Coral Sparkle French Manicure

Matching my manicure to my purse :) My Mom gave me a new Vera Bradley tote in Plum Crazy and I love the jewel tones in the fabric. I thought the coral in the pattern went pretty closely with my current favorite polish Rimmel London Sunset Orange. I recently bought Wet 'n Wild Megalast Heatwave on clearance and with an additional coupon for 66 cents! Woot! I thought it would be a good duplicate for Sunset Orange - it is pretty close in color, almost as sheer, but is definitely a darker coral orange with leaning more towards red.

This manicure is one coat of Heatwave, topped with one coat of Sunset Orange, and tipped with 9.0.2.1. Orange (also procured with same super sale at 66 cents). Now I have shimmery tips with gold and orange in it at the same time. The visible nail line helped me paint on the french tips without needing a nail guide.

I have a nail patch made of teabag on my right thumb, so I did a reverse manicure and covered up the bit of teabag you could still see with a ton of sparkle.

Matte Skittles and a few Black Stripes

From Friday night's manicure, only one nail on each hand survived the weekend unscathed! And oddly, both nails had the horizontal stripes. Odd!

The ring finger on my left hand and the pinky on my right hand were the only ones not chipped and flaking after two days at work. I open latches a bunch at work and know those eat polish for dinner, right? I retrieved all the colors from last time and painted each remaining nail a solid color. That didn't look quite finished so I used my new topcoat NYC Matte Me Crazy and it looks all velvety now.

Left hand - I think I'll leave the ring finger shiny instead of mattifying it.

Right hand!

Black Striped & Rainbow Nails

I was inspired to try rainbow nails with a pattern of black on top after seeing this tutorial for Mardi Gras Harlequin Nails on Nail Nerd. Instead of painting some skittle nails, I used a tiny little paint brush to dab bits of polish directly on my nails. Dab dab dab dab. That part was fun and I used some jelly polishes and some shimmery ones. Layers of dabbing China Glaze Red Satin, Rimmel Sunset Orange, Wet 'n Wild The Wonder Yellows, China Glaze Cha Cha Cha, Wet 'n Wild Bijou Blue and Eggplant Frost dab dab dab dab. The right hand, I tried to use a sponge to lay on the rainbow gradient and it kinda worked. The dabbing method worked better.

I used a top coat and let it all dry. I tried to hand draw on the triangles in the tutorial...but that just got all blobbity. My nails aren't long enough yet or maybe I need a thinner brush. Instead, I used tape for the design since I have a wee bit of experience with tape manicures. After Christmas, I bought a ton of Christmas themed washi style tape on super sale called Recollections Crafting Tape at Michael's (examples of washi tape in this blog post here reviewing different kinds of washi tape). It isn't as sticky as masking tape and easier to see than trying to use clear tape when laying it on your nails.

This was the part that took forevers and evers. Note to self, cut all the bits of tape when your hand isn't wet with paint. Also, make sure you watch something really boring on TV like "The Bourne Legacy" so it seems like your manicure is taking more forevers than just one forever. This is somehow inexplicably an important part of this manicure....

Right Hand!

Left Hand!

My favorite two fingers on my left hand. I made most of the rainbows start with red at the nail tip, but my ring finger had a reverse rainbow. I also think the taping came out looking crisp and sharp here.