distressed stamped nails

I love the look of layered, distressed paint--where the top layer is worn away and you can see the underlying layer of color peeking out. I've been playing with ways to recreate that look on my nails (I'm sure there is probably a blogger out there who has already perfected this, but for some reason I decided to re-invent the wheel and try to figure it out all by myself)...

My experimentation has led me to double-painting my nails--one coat of color and then another coat of contrasting color on top of that. Then, using a fan brush dipped in acetone, I strip away the top layer just enough so the underlying color can be seen.

Anyway, so that was what I did to create today's mani. Then I stupidly stamped over my distressed polish WITHOUT taking a pic of what it looked like pre-stamp **head--desk**...observe:

(click to enlarge)

So anyway, here's all that I used to create this mani:

I started out with 2 coats of a no-name L.A. Colors lime green creme (it came as part of a 6 or 7 bottle "brights" set that I found at TJ Maxx sometime last year. Then I laid down a coat of Sally Hansen Insta-dri Blue By (a summer 2012 LE shade that I recently found in my Walgreens clearance bin). After that, I poured a capful of pure acetone, dipped my fan brush in it and stroked it across the blue polish until the green was visible in places again. Of course, I can't live without some kind of glitter in my mani, so I added a coat of Pure Ice Rescue Me, an awesome translucent lime green jelly polish with this killer duo chrome green/blue glitter in it that just GLOW (speaking of which, this polish actually does glow in the dark and it is BRIGHT too--but I was more interested in the tint and the glitter this time)...all that got a coat of Seche Vite.

While I was waiting for the Seche Vite to work its magic, I suddenly go the itch to stamp, so I busted out my BM 208 plate and my Konad Special white polish and used the 2 shattered images--ya know, shattered...distressed...I figured it goes with the whole deconstructed look of all this. And don't get me wrong, I like the stamping...I just am kicking myself for completely forgetting to get a pic of my nails before I stamped...oh well...

I'll be doing other manis like this soon. Maybe I'll even do something crazy like post a tutorial, if you're interested, of course...

So have you done any nail art experimentation lately?