I was contacted by Rockabilly Luau asking if I could come up with some Luau themed nails they could show the ladies attending the event as inspiration. I was so excited I decided to dedicate an entire week (or more) to it!

Most of the manicures you will see for this theme will include tutorials, I imagine a lot of people viewing these won't be familiar with some terms and techniques, so I am going to try and break it down as best as I can for everyone, and not just my regular readers.
To see all of the manicures in this theme - click here!

So let's get started on these Hibiscus Floral nails!

Here is what you will be achieving:



First up - you will need plastic baggies. Saran wrap should work as well, as long as its a thin and clingy style of plastic, a ziploc will most likely be too thick of a plastic.
Cut out 10 squares, about 3" square.

I would also like to add that this technique was not my own creation, but one I found on the polishandpearls blog - you can view her tutorial HERE.

These are the polishes I have used for this. Feel free to use more, but I wouldn't suggest less than 3. You want to have a cool color swirl which you just won't get with 2 colors. These are all matte polishes from Manglaze. I chose them because when you top coat them, they have a gorgeous shimmer.
Colors used are Fatty's Got More Blood, Ilf and Lesbihonest.
I would guess like most of these tutorials, that you could substitute polish for acrylic paint. Haven't tried it, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Base coat your nails and apply your lightest chosen shade on your nails. Just a base, so one or two coats should be sufficient. Make sure it is pretty dry before the next step.

Next you are going to randomly blob on the polishes in drops on your nail, like so:

Then take one of your plastic squares and lay it on top of your nail and lightly smoosh it down until the polishes spread out across your nail and it looks like it's covered all of the nail.

Lift it off and VOILA! If there are any empty spots you can lightly blob them with a random polish to fill in. The polish should self level and blend in.

Do the other nails:

Add a top coat. I like to top coat before I stamp or draw so that if I mess up it's a lot easier to remove the design without removing all of the polish on the nail with it.

These are the Hibiscus flower stamps I chose for this design. Use whatever you want or draw some on. You could even use tiny dried flowers or nail decals. Experiment and have fun.
I used a white stamping polish and just randomly stamped one or two of these designs on each nail.
After stamping is when I cleaned up the cuticles and surrounding skin of all polish residue.
(These stamping plates are from Bundle Monster and Mash)

My finished and cleaned up design.
Wait a good while for your stamping or painted design to dry before you top coat so you don't smear all that hard work!