Nail Art: Arlene’s Stargazer Lilies

This Nail Art is in honour of my sister, Arlene, whose favourite flower was the Stargazer Lily. She asked me if I would do a Stargazer Lily design and I told her I would. It took me a couple of weeks and lots of different attempts to achieve a result that I was happy with.

To start off with, I am not an artist and had absolutely no idea how to draw a stargazer lily. I immediately went to Google and You tube for some idea how to represent a recognisable flower on a fingernail.

My inspiration came from a U-tube tutorial by 3TanjaJ3 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD5JZNHYIIA …

which i tried to copy … without much success.

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I didn’t really like the look of the green painted tips, and I didn’t really like the base colour, especially since the white of the flower didn’t show up against it. The first flower I painted was so bad that i decided to use the other fingers to practice painting the flower so I would be able to do it later without problem. (I’m going to blame the bad art on a brush that was too large).

I don’t have a pile of gems to stick on the other fingers, so I had to decide if I was going to paint flowers on all nails, or come up with something else. So on the second hand, I tried using little dots of gold sparkles, but they didn’t work.

I learned a lot from my first attempt and all the practice that I got from doing it.

Now I decided to use a darker colour for the base colour … darker but not dark … one that evokes spring and sunny blue skies and that the white of the flower would show up against. I decided on the lightest blue polish that I have. After applying it, I spent 3 days trying to decide wether or not to use acrylics to paint the flower, instead of nail polish. I had never used acrylic paints before, but had heard that it is easier to erase and redo the design. And I had a box of acrylic paints that had never been opened. Eventually I went for it and painted my best two sungazer lilies yet, (even though i still don’t have a good brush (-: ).

I wanted to do some kind of glittery treatment for the other nails. I used a clear polish with a very fine glitter and a few spots. It didn’t do anything for the look at all. I tried something different on the thumbs, then painted over it, and that didn’t look very good either.

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Santa Elena is not a place that has a lot of great shopping, especially for nail art supplies, but on my next trip to town, I found a clear polish with black sparkles and it was perfect!! With two coats, it even covered most of the problems with the thumbs.

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Thanks, Arlene, for the inspiration!! I never would have tried such a challenging painting without your inspiration and confidence. This one’s for you! Arlene’s Stargazer Lilies.