20 July 2012

Summer Challenge - Buttercups

Todays challenge over at the Purple Crumpets Fairy Challenge, is Buttercups. Yupp, you heard it, Buttercups. Not cups of Butter, but the flowers. And no, not the girl from Power Puff, but it could of been, but not to me. When Power Puff girls where cool, I didn't own a channel that sent it. I lived in a cave, so to say. Haha.
But I have seen a few episodes of it, after I grew older. It`s fun.

I have been asked, " How to you decided what to wear?"
Well. Since this was a challenge, I went to Google Images and searched for Buttercups. I looked at the colours in the flower, the backgrounds, if anyone else had made manis with the same theme, and so on. You might say I use a lot of time on it, but I like researching before doing a "summer challenge mani".
Then I select one or two images that will work as my inspiration. Often these images have specific shades that I want to match.
I look in my collection to find the shades that matches in the image. For this challenge I had a close-up on a buttercup. You could see 4 different yellows in it, that made up the flower. I only had three shades that matched.
Buttercups have often 5 to 7 petals. I decided to go for 5, cause its easy to paint. Then I took a brush and created a star like pattern with Yellow from H&M, 5 petals. 
The middle of a buttercup often variate depending on how old it is. The older the brighter the colours. The buttercup image I was working with, was of a young flower. It still had some green in the middle of it. That`s why I picked up Lime, and Lemon Tree, darker shades of Yellow, running towards green. 
I used a tiny dotting tool to make the spores in the middle. I used both Lime, and Lemon Tree for this.
To finish it all of, I took the same dotting tool, dipped it in Licorice - ESSIE, and created the edge. I wanted it to be thinner than this, but I kinda rushed it, cause the sun was going down, and I wanted to get a decent picture, before it went all dark.
It still turned out pretty cool, a bit more cartoon esk, that I had planned, but its so cute.


Here are my flowery Buttercups.

I used Linda Johansen as a base for this mani. It took two coats.
For the flowers I used Lime, Lemon Tree, and Yellow, all H&M polishes. A tiny dotting tool for the middle, and, used Licorice from ESSIE for the black outline.



2 comments:

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