Snakeskin Nails & Tutorial

Not long ago on the Today Show, they featured a stunning new type of manicure/pedicure using actual snakeskin!  I'm sure most people will be turned off by it, but I thought it was HAWT....until I heard that it could cost upwards of $300 AND take nearly 2 HOURS to complete.  Eeek!

Then I remembered that one of the patterns in the new Bundle Monster plates was snakeskin!  Originally, I just tried stamping the pattern over a solid base coat but I thought it looked too artificial.  Natural snakeskin has slight variations in color and this looked too much like a 'stamp'.  

I decided to play around with my polishes and the results were SO much better than I could have hoped for, SUPER easy to achieve and, IMHO, look better than the $300, 2 hour manicure - at a fraction of the cost and time!  

I used 4 polishes: OPI Skull & Glossbones, Essie Chinchilly, China Glaze Below Deck and VIII

I started with a single coat of Essie Chinchilly ~ I tried each of these colors as a base coat and found that I preferred the medium shade of Chinchilly best.  I didn't worry about VNL or perfect application because this base will be mostly covered up. 

Next, I randomly blobbed (yup, completely technical term) Skull & Glossbones, Below Deck and sometimes a little more Chinchilly, on the nail just using the brushes straight from their own bottles, and swirled them as I went. 

Finally, I used China Glaze VIII and Bundle Monster plate BM-215.  I first tried a black polish, but it looked too harsh.  The dark, dusty purple in VIII worked perfectly with the other colors.  I then topped it with two coats of Out The Door top coat. 

Gah!  I LOVE this SO much!  

I can't wait to try this with other color combinations!  

.