Leadlight Flowers

Hello my lovelies! It's a beautiful Saturday in my neck of the woods and I decided to spend my morning doing nail related stuff. I had a ton of unedited pictures of manicures that are now taken care of and a few YouTube videos from my favorite nail artists to watch. But now I'm going to write this post to show you my latest work of art. I did these nails a couple of days ago because I missed doing a leadlight manicure and been wanting to do one in weeks. I finally gathered up some free time and got to work. I'm really pleased with the result!

I started with a base of Barry M Cotton, which is my new go to white base for nail art. I only did one thicker coat because I knew I was going to cover it so it didn't have to look perfectly opaque. I then stamped an image from plate BP-L011 using a black stamping polish, both from the Born Pretty Store. This image is perfect for leadlighting and decals because it has various flowers and leaves and it's also very big, covering almost half the stamping plate. You can use different areas of the image on each nail so they look slightly different but still look like they belong together. I usually like my nails to all look the same but I did an exception this time. I think they look cool this way.

After I stamped I added a coat of Seche Vite on top so I wouldn't smudge the design with the leadlighting. I then used my home made sheer tints and a dotting tool to colour in the design. The flowers are pretty sparse and I didn't want such a large area of white space on my nails so I used a sheer yellow to fill in the space between the flowers. It's the only way I wear yellow on my nails lately since actual yellow polish stains my nails and I'm not very eager to use it for a full manicure.

This type of manicure takes some time with the many steps and waiting between them for the layers to dry. I still think it's easier and takes less time than stamping decals because those take a lot of time and patience for application. This technique is very easy and practical because you can make your own sheer tints by mixing a few drops of polish with some cheap clear polish. I hope you liked these nails and have a very nice and relaxing weekend!