Stripes, Spots and Roses

Hello!

My manicure today was inspired by a bag I saw someone carrying at work. I have no idea where it was from and didn't get a pic or anything, but I do remember thinking it was a design I'd like to try on my nails. It was blue and white, one side spotty and one side stripey, with flowers down the middle separating the two prints. 

At first I was going to do each nail with half-and-half spots and stripes, with roses down the middle, but I thought this might be too time-consuming, and end up looking too busy. Instead I decided to do the main design on my middle finger as an accent nail, and do the nails either side it as spots and stripes. 

I used:
Sinful Colors - Snow me White (for the base)
Color Club - blue ...doesn't have a name on it (for the dots and stripes)
Barry M -  Grapefruit (for the roses)
Barry M - white and pink nail art pen (for the detail on the roses)

For the stripes, I used nail vinyls from She Sells Seashells - I used these ones that are just straight strips - so much easier than trying to cut pieces of tape to the same thickness! I applied them over the white base, painted blue over the top then removed the strips with tweezers. 

For the spots, I used a dotting tool that I won via Naileymabob from Models Own. I find when using a dotting tool it's easier to blob a small amount of polish onto some scrap paper and then dip the dotting tool in this rather than in the bottle - it's easier to see what you're doing and to control how much polish you pick up. I've never really done a successful dotting tool mani before but I like how these spotty nails turned out and I definitely want to try more colour combos.

For the roses I blobbed on random dots down the centre of my middle nail, using the brush from the bottle of Barry M's Grapefruit. Once dry I added detail with the nail art pens, then topcoated all my nails with a fast dry topcoat!

Here's some pics of them in the sun! ....apologies for my tiny baby nail on my little finger :-(