Half Moons and Studs

I love the color combination of rose and brown so I decided to do a manicure with those colors.  Gold looks good with that combination, so I added some gold studs:

I know my hand looks more yellow and pink than usual.  This is much closer to my actual skin tone.  I have been playing with the white balance on my camera so I can show you the colors of the paint accurately.

I started out with a base coat of Sally Hansen Double Duty.  Then I painted on two thin coats of Rimmel English Rose.  When that was dry I applied a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly.  Then I put on hole reinforcements at my cuticles so I could achieve a half moon effect.  I cut the hole reinforcements in half so I can get more uses out of them.  I painted on Essie Don't Sweater It next.  I immediately removed the hole reinforcements on each nail after painting on the brown.  Then I dotted on some Dries Instantly to stick the gold studs to.  I got all of the studs from Born Pretty Store.  The square ones are 2 mm and the round ones are 1.5.  After everything was dry I painted on two coats of Dries Instantly.

Sponging, Stamping, and NEW CAMERA!

I am super excited to be using a better camera now!  I'm still not an expert hand photographer, but I will continue to get better with practice.  I am super excited about sponging, so I decided to do another sponging manicure today:

My base color is two coats of Rimmel English Rose.  When that was dry, I applied a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly to my nails so that my sponge wouldn't pick up my base polish.  I put a line of Rimmel English Rose and a line of Milani Rapid Orchid on a cosmetic sponge.  I put on the lighter color first and then slightly overlapped it with the darker color.  Then I sponged the two colors on to my nails.  I had to reapply polish on the sponge after every couple of nails that I sponged.  When I was happy with the gradient and opaqueness of the new color, I allowed that to dry.  (Oh!  By the way, you can reuse a triangular makeup sponge many times.  I simply cut off the end that I use after I am done sponging all of my nails.)

I wanted to do some stamping too.  I used Bundle Monster Plate BM404.  The white polish is Sally Hansen White On, a polish that I use exclusively for stamping because it is old and very thick.  I applied two coats of Dries Instantly to finish off my manicure.