I really wanted red roses on a black background, but I don't have a stamping plate that has an image of the negative space around a rose, and none of my reds stamped well at all on top of black. As a last resort, I stamped on some roses in white onto my black base and then painted over the whole nail with one of my more sheer reds, and—bingo! It worked! Red roses on a background that still looks black.
I used Essie Licorice for my base, and then stamped on the roses using essence white stamping polish and the Messy Mansion MM07 plate. (By the way, everyone probably already knows this, but Messy Mansion plates are amazing—they're really well etched and every single stamp came out perfectly. I can't recommend them highly enough!) Then I added a thin coat of tenoverten Carmine to each nail and sealed everything with topcoat. And once I realized what I was doing, I couldn't help but hum the "Painting the Roses Red" song from Alice in Wonderland to myself the entire time.
I really love how this turned out—the roses looks so deep and rich because of how the stamping is sandwiched between the two colors. I'll definitely be trying this technique again the next time I want to stamp a color onto black! I wish I'd dragged out my light box to shoot a few of the pictures so that the lamp glare wasn't such an issue (the dark colors and extremely shiny finish from the HK Girl top coat I used make the glare especially obvious), but that's my only minor regret here. Lesson learned for next time!
Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!
Just found you from a pinterest pin - and -yay! This not only looks amazing, but you ingenuity to use white & paint over is priceless!!! Well done! And I hope you get some yummy chocolates tomorrow too! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you! I wish I could claim that I happened upon the idea some other way than just random luck, but I suppose serendipity has its place in nail art, too. :)
DeleteGorgeous! You have a new fan ��
ReplyDeleteThank you! :)
DeleteTHIS IS GORGEOUS! I saw this on Pinterest and was like woooooah. <3
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! And whoa, cool, I'm pretty excited to hear that this made it over to Pinterest. :D
Deletei lke how you paired the red roses with a darker colour, it looks lovely! i love your blog :D
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Galorious
These look gorgeous -- I love the idea of, well, painting the roses red! Red on a black background is always so stunning :)
ReplyDeleteThis is gorgeous! Brilliant idea to stamp with white first and paint over with a sheer red... I tried stamping roses with a red shimmer polish over black for Valentine's and the roses are very subtle :(
ReplyDeleteGreat idea!!
ReplyDeleteWhat an amazing discovery! Oh, my, gosh...so many techniques could blend with your idea...sponging, gradations/ombres, detailed painting over just the image stamped in white...I'm sure even more. Congratulations! This mani is just sooooo beautiful!
ReplyDeleteI just realized: this is similar to the pond technique only without the many layers of the sheer jelly polish, and with the ability to lend even more depth because of the black base polish. Really, very cool. Oh...just in case you're not sure what I mean by "pond" technique: the pond technique. It was created by a woman named Vicki. She showed her creation on reddit at http://www.reddit.com/r/RedditLaqueristas/comments/1ck1tq/first_jelly_sandwich_flowers_on_a_pond/. She then started a blog. Her post about creating the first pond mani is at http://oliveviewfashion.com/2013/04/21/the-manicure-that-started-it-all/.
DeleteThank you! :) And thanks for linking to the pond technique, too—I hadn't seen that before. So pretty!
DeleteYou are a GENIUS for this idea! I've been telling all my fellow stamping lovers! Beautiful manicure!
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