ProcrastiNails: Pinterest Inspired Nail Art Challenge Week 4: Ikat! Half-successful? Haha.

So this is the last fill for the Pinterest Inspired Nail Art Challenge I’ve been taking part it. It was short and sweet, and it let me try out some techniques I hadn’t gotten around to doing yet. I had a lot of fun, and I want to thank the other lovely ladies that took part in it with me. 🙂

This week our challenge was to make an ikat mani. I followed a pin which led to this tutorial by the lovely Brittany @ Brittany’s Secret. I said this mani was half-successful because while I’m not 100% happy with it I can tell what it’s supposed to be. Just gotta keep thinking that I’ll get better each time I try it, right? 🙂

This look started off with three coats of OPI Sparrow Me The Drama, which I let dry overnight. Not for any particular reason, I just didn’t have the energy to finish the mani last night. lol. 😉 Then, following the steps from Brittany’s tutorial I painted the white shapes with Quo by ORLY Instant Artist in White and let them dry before putting blobs with OPI Fly (which looks more turquoise in real life) in the centres. Then I geared up to do the black sketchy outlines and centres, the part that I wasn’t 100% sure how to do. Hahah. The black was done with Quo by ORLY Instant Artist in Black, and my bottle needs some thinner because the polish went on pretty goopy which made it hard to manipulate.

I think the trick to getting the black outlines look right is a thin brush.  My brush was thin but like I said earlier the polish was very goopy, so it didn’t go on as precisely as it could have. It was also tricky to get the black lines to go up-and-down since a few times I caught myself making them look like they were on an angle. Grrr!

Next time I think I’ll space things out better so that the black lines don’t hit each other when there’s more than one ikat on the nail. (Is that what I call it? Is the whole look ‘ikat’ or is each individual mark ‘an ikat’? Questions!!)

Overall I’m content with how they turned out, though I’ll expect them to improve as I get more practice. I think one thing that makes this mani difficult for me is that I like crisp clean lines, and that’s not really possible with this type of look.

Check out the other ladies doing this challenge this week:
Julie @ Beauty Fiends
Nilda @ Nilda’s TumblrBlumbr

So, what do you think? Have you tried the ikat look before? How’d it turn out?! 🙂

Thanks for visiting!! xx

All nail art represented here and elsewhere on my site (unless indicated) is my intellectual property and Copyright © ProcrastiNails 2013. Please do not link/re-host elsewhere without asking.