Dandelion Weekend Nails: Fun With Finishes

I like shiny nails. Shine is good. Every now and then I get a matte itch, but overall, the shinier the better for me. When I tried on Sinful Colors in Savage, I was beyond delighted with the bright teal toned blue...then horrified as I watched it mattefy as it dried. Sigh. Into the pile it goes. Until last weekend.

I've been coveting dandelion nail art for a while, but my attempts have all fallen flat so far. To maintain the airy, slightly vintage look I was seeing in my mind, I whipped out Savage for a flat finish that still had the brightness I needed to draw out the white dandelion puffs. I used my Salon Perfect nail art striper in White Out to make my stems, then placed a dot of Julep Florence at the end of the stem on my thumb. Then I used the striper to create my dandelion head, carefully wiping most of the polish off on the neck of the bottle to keep my dandelion wispy. That's been my problem in the past-designs I had been trying to emulate were more like this one from Nailz Craze, which have to be perfect or they look messy. (In my defense, hers were stamped and I was trying to hand paint the design, so while I was frustrated not to get the look I wanted, I couldn't be too hard on myself there.)

Then I gave my shorter dandelion puffs wispy heads and tapped a tiny dot of Florence at the base of each. Because everything is better with glitter, I used a tiny dotting tool to put a subtle haze of Julep Joelle on my dandelion and the end of my puffs.

Finally, for the last piece of flair, I grabbed a toothpick and used Sally Hansen Super Shine top coat to add a few curls of "wind" to each nail. It's very subtle, but definitely adds to the overall look of the mani. I didn't use a fast dry topcoat because I wanted more time to etch my curls, but I didn't have any trouble with smudging, and Savage dries pretty quickly as well, so no drying issues. I didn't mattefy the dandelions before adding my curls; they maintained White Out's soft flat shine and Florence's touch of high shine.

While not particularly original, I had a lot of fun with this mani. Part of the fun of nail art is that there's often more to it than the casual "oh, I like your nails" observer will ever notice, which is very true of this design. It did feel weird not to topcoat, though-like I was skipping a step. I also liked that I got to do something with Savage, since it's a beautiful color, and the finish is really nice, just not very me. I'll probably wear it again for this type of design since the topcoat curls show up so well. The contrast between the matte, glitter, and shine is so much fun! What do you think? Is mixing textures a fun way to add oomph to a mani, or a time consuming trend that no one notices anyway?