Purple and Blue Saran Wrap and Stained Glass

Saran Wrap Mani with Essie Sittin Pretty & I'm Addicted

For today's Mani Monday Nail Art look I have two designs using purple and blue with Essie's Sittin' Pretty, I'm Addicted and Pahlish's Charn. I'm sorry for being MIA for most of last week, it's been busy here at home with Princess A starting 2nd grade today and Squish getting his 2 year molars in. Ugh...if you have kids, then you know how awful those 2 year molars can be. Things are quieter today and I have been working on nail art behind the scenes so I hope to catch up this week. I have a new monthly feature coming soon as well that I'm really excited about. On to the nails!

Stained Glass Mani

This is my stained glass fail. I had to do this several times. Basically I started with a white undie (Sally Hansen White On), then I stamped a design which I thought resembled stained glass using Bundle Monster plate 208, after that I carefully filled in the spaces with acrylic paint. And here's where it all went to hell. I then carefully attempted to go over the black outlines, first with a thin brush and black polish and the 2nd attempt with a nail art pen. It dawned on me later that I should have just used black acrylics, all I needed to do was to top coat the colors to protect them and then gone over the lines with acrylic, so I could wipe away any mistakes with water. Also, maybe I should have freehanded the design and done larger chunks. I had this vision in my head and it did not work.

Stained Glass Mani with Pahlish Charn

The other color I used was Pahlish's Charn from the Wood Between the Worlds Collection. (Yes, that is a Narnia reference, which I love!) Charn is described as a "bright lavender crème with soft lavender-gold flake shimmer and matte lagoon blue glitter". (Source). It's a lovely color and it was very easy to apply. I didn't have to fish for glitters but they large blue ones sank to the bottom (as you can see in my pic) so you do have to give it a good shake and I recommend putting the bottle upside down for a bit so the glitters will get redistributed better. I used two coats.

After being super frustrated with the stained glass fail I decided to try again with a Saran Wrap mani. That's a technique where you basically use a crunched up ball of Saran Wrap to dab on your colors, creating a marbled/watercolor effect. There's several ways of doing it. I tried with a plastic baggie since I didn't have any Saran Wrap and it did not work. I ended up removing layers of polish in chunks instead. That's ok though because I got creative and realized a Q-tip cotton swab would give me the same effect. I started with Sitting Pretty (purple), let dry, add I'm Addicted (blue) by gently dabbing it on with the Q-tip. Then I added a few dabs of Charn. I added the heart and top coated with Gelous.

As for Sittin Pretty, it's from the Summer 2014 Neons (Too Taboo Collection) but it isn't a neon at all. It's a bright purple creme, dried to a smooth shiny finish in two coats. It was one of the easiest Essie formulas I've worked with.

I really liked this mani and I wore it for several days. Like always, I bought all of these polishes myself.