A2Z - N is for.....New

Hiya lovelies!  So, this week in the A2Z, we're up to the letter "N", and the prompt is "New".  I decided to use a brand of polish that I've only tried very recently, and am really loving - Orly.  So, I picked out In The Navy, since it was untried, Basket Case, because I love it, and Luxe, because I knew it would look good with the other two.  From there it made sense to do a nautical themed mani, especially since I haven't done one before.  Loads of new in there... :D

If you guys also follow the insanely talented, and quite frankly, adorable, Narmai from PiggieLuv, then you may have seen this awesome octopus mani she posted the other day.  Well I seriously f-ing loved it, so I had to attempt an octopus for one of my nails today, and would you believe it, just look at the little sweetie'!  She doesn't have the cleanest of tentacles, but she sure is a cutie.  Really pleased with how that turned out. :D
I used acrylic paint for my white shape, and then by mixing a splodge of basket case with a little puddle of thinner, I added the spots to her head with a dotting tool. On a few of them I touched my finger against it almost immediately to make it hollow, like nimbus nail art.  I left a couple of them intact too, and added teeny dots along the tentacles.

I really struggled to capture the details on my little octo-buddy in photos though, which was annoying!  That was actually why I decided to mattify it, which thankfully did help.

The anchor was painted with Luxe, and then outlined with black acrylic paint. As you can see, I had a few issues with my spacing, but other than that I'm really happy with how it turned out,  For a first try, I don't think it's too bad :D
The stripes were free handed too - I painted some guidelines with white acrylic paint first, and then filled in the pink and navy sections with a small brush.  Then afterwards I separated them with a thin stripe of Luxe.  In the photo's, the navy looks really patchy, but in real life you can't tell at all.  I didn't even see the patchiness until I was editing the photo's.

So, whilst I definitely see room for improvement, I am really pleased with the final result of this mani.  I love the combo of deep navy and bright pink, and I am properly chuffed with how my octopus turned out.

What about you guys though?  What do you think of this slightly unconventional nautical mani?

So, that's all from me today, but I'll be back, hopefully in a few days - but if not I'll definitely see you for the A2Z next week.  In the meantime, I would love it if you checked out what all the other A2Z gang have been up to for this week, by visiting the thumbnails below.

An InLinkz Link-up