Watermelon Nails

I scored my very first Butter London Nail Lacquers very on sale at TJMaxx recently. I picked up the colors Dosh - an olive green with shimmer & Wellies - a yellow green creme. When my boyfriend saw them, he suggested that I do a watermelon mani and use these to make the rind. Of course, I took his advice! Here are the polishes I started out with:

Here is the final list of everything I used to make this mani:

Base Coat: Orly Bonder
Polishes: Butter London - Dosh
              Butter London - Wellies
              Klean Color - Red
              NYC - Black Lace Creme
              (later added ELF - Flirty Fuchsia)
Tools: Extra small dotting tool
          Small square nail art brush
          Triangular makeup sponge
Top Coat: Seche Vite (later decided to mattify with NYC Matte Me Crazy)

I started out as usual, with my base coat of Orly Bonder. Then, I put my base colors on. The Butter London in Dosh went on my thumb, pointer and pinky, while the Klean Color went on my middle and ring fingers.

To make the rind pattern, I used a small square nail art brush (from my Bundle Monster Kit):

I dipped this in the Butter London in Wellies and started pressing down the tip of the brush in a zig-zag pattern along the length of my nail. Then, I went over a second time using the same process, but making the zig-zags a little less defined.

For the watermelon seeds, I used this tiny dotting tool (also from my Bundle Monster Kit) dipped in the NYC polish.

I tried to make the seeds wider on one end and taper to a point, but they didn't come out all that cleanly.

Finally, I decided that the mani would look better with a matte top coat, so I covered everything with NYC Matte Me Crazy.

I wore this for a day before deciding that the red was too red for watermelon. So, I sponged some of the ELF Flirty Fuchsia over the top of the middle nails and topped again with NYC Matte Me Crazy. Here is the final result!