Frrrrrench Manicure

Let me begin today's blog by saying that I am not a french manicure type person. I cringe whenever I see the standard issue acrylics with stark white tips, and automatically think "Soccer Mom".

I can, however, appreciate how nice a french manicure can look when it's not on 2" plastic nail beds. I'm in a play this weekend, in which I am required to appear somewhat "innocent" for the better part of the show. I toyed with the idea of frosty pinks and lavenders, but nothing says "school girl" better than a french manicure with OMGGLITTER!

While I wanted to give the scotch tape method a try, I simply don't have the time to let the base color dry completely. So I free-handed the tip to varying degrees of success.

I began with a base of Nailtiens (because Thursday's application of Sinful's "Hottie" kicked my ass!), folowed by two coats of Sinful's sheer pink shimmer "Social Ladder", and the tip was two coats of Sinful's "Snow Me White".

I had some problems with "Social ladder streaking over the Nailtien, which I think can be blamed on the Nailtein and not the color, as it's usually very smooth when used without a base coat. This is also the first time I've tried any amount of detailed work with one of Sinful's brushes, and I was less than enthused. It seemed to have a way of grabbing clumps and strings that clung to the brush, no matter how often I scraped it against the lip of the bottle.

After about 10 minutes of dry-time, I applied 2 coats of Wet n' Wild's "Kaledoscope", which is a holo silver glitter in a clear base.

I had some serious problems with glitter clumpage.

It was nearly impossible to get an even coating of the glitter, and I couldn't play with it too much for fear of the white streaking. Some of my nails came out quite streaky:

Overall I give this manicure a 7 out of 10. While I was really pleased with the french tips themselves, and pleasantly surprised at my ability to free-hand, the holo glitter pissed me off enough to be bitter about the time spent on this look. Next time I'll choose a better brand, or skip the glitter entirely.

Teal and Purple Water Marble

Hurray for marble! Is it time consuming? Yes! Is it messy? Yes! Does it waste perfectly good nail polish? Yes! Is it frustrating? Hell yes! Does it look OMGAWESOME?! YES IT DOES!

My local walgreens is having a sale on Sinful Colors nail polish, 99cents per bottle. I had pretty much exhausted my options for polishes that spread well duing water marbeling (and they were mostly pink, blech!), so I set out speciffically to find colors that would look nice together. I came out with Let's Talk, a deep purple shimmer, and Rise and Shine, a teal cream. I also picked up Snow Me White (which is a very dirty name, in my opinion), to use as the base.

This time, I made my own video to help others looking to duplicate the pattern. Here is the most important part: distilled water. Using tap water is simply an excercise in frustration.

The finished product, including Sally Hansen's Mega Shine topcoat:

And up-close!

Not too shabby! I'm especially pleased with how vibrant the white base made the marbled colors.

I picked up a few other things while I was out, including Sinful's Hottie, a blue holo glitter, and Kaleidoscope by Wet n' Wild. I know, I know...Wet n' Wild is the cheap stuff right? This might be true, but their Gray's Anatomy lasted a hell of a lot longer, and in my opinion, even looked better than OPI's Not Like the Movies. And hey, it's always 99cents!