cloud manicure ever since I came across it on Purple Wolf's blog, HERE is the link to her post and she in turn credits Nailside, so we're all spreading the love, which is one of the reasons I love beauty blogging so much.  The idea I woke up with was to combine my want to do the cloud mani with the inspiration of colours from Sin City, and this is what I came up with:

It doesn't look too bad in that picture, but it wasn't by any means perfect (I'm a bit pedantic).  However I still liked it, partly because it reminded me of the film, and also because it was a nice bold design.  It is definitely one of those where it looks harder to do than it was.  Heres the steps I did, but Purple Wolf links Nailsides tutorial which explains it all step by step if you want to see that.  Firstly two coats of L'Oreals Black Swan:

I chose this one for one reason.... its my only black haha.  It goes on OK, and even though it's a pro-wide brush its not too tricky to use.  I didn't have to do any clean up that I remember.  You'll notice this is my left hand.  I'd already done my right hand before I remembered to take 'along the way' pictures.  My index and middle fingernails are both broken off grrr...  Anyhow, onto stage two:

For this stage I used OPI's Alpine Snow.  I do own a few whites but I picked this one because, a) it has the right shaped brush that I wanted, and b) I was pretty sure it would cover the black in one coat.

Then onto the red coat:

The red I used on my first finger (which was incidentally my left thumb lol) was Manchester by Nails Inc.  However this wasn't bright enough to give me the Sin City look I was looking for.  And to my surprise I discovered that I don't actually own alot of bright reds!  So I plumped for a red polish by a Boots brand called Fearne, which came in a gift set from my mum last Christmas, so I have no idea what it's called or how much it cost, so sorry.  I alleviated this situation by going out yesterday and buying two bright reds, which I will swatch and review later to make up for it :)

By this time I was getting the hang of it a little bit more, and I found it a bit easier if I lay the brush down quite flat to my nail, the way you would do with a striping brish, this seemed to cause less dragging and give a better finish.  I popped a layer of Seche Vite on the top and was done!

As is often the way with Seche Vite, it all then seemed to dry really fast, but was still wet underneath....   I went to the gym and when I came out my manicure was a wrinkly crinkly mess, sigh...  So off it came, but I will definitely try it again, perhaps I'll try it with different colour 'clouds' on each finger, ooh perhaps ombre clouds?  So many ideas!

Does anyone have any recommendations for a top coat that dries fast, doesn't smudge nail art, but doesn't dent like Seche?

I better go, I hear other half stirring from slumber :-)

Until next time.....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~