Breast Cancer Awareness: Argyle

I love argyle patterns, especially on my nails.  It’s been a while since I’ve done one and I thought an all pink one for Breast Cancer Awareness month would be appropriate.

I started with a base color of OPI Pink Friday.  On my pinkie, middle and index fingers I added the hourglass shape with Sinful Colors Easy Going and stitching with Milani Pink Hottie.  On my thumb and ring finger I did a diamond out of Milani Pink Hottie and stitching with Sinful Colors Easy Going.  I finished it off with two coats of Hong Kong Girl Top Coat.

Argyle patterns are pretty easy to do.  I did a picture tutorial a while back; you can find  it here.  You can also check out my other argyle designs here.

To me, argyle is one of those patterns that can mold itself in to anyone’s personal style.  Whether you are super sophisticated and classy, baggy and grungy or somewhere in the middle, you can pull off an argyle sweater or socks.  I love fun socks by the way.  Too bad I hardly ever wear socks.  I’m a mostly barefoot kind of girl.

Neon Argyle

I realized that it’s been a long time since I did an argyle mani.    Argyle is such a preppy pattern, but doing it in neon colors spices it up a bit, I think.

Argyles are a little involved as far as nail art goes, but still not too hard to do.  I find the pattern on my ring finger to be a little more difficult than the pattern on the rest of my nails.  I actually prefer the pattern my accent pattern less too.  I just wanted to show both options.  You can find my argyle nail tutorial HERE.

My yellow is NYX Girls Bubble Gum.  I find it very odd that a neon yellow is called Bubble Gum.  My experience with NYX Girls polish thus far is that it’s quite thin and needs multiple coats for full coverage.  To help the process along I started with a white base coat of Nina Ultra Pro ridge filling base coat.  With the white, I still needed three coats.  Not happy about that.  I guess that’s what I get for buying super cheap polish.  The pink is NYX Girls Pink Strawberry.  It had better coverage than the yellow, but I was also just filling things in with a small art brush.  My “stitching” is Milani Fresh Teal.

Argyle Nails Tutorial

The pictures should speak for themselves for the most part.

Yes, you could just make an “X”, but I tend to mess that up, so doing each line individually is easier for me.

Don’t worry too much about how smooth things are.  A good top coat will conceal any lumpies.

The above picture is just to show you how I avoid having a large ball of polish on the end of my brush.  Dip and drag.

I used Sally Hansen Wet Cement for the base color, white Stripe Rite (which is acrylic paint, not polish) and China Glaze Liquid Leather for the “stitching.”  Don’t hesitate to leave a comment or message me if you have any question!

B&W Argyle Nails

A few weeks ago I did a pink and green argyle mani and have been wanting to try another argyle ever since.  I tried it two different ways, if you’ll notice.I don’t like my ring finger quite as much as the rest, but am glad I tried it.  Argyle seems like such a preppy pattern, but is so popular right now.  Doing it in grey scale makes it a very versatile manicure.  I could wear it with pretty much anything (except brown of course).  I’m sure this would be really fun in shades of brown as well.  I’ll add that to my “To Do” list.

Which way do you prefer do you prefer the design?

Argyle Nails

I need to start by asking you to please excuse my nubby nails.  I had bad breaks on my index and middle fingers and trimming them way down was the only thing I could do.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for my next mani. I asked my husband to choose some colors. He picked pink and green and I instantly thought argyle.  I didn’t want them to look like Easter colors, so I opted for a deeper green. 

For this mani I used O.P.I. Pinking of You, O.P.I. Uh-Oh Roll Down the Window and a white Stripe Rite nail art polish.

I saw people wearing argyle all over the place today.  My daughter and I were among them.  It was completely unintentional, but somewhat amusing.  I really like how this turned out and will definitely try it again.