Vday Roses

Hello there! Valentine's day is coming to a close, and I hope it was a good one, however you chose to celebrate it, and even if there was no celebration involved. I think mine turned out a bit anticlimactic. After the wedding festivities were over, my body caught up to me and was all like "Hey, what happened? We had a deal..the deal was we sleep in on Sundays! Go take a nap." So I encouraged my hubby to go on a bro date and see Deadpool while I snuggled with my kitty and had a nap. But I did my nails so I gotta show them off, right? Right! So here they are....typical roses ;D

My inspiration was from a mani I saw on IG by cdbnails143. And then I realized that of all the stamping plates I have, I don't have that exact one. Still, roses, and flowers in general are pretty abundant when it comes to stamping plates so it's not an exact copy, but definitely inspired by.
This is another go at a skittlette mani, because I have so many accept nails! I really liked the silver roses from the original mani, but I wanted to try a more traditional red rose as well. Initially I thought of finally using my OPI color paints to fill in the colors, but they're kind of bright and happy looking and I was aiming for something more darker and classy. Did I get close enough?

I used two ILNP colors - the silver is First Class. It's a beautiful holographic polish with tons of silver metallic flakes. It's a unique finish in my collection, and one that ILNP does really well! First Class gave me the opaque coverage I wanted in just two coats. The leaves are also ILNP, Ski Lodge - I finally got this color!! No more looking at every green I own and wondering if it's close enough if I add a holo top coat, lol.

For the berry color, I used Bonita Hollywood High Rise - it's from their Gel-on line of polishes and I'm finding that a lot of them are one coaters. This one is as well! I did end up using two coats though, because I wanted a deeper color.

I used MdU Black and plate 03 from CICI&SISI. Roses were made in decal fashion, the old way - on a stamper. Silicone mats are a very handy tool, especially now that so many different ones are available. I just used my stampers because I was lazy ;)

Decals are pretty simple to make - stamp, wait till it's dry (10ish mins is usually good enough), fill in with color, wait to dry, and topcoat. I used Wet n Wild Clear Nail Protector, it seems to be one that's often used and it definitely does the job well. After the final step is dry, peel it off and position onto the nail. Here's where the decal can be trimmed if your nails are on the shorter side. Or even if you only want to use one accent rose, just cut it out! I clean up the extra around my nail with scissors and then a little brush with acetone.

Hope you enjoyed my floral look. I'm leaning towards the silver roses, they just stand out and look better. Maybe I'll get ambitious and do a full mani with them, not just accents!