Reflection

Mulan is the 8th official member of Disney's Princess franchise, and the first East Asian princess.  This mani incorporates some detailed freehand painting and stamping.

With my birthday and Christmas in December, I got a lot of gifts this month.  And a lot of them were nail polish! Yay for me :)  I'm a huge Disney fan, as is the rest of my family, so I received a lot of Disney nail polish sets.  Each Beautifully Disney set contains four mini nail polishes, so I decided to do a whole series of Disney nails.

First up is Mulan. Her polish, Far East Embers (pictured second), comes from the Fiery Spirit set. 

I decided to start with Mulan since today's theme for the Lacquer Legion is #LLreflection.  One of the main songs from Mulan is called "Reflection," so it was the perfect!  I freehand painted Mulan from the scene where she is singing the song after disappointing the Matchmaker.  I was debating whether to stamp kanji on the other nails, but decided to go with gold fans.  The top of the nail polish bottle has a gold fan, so the fan stamping tied it all together.

Polish Used:

• Beautifully Disney Fiery Spirit set - Far East Embers
• Bundle Monster Stamping Lacquer - Liquid Gold
• Base and top coats

Other Supplies:

• Acrylic paint - white, black, pink, red, brown, purple, and teal
• Nail art brush
• Bundle Monster stamping plate - BM-215 (fans)
• Rubber stamper

I decided to use acrylic paint for Mulan, but you could also use polish.  Disney cartoons are flat in the sense that there aren't really shadows, so you don't have to worry about shading.  To create this look:

1. Apply a pink base color using Far East Embers.
2. Use acrylic paint to paint Mulan on the middle finger.  Mine's a bit smudgey, but from far away it looks better.  Start with her head and neck, then add the hair, facial details, hair details, and clothes.
   
3. Use gold stamping polish to stamp the fans (BM-215) on all the remaining nails.  Liquid Gold is a metallic polish, so it was hard to get a good photo where you could see the stamping well...but it looks awesome!  The fans are a subtle design since it doesn't pop out as much and can only really be seen from certain angles.  They make nice supporting nails to the feature nail.