Hi again. Today I have a mega post for you. This post will quickly touch on two Valentines manicures and go more in depth onto the third, which is my current manicure.
The first manicure is one I did for my friend while watching movies the other night. Keep in mind, this was done in the dark. My friend is more of a vampy kind of Valentines person, rather than a cutesy girly pink person. I gave her my swatch bin, and she picked out Center stage by Jessies Girl as a base. Its a dark blood red colored almost jelly finish. This was the first time I'd used this polish and the formula was less than ideal. It was very thin and streaky, yet didn't come out of the bottle too well either. So not a lot made it onto the nail and it dragged into thin yet chunky streaks. it took three attempts at thicker coats to get the full opacity without streaks. Thankfully, she had decided on a reverse feature nail. She decided on one coat on each nail except the ring fingers of Quo by Orly Paint the town red, with the ring finger left sparkle less. She loves the manicure and it totally suits her in every way.
The second manicure is one I did for myself that night. I started off with Viva Pink by Avon. Its a darker bubblegum pink cream polish. The formula on this is fantastic. Its just the right consistency and almost completely opaque in one coat. I used two coats on my nails. Then i took Step to the Beat of my Heart by Nicole by OPI, from the Justin Bieber collection, and brushed thick coats onto my ring fingers, trying to get a bunch of hearts. Due to trying to place the hearts in the thick clear jelly base (with aqua irridescent glitter) it made that nail thick and slow drying. Even after the top coat it was less than ideal. It was bumpy and wasnt really the look I was looking for.
So for my manicure that i'm sporting now, and LOVE, i used the same base Avon Viva Pink. I took off the ring fingers on the last manicure and repainted them, and added a third coat to the rest of the nails to refresh them. I decided to give my original idea another shot, and try to get it to match my vision. After my viva pink nails had dried, i poured out some of the Step to the beat of my heart onto a piece of plastic wrap and used a dotting tool to pick up and place the hearts. I placed them in rows entirely covering my ring fingers and topped the whole thing with a coat of seche vite. I topped the ring fingers with 2 coats of top coat to make it flat. For the rest of the nails I sponged on a little Quo by Orly Paint the town Red from the base of the nail upwards towards the tips, and topped with one coat of Seche Vite. I am loving this manicure and I think I'll try to keep it until we go away for Valentines day on Thursday. The photos for this were taken in the sun! Yay, the first sun we've had in awhile, so I was super excited to get some I could photograph the nails in.