California Poppies
Hello! It's been a while. Again. I know I've been having some pretty spontaneous hiatuses, but hopefully this is the last in a while... It's now summer, I'm officially a high school alumna, and I'm getting ready to move across the continent and live out the next four years of my life in a city where it snows for five months a year. I'm from the sunny Bay Area of California. Our winter lows are about 50º Fahrenheit. Can you imagine?
That being said, I'm definitely not ready. My North Face jacket hasn't arrived yet, and I have yet to search for sturdy winter boots. So, for now... California poppies. A healthy dose of the home state (state flower!), translated into nail art. I'm going to miss this Mediterranean climate :(
And here it is! Honestly, I'm not sure how long this took – two layers of Zoya Charlotte (from the 2015 mystery mini trio!) and many, many layers of acrylic paint. I originally took inspiration from this beautiful embroidered set of lingerie I found on Tumblr, as inserted below. This is my first manicure I've ever done inspired by an online photo or design, and I'm fairly proud with how true to the original the mani turned out!
Here's another first – a (nearly) full length tutorial for the design. Check it out! I unfortunately did not grab photos of the first poppy acrylic layer, but as the yellow is a repeat of the red (the non-photographed step), it all comes down to the same techniques.
Here are the individual steps:
(Not shown – paint two coats of Zoya Charlotte. Dab on some red acrylic paint in rough "sickle cell" shape, forming the base for the red poppies. Add some yellow acrylic paint as shown for the poppy detail while the red is still slightly wet, and a little orange to ease the blending. Red poppies are done!)
- Paint on lemon yellow acrylic paint in sickle cell shapes to begin the yellow poppies.
- Add some medium yellow paint (for depth) where the yellow paint went on the red poppies.
- Add some red paint over the medium yellow, but don't entirely cover the medium yellow.
- Dab on some tiny clusters of purple dots. I did not have bright purple acrylic, so I mixed sky blue and neon pink. Make some dots tiny v's.
- Add some darker purple to the bottom of the small v's for depth. (I know – it's subtle.)
- Mix a greyed-out green to your satisfaction, and begin painting on tiny stems and leaves. (You can see the trial-and-error process on my middle finger! I personally used a mix of white, grey, phthalo green, yellow ochre, and a tiny hint of blue.)
- Add some darker green accents to make the leaves and stems pop a little more. Topcoat and you're done!
Materials used:
- Zoya Charlotte – greige (heavier on the beige) creme
- Various colors of Reeves acrylic paint
- Various colors of Apple Barrel Colors craft paint
- Various colors of DecoArt patio paint
I hope you enjoyed this post and found it potentially helpful! Time to return to a regular posting schedule... Thanks for reading :')
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