Red Spotted Purple - A Butterfly Mani

The other day I decided I really wanted to try out the bottle of Zoya Phoebe I bought way back during the B1G1 Summer collection promo and I was trying to decide what to do with her since I really just don't use plain blue that often. Then I remembered the butterfly mani's that I had seen a bunch of other people doing and decided to put my own twist on it. I googled "blue butterfly" and looked through the image results until I found one I liked then I googled images of that species. Turns out I picked the Red Spotted Purple, a close relative of the White Admiral butterfly that I had photographed in our yard last summer.

My first attempt at this I did three coats of Phoebe over my base coats, then I took a striping brush and painted the dark veins in Zoya Casey, the light blue in Pure Ice Frosted Ice Sea Pearl, then the orange spots in Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Precious Peach.

It was ok for a first attempt but the more I looked at it the more it bugged me. So I took it all off and started over. This time I managed to get full coverage with only two coats of Phoebe. Then I sponged Sea Pearl on the tips, Precious Peach in the middle, and added Sally Hansen HD DVD at my cuticles. The veins went on with Casey again and then I brightened the orange up a bit more.

This came out much better, I think you'll agree :)