August Glam Nails Challenge | Aztec

Hey everyone! For the month of August I have decided to participate in a nail art challenge hosted by Bianka,@nbnailart. Bianka seems to host nail art challenges every month, also under the dedicated account @glamnailschallenge. I absolutely love the quality of the manis this girl creates, so I’m excited to participate in this latest challenge!

We are on the last prompt, can you believe it? The last prompt of this August challenge was Aztec. A common theme this month with these prompts is that I have been lucky enough to have just the right equipment. I didn’t order anything special for this challenge! So it fits that I had an Aztec-themed plate from What’s Up Nails just waiting to be used! I love that this is a full-design plate, which gives you unlimited patterns to use!

Photo courtesy of What’s Up Nails

For this mani I did a pink to white to orange gradient, and stamped the aztec designs in white over it. I am loving this summery colour palette!

1. For this manicure, I started by applying my favourite base coat, Orly Bonder, to all of my nails.
2. To prepare for the gradient, I first painted all of my nails white (China Glaze White on White).
3. To make clean up easier, I then applied a liquid latex (Edge Perfection Easy Peel Latex Barrier) to my cuticles.
4. I then applied three different polishes, pink, white and hot orange (KL Polish Celia, China Glaze White on White and KL Polish Aries), in three stripes on a cosmetic wedge sponge. I then dabbed the polish on the sponge on each nail with light pressure, making sure to move the sponge slightly up and down the nail to blend the shades. To be honest, this was definitely not my best gradient. I’m not sure if I just didn’t spend enough time on it (I did start this manicure at 10PM, whoops), or if these shades just weren’t great for a gradient, but it really didn’t matter since I knew I was going to be covering most of it up with a stamped design anyways.
5. I then removed the liquid latex, cleaned up each nail, and applied a fast drying top coat to blend the shades a bit more (Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat).
6. After the nails were dry to the touch I again applied the liquid latex, and used the What’s Up Nails Aztec Countdown A007 stamping plate with a white stamping polish (Born Pretty #4) to transfer a different pattern to each nail.
7. I finished off the mani by applying the Maniology No Smudge Nail Polish Top Coat (Use code SUPERNOVA10 to save 10% off Maniology purchases (affiliate)), followed by my regular glossy top coat (Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat).

I think this was a nice mani to finish off the summer with! It was definitely a lot of fun participating in this months mani challenge. I really want to participate in September’s challenge too, which is filled with themes like leaves, pumpkins, sweater weather etc. but I may not have enough time. I might just participate in what I have time for though, it’s too hard to resist!

Watch my video tutorial below to see how this last mani was done!

Loving this mani? Check out my last mani for this August Glam Nails Challenge!