Mondrian inspired nail art

Yesterday's nails were at glimpse at my first actual art-inspired nail design! Most of you will have seen this general pattern before, but there are many ways of applying it just as there are many original pieces (and interpretations) of Piet Mondrian's work. When you Google 'Piet Mondrian original' this is what you get:

Credit: Google "Piet Mondrian original"

A few talented ladies have previously adopted this style to do Mondrian-inspired nails. They include: Polish you pretty, Demelza's world, Work play polish, Nuthin' but a nail thing, ChrissyAi, the Nailasaurus, and so many others to name! I've seem some nail stickers/decals out there too (see Elle Oh Die's application of some), but that would only take 5 minutes and that's no fun. Obviously it's way more fun when you spend approximately 5 hours between painting, drying, taping, painting, drying.... and the crazy goes on.

To do this mani I first applied three thin coats of Orly's white polish, let dry (I generally don't put a quick-dry top coat in-between layers because I find it unnecessarily bulks up the overall thickness) for about an hour (watch a show or something!). Then I used a hell of a lot of striping tape to paint my rectangular and square coloured shapes. Let dry. Then put striping tape on again everywhere guiding where you need to make a black line. Some will overlap, so I did this in two steps. Let dry between any time you're going to intersect two black lines. That's a hell of a lot of drying time! And then some more drying time before you top coat it or else you'll risk smudging the black lines and all your work would be ruined. Basically the whole thing took be 5 hours from start to finish (but I was surfing nail art in the meantime, so obviously time well spent).

And yes - I did both hands!

Polishes used:
- Essie 'Forevery yummy' (red)
- Essie 'Mesmerized' (blue)
- Maybelline Color Show 'Fierce n' tangy' (yellow)
- Orly 'Pointe blanche' (white meant for french tips)
- Quo by Orly Instant Artist striper polish in black