The Digit-al Dozen Love & Heartbreak Week day 1 - stained glass hearts

Hey loves! It's that time of the month again... Digit-al Dozen theme week! This week's theme is (of course) Love & Heartbreak. I like painting hearts on my nails almost as much as geometric patterns so expect mostly "love" and not so much "heartbreak" this week haha.

The nails I did for today are an idea that I had a while ago and filed away for later and now I'm glad I saved it: stained glass hearts!

When I originally had the idea for these I pictured the hearts being all one color with a stained glass background of a different color, but when I was thinking about them today I decided that I wanted to leave the background plain to make the hearts stand out more. I thought it would look a little boring to leave the hearts all one color with a plain background so I did four colors!

I started with a base of Revlon Bare Bones, and I have to tell you guys... I went through a big nude polish phase so I own a lot of nudes but something about this one makes me reach for it all the time! I love it so much.

After my base color was down I used a small detailing brush to quickly freehand the outline of the hearts and the shapes inside with American Apparel Hassid, which is definitely my new favorite black polish. The hearts and lines at this point were messy because I knew I'd be going over them again.

Then, one by one, I filled in the colors inside each heart. I put down a drop of the color and filled in a few shapes, then added some white and filled in a few more, then some more white and some more filling, then a little more white and a little more filling (this was way less time-consuming and annoying than it sounds haha). The colors I used were Sephora by OPI Domestic Goddess (purple), China Glaze Four Leaf Clover (bright blue-green but it's showing up more aqua in these pictures for some reason), Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Fuchsia Power, and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Pacific Blue. This step was really messy too, I just sort of blobbed the colors in the general area and then moved on.

After all the colors were filled in, I went back in with my little detailing brush and painted the black outlines again so they would be all neat and clean. This part was the reason I was able to be so messy on the first two parts haha.

I thought that these would take a pretty long time but then when I sat down to do them I decided that I would try to work faster than usual - I'm such a perfectionist that doing my nails usually takes FOREVER and I want to get better at doing them faster! I timed myself and both hands, including basecoat/base color/topcoat/cleanup, only took 1.5 hours. Not bad!

I am sooooo happy with the way these turned out and I'm glad I already have a few manicures ready to go for this week because I want to wear these for more than a day. I love them! They're definitely very "me" haha. What do you guys think? Do you like them as much as I do?

Don't forget to stop by and see what the other ladies have for the first day of Love & Heartbreak week!