Simple Sunflowers

Mondays are the worst, but hopefully this sunflower mani will brighten up your day a bit! I do floral designs a lot, but I realized when doing this that I've really only ever done roses or daisies. I definitely need to work on my sunflower technique, but I thought the finished product was pretty enough to share anyway.

The gradient base was done by sponging China Glaze - Too Yacht to Handle and That's Shore Bright. These are two of my favorite colors in my entire polish collection, and I especially love them together!

I used the Elmer's glue clean up method, which I have to say is one the best ideas ever. I emptied and cleaned out an old bottle of base coat I don't use, and use the brush to apply a thin coat of glue around my entire nail. The "thin" part is key if you don't want to wait around for it to dry forever. Also, you don't want to get the glue line too close to your nail--you might end up accidentally peeling off some of the polish you actually want on your nail. Then, once you're done doing the gradient, just peel the glue off! It saves your cuticles tons of acetone exposure, and who doesn't love peeling dried glue off their fingers? I distinctly remember getting in trouble in kindergarten for doing that ALL the time.  

Here's a photo of the gradient base topped with a coat of China Glaze - Fairy Dust. Excuse the shoddy clean up here--I had more work to do!

Using a small Bundlemonster dotting tool, I added polka dots in OPI - Fly to the base. Then, using a small Winstonia nail art brush, I painted the sunflower petals using OPI - I Just Can't Cope-a-Cabana. The centers of the flowers were done with a smaller dotting tool in OPI - My Private Jet.

I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out, especially the gradient. Like I said, these colors together make me so happy. I need some more practice with sunflowers, but I'm okay with the simplicity of these. Hope you enjoy them as well!