Bestie Nail Art Challenge - Week Three: St. Patrick's Day (Shamrock French Tips and Claddagh Nail Art)

Do you ever do that thing where you have an idea in your head and then things go horribly wrong? I guess that's what happened this week for the Bestie Nail Art Challenge with Caitlin from Addicted to Lacquer. This week's theme is (obviously) St. Patrick's Day. I wanted to go for something clean (originally), some gold glitter over some french tips and then some shamrocks. Sounds OK so far... Then I thought about adding a Claddagh highlight nail tip. Yeah. That's when things went wrong...



Be sure to check our Caitlin's side of things over here. Apparently she wasn't too happy with her shamrock pond nails either but I guess that's why we're besties - always in sync, haha!

Anyway, here's how my St. Paddy's nail art ended up:





All the nail art was freehanded and I think I know where the problem stems from... All the nail art was freehanded... Haha! I wasn't too happy with how my Claddagh highlight nail looked but in all honesty it just took way to long to do, so I couldn't remove it. And it's not that it was complete shite, it's just that it was painted horribly crooked.



Here's a full list of all the supplies that I used for this nail art:

- fine nail art brush
- white polish striper
- OPI In the Spot-Light Pink (sheer base)
- Quo by Orly Cheers to You (holo gold hex and bar glitter)
- OPI Jade is the New Black (for the green shamrocks)
- OPI Mermaid's Tears (for highlights on the shamrocks)
- Essie As Gold as it Gets (claddagh tip)
- OPI Black Onyx (claddagh black outline)

And for some reason I keep bringing one tool from last challenge into the next so that was the fine nail art brush this time around! So here's how I made these nails - I started with a sheer foundation with two coats of OPI In the Spot-Light Pink. Then on all the nails but the ring nail, I freehanded a white french tip with a white striper. So far, so good... but here's when things started going south. I wanted to add a touch of gold glitter so I pulled out Quo by Orly's Cheers to You from maybe two years ago and I noticed there were little gold flecks that were in the base. That wasn't there before. It looks like over time, the base had eaten away at the glitter and now even has a yellow tinge to it. A bit of a bother! To make matters worse, I started outlining the Claddagh highlight tip with Essie As Gold As It Gets but the formula dries SO fast and is SO thick that it caused huge problems and turned out a bit lumpy. I started on the shamrocks with OPI Jade is the New Black, which were just fine. They were relatively easy to do as long as I had some patience and remembered to stay small. Added some highlights with OPI Mermaid's Tears - still OK. Then I started outlining the Claddagh and I was semi OK with it. I mean, it looked OK for what it was - I am still a complete n00b at nail art... But then I realize I painted it completely crooked and it was already sticking out like a sore thumb with the 'heavy' black outline. UGH. Anyway, topped it off with Seche Vite top coat and called it a night:







I thought about redoing them because the way everyone celebrates St. Patrick's Day in Vancouver is more like St. FRATrick's (har har get it?) so I thought about doing SUPER TACKY St. Paddy's nails instead but maybe I'll chalk it up for next year.

Have you ever had a fail nail art? What went wrong? What are you doing for St. Patrick's; is it something you observe?