Nail Art Challenge: I Love You, Man!

Week 4 of the Polish Swap Society's Nail Art Challenge is a heart-themed spring mani using this tutorial. 

These little hearts are harder than the video looks; at first I was concerned because I don't have a nail art brush like the one used in the video (flat with a pointed tip) but then I remembered I had my mom's box of acrylic paints with a bunch of paint brushes. I quickly found one quite similar. 

I then had the daunting task of choosing my colors. I've been dying to wear orange lately so I knew I was starting with an orange. I also had Orly's Starburst from the Galaxy FX collection which has orange glitter in it. My vision was coming together. I knew I wanted to go with white dots but what color should the hearts be? I didn't want pink or purple, nor black. After staring at my colors for a bit I had an idea to go with peach and yellow. 

I painted my ring, middle, and thumb with a base color of Barielle, Fire Me Up from the Vibrants Collection. I love this firey orange jelly. It's very bold but it's slightly sheer so you get that squishy jelly feel. Formula was a little on the thin side but very easy to apply; like butter. It dried quickly with a super shiny finish.

I applied Orly, Starburst (Mmmmm now I'm in the mood for some Starburst) to my pinky and index. This is a very chunky glitter in a milky white base. There's orange, red, and gold hexagons with some silver circle glitter thrown in. It required 3 coats to get it to the opacity I liked. The suspension base is very thick so you get a ton of glitter in one coat but it's easier to apply if you use thin to medium coats. It dries quickly as well but to a very gritty finish so you will want to use a few coats of a thick top coat to smooth it out.

I used acrylic paints to paint the hearts on my ring, middle, and thumb. Even using the special brush was a bit of a challenge (I'm not very artsy fartsy) but I'm not horrified with the results. I used a very fine dotting tool to add some white dots. 

I applied a coat of Gelous and In A Hurry to all of my nails.

I like the color theme I chose, it's really more summery than Spring but to be honest it's already super hot over here in SoCal so our spring only lasted for about... Eh... Like 3 days. ;)