I have so much stuff to put up I wanna show you guys, including new nail polishes, nail art that I've created and a few random nail related items. I thought I would start at the beginning of my list and show you some nail art that I'd been thinking of executing for a little over a month. Well, I actually did execute it but I wasn't very happy with the results so I had to start over a couple of times.
This mani is based on a dress by Christian Dior from his Fall 2013 Couture collection. I wanted to recreate the textures and line of the dress along my four fingers.
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For the satin finish, I started with three thin coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On and let them dry thoroughly before applying two coats of OPI's I Juggle... Men. I've had the latter for a little over a year and the formula has thickened and I think (...think) that the coverage of translucent glitter is a better because of that.
To mirror the sequins from the dress, I tried creating a my first ever franken but for some reason or another, it didn't turn out as good as I hoped and its glitter coverage was poor. I bought a multi-coloured glitter that had the colour range that I was looking for but then again the coverage left a lot to be desired.
I decided to layer the glitters instead to make the 'sequins'. After sticky taping my fingers in the different designs. I sandwich a coat of China glaze in Electrify within two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Rockstar Pink. I removed the tape immediately after applying the last coat of glitter and the lines still came up acceptably crisp.
After the three coats of glitter, I applied one coat of Seche Vite to even it all out. I tried to be very careful to make sure I wrapped my tips with glitter to have a full coverage but it seems like the Seche Vite caused some shrinkage and pulled the glitter back.
As a final step, I used Rimmel Pro Matte Finish top coat on the white to give the finishes a little bit more contrast.
Yes, my pinky is looking chunky. In my first try, it looked like a thin french tip and not like the dress. I had the idea of taping my finger again closer to the cuticle and painting over it, thinking that it would dry a little flatter. :( It looked better than it would have otherwise so I let it be.
Now for the little breakthrough. I'm particularly happy with this manicure for the reason that I managed to clean up white polish AND keeping the edges tidy and wearable. It took a lot of patience and time but I did it!!!
The above photo shows my second attempt but it felt incomplete, I had tip wear after about half an hour after finishing the mani and look at the clean up on my ring finger... I had to re-try it. I'm very glad I did. My first attempt was majorly smudged and wasn't even worth photographing.
I hope you guys enjoyed this mani. It was really fun to do, even if it took me three tries to come up with something I was satisfied with.
Till next time,
Laura
