When I sat down to paint my nails I had a completely different design in mind and had already picked colors for it and everything, but then I realized that it was already pretty late and I was sleepy (story of my life) and so I hunted around for something simpler and less time-consuming to do. I found this image on Shutterstock and decided that the design in the bottom left corner would be perfect.


Of course as soon as I found the design I was like HEY YOU KNOW WHAT COLORS WOULD BE PERFECT FOR THIS??!??!!? ON SAFARI COLORS!!!!! and I got really stoked about that. The base color is China Glaze Prey Tell, which is basically the only color I want to use when my nails are really short (I had to chop them all off again a couple days ago because I broke a couple). I love dark colors on short nails SO MUCH.


The green is China Glaze Exotic Encounters and the khaki is China Glaze Kalahari Kiss. For the plum color I mixed China Glaze Purr-fect Plum with a little bit of Kalahari Kiss to lighten it up because it wasn't showing up well enough against the base color on its own. I love the color that resulted from mixing those two. I also like that the color scheme sort of looks like a jewel-toned Rasta color scheme, too. Total accident!


To do these nails I just freehanded all the vines and leaves with my mid-length striper brush, AS USUAL. I did the yellow vines first, then the green vines, and finally the plum vines. I painted a curved stripe for the vine and then did the leaves one at a time by forming the shapes and filling them in. If I had to do them over again I think I would try to make the leaves a little smaller, but it was pretty time-consuming just to do them this small and also neatly so I'm not mad about it or anything.