So if you know me more than just through this blog then chances are you know that my boyfriend is a metal worker. He is actually a tattooer, but he has spent his life as a metal worker before that and he now builds really spectacular tattoo machines outside of his day job at the tattoo shop. So of course it goes without saying he can sometimes "inspire" me with his own designs.

I was thinking this week that I wanted to attack a 3D nail design, and I was leaning heavily on the lego look I've seen a few girls do. But then I was outside over the weekend with the boyfriend while he was working and I saw this random piece of diamond plate metal sitting on the ground and I thought...hmmm...how can I do THIS on my nails!?! Normally I don't go into great detailed stories here about how a mani came to be, but I thought it was pretty cool going from a blank slate to this mani, which I fell in love with the minute it dried. The steps between though...yeah, I was pretty unsure if this would work.

So essentially what I did here was start with bare nail and then I took some gel polish and I dotted on lines. I meant to grab that piece of metal to use as a guide for the lines, but when it came time to do the mani, I couldn't find it. So I winged it, and while I love it, I wish it was more accurate, because each nail is kind of all over the place with line placement. Anyway - I took gel polish and I dotted on the lines. In the future I'll use a non-clear gel because it was REALLY hard to see where I put it. Once I got all the lines on the nails, I cured the gel. Then I went back in and went over them again and cured them again to get them a little more prominant.

After my lines were all cured, I cleaned the gel off with alcohol and then I applied 1 coat of OPI Push and Shove. Holy molies ladies. At first the silver seemed too thick and that it would cover up my gel design, but then I remember how well this polish dries down, and when it did OMG. Metal! The gel parts look even shinier than my nail parts, so I bet if I applied this polish over straight gel nails how shiny it could get?! Anyway - Sorry for the excessively wordy post, which is pretty rare around here - hope you enjoyed the week!!