Wednesday's Nail Art: Grape Clusters

    I have always wanted to attempt the Konad manicures, but when it comes down to buying nail polish or Konad plates, polish always wins. The only plate I have is the Hello Kitty one that I bought off Ebay. I'm not sure if it's the polish I have tried with it or the rubber stamp, but my images never come out clear.

   One of the images on the plate is a cluster of grapes. This never appealed to me, until one day I was going through my polishes and saw that I had one of Revlon's scented polishes, Grape Icy. It was a lightbulb moment for me because I immediately thought, what better way to use Grape Icy than to do a grape design?? Now, like I said I'm not good at Konading so I decided to replicate the design with other nail art tools.

   For this design I used Petites Mystical, China Glaze Rainbow, Revlon Grape Icy, Sinful Colors San Francisco, purple striping tape, a dotting tool and a detail nail art brush.

   I decided that the best way to show off my grape clusters would be to use a french manicure design. In order to add some contrast between all the purple I decided on one coat of China Glaze Rainbow over the whole nail as background. I normally do not like sheer nail polish, but this is a nail polish that I would definitely wear on its own. In the bottle it looks white, but in real life it has a pink and purple shimmery cast depending on the angle you look at it.

   For the tips I used 3 coats of Revlon's Grape Icy. This polish is relatively sheer, but for some reason it took ages for it to dry. I suppose the reason for that has to do with the scented formula because the other Revlon scented nail polish that I have also took quite awhile for it to dry. The scent was not overwhelming and did not cause me to get nauseous which happens to me with prolonged exposure to sweet scents. I have heard people describe it as a fake grape smell and they compare it to grape candy. I actually don't like grape candy so to me it was just a sweet smell, but I did let my husband smell it and he immediately identified the smell as grape.

   For the grape clusters, I took my dotting tool dipped in Mystical and created three adjacent dots then two more dots below that and then one last dot below the two dots, like an upside down pyramid.

   My vines were not exactly visible on my actual manicure because like I said before, I'm not great at freehand. Even though they weren't perfect, I don't think that it really matters in this design since the focal point in this design is the grape cluster.

   To better show what my vines were supposed to look like, I went ahead and took a picture of my trial run on a nail art wheel. I used my detail brush dipped in San Francisco and created a sort of cursive e and then drew two leave shapes on either side of the cursive e.

   Afterwards, I took Revlon Grapy Icy and with a smaller dotting tool, I made small dots on random "grapes" to add some dimension.

   I love striping tape. It's one of my favorite nail art products because of the BAM effect it adds to any nail art design. I get compliments everytime I use it. Here, I just cut a strip and lined my french manicure with it, which also helps define my french manicure line and cover any mess ups I might have had.

   Final look with Finger Paints Top Coat:

   I didn't expect to love this manicure as much as I did. I think the color I chose for the background really made the grapes pop and then adding the scented polish made it even more realistic for me. I really enjoyed doing this manicure and I hope you will enjoy it too!