Pink and Teal French Tip Mani

I did this manicure months ago at this point.  I am letting my nails have a little break while I wait for my new base coat to ship to me.  I, luckily, have three older manicures saved up for occasions such as this.  

I started out with a coat of Essie Protein Base Coat.  I then applied two coats of Essie Go Overboard.  When that was dry, I applied a coat of Seche Vite top coat before applying pieces of striping tape for my french tip guides.  I then used Sally Hansen Rockin' Hard for the french tips and immediately removed the striping tape after painting each tip.

I finished off with two coats of Seche Vite.  I then threw out my bottle of Seche Vite because it always shrunk my manicures.  I think I just had a bad bottle because everyone else who talks about Seche Vite says it is great and never shrinks their manicures.  Maybe my bottle was just old.  I ordered it online.  I might try a new bottle of it some day.

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Beach Nails

Yesterday I had such a hard time figuring out what I wanted to paint.  I considered not painting my nails at all, but I wanted them to look nice, so I chose a color I had never used and went with it.  I ended up with this:

I started out with a base of Sally Hansen Double Duty.  Then I painted on two coats of an L.A. Colors polish (the sheer, sparkly, tannish color).  When that was dry I applied a coat of Seche Vite so the sponge wouldn't pick up my base color.  I took three small chunks of a makeup sponge and, with tweezers, dabbed on the color of the waves.  I made sure I dabbed off the excess polish from the sponge on a piece of paper before applying it to my nails.

First I dabbed on Sally Hansen Hard To Get (the white).  I applied it near to the top of my nails and all the way down to the tips.  I made sure not to make it perfectly even on the top because waves don't go on to a beach in a perfectly straight line.  When that was dry I dabbed on some L'Oreal Now You Sea Me a teeny bit lower down than the white.  At times I made it go completely over the white so that it didn't look perfectly straight.  I didn't bother bringing that all the way to the tips of my nails on all of my nails because I was going to go over it with a darker blue.  When the middle color was dry I took my third piece of sponge and dabbed on Essie Go Overboard.  I tried to make it a little more opaque towards the tips of my nails.

To bring the design to life a little more I painted on a star fish with Avon Blossom and a scallop shell with Revlon Impulsive.  I used a small nail art brush for both of these.  I did not like how my scallop shell came out, but I made it a teeny bit better my adding three small lines of Rimmel Wild Orchid to detail it.  I finished off with two coats of Seche Vite, which has already chipped a lot, even though I have only been wearing this design for one day.  Not impressed.  I am a little hard on my hands and I did work today (I did some cleaning at my job), but I would do those same kinds of things with Dries Instantly and that would not chip.  I actually am really happy with the finished product, though.  Having pictures of my manicures makes me feel slightly better when they get ruined.  At least I will be able to look at them when they were first done and still looking perfect.

Tricolor Gradient

Last night I was looking at my Olay Fresh Effects facial cleanser and I realized how much I liked the colors on the bottle.  So, I decided to recreate those colors on my nails by sponging on a gradient:

I started out with a base coat of Sally Hansen Double Duty.  I then applied two coats of Sally Hansen Hard To Get, a white polish (which I would not recommend, by the way.)  When that was dry, I applied one coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly so the sponge wouldn't pick up my base color as I stippled on the gradient.  When that was all dry, I took a triangular makeup sponge and put three lines of polish of different colors on the end.  I put a stripe of Avon Sunshine (a yellow), NYC High Line Green, and Essie Go Overboard (the teal) slightly overlapping each other on the sponge.  Then I started stippling that on to all of my nails, placing the yellow side at the base of my nails.  After every couple nails I applied more polish to the sponge.  After doing all of this, I cleaned up around my nails with a Q-tip dipped in acetone.  This was a challenge to clean up and it took a while.  To finish off the manicure, I applied two coats of Dries Instantly.