Snow Leopard

Meow.

I have a confession. I'll tell you if you promise not to laugh. Promise?


This is my first time doing leopard print. Or at least my first time without rage-quitting half way through. Blasphemous, I know! Leopard print is a nail art staple and I've been completely neglecting it.

I considered doing something wild and colorful for this but, in the end, I went with simple snow leopard print. Why? Well, I love grey. I also love snow leopards. I need no better excuse!

I started off with two coats of Essie Chinchilly. It was a bit darker than what I wanted, but it's such a nice warm grey. I applied two thin coats of Sally Hansen Polar Bare over Chinchilly to lighten the color. This achieved a warm light grey. Perfect!

After allowing that to dry completely, I used a dotting tool to randomly place some spots. Again, I used Chinchilly here. As you can see, my spots are shaped irregularly. I didn't want them to look too uniform.

Finally, using black acrylic paint, I partially outlined each spot. I also added some small black accents here and there to break up the pattern.

It's not the silky smooth leopard print I'm used to seeing in manicures, but I'm alright with that. I originally tried doing smooth black lines but I wasn't liking the result. I went back and thickened them up a bit, allowing for a bit of texture. I like this a bit better. What do you think?

By the way, I signed up for NaBloPoMo (think of it as NaNoWriMo but for bloggers). That means I'm going to attempt to post every day this month. I should have more than enough material to work with, considering I still need to show off Toni and Natty, the gorgeous Zoya polishes that I recently won from A Girl and Her Polish. I also just received my first Julep order and I've been working on a manicure that incorporates variegated black metal leaf. Plus, I've been playing around with a blog redesign.

There's so much to do!