Anyway, last night I redid my nails for a 4th of July theme. I have a few red, white, and blue glitters, but none of them managed to make it on this mani. Perhaps I'll throw some on for a post 4th of July or something. I have a feeling, to say the least, I'll have new nails by the time Thursday rolls around. My last mani lasted a good 4 (not 5, right?) days and this one wasn't nearly as difficult as the last one, so I seem to have gotten out of my "change everyday" rut.
(Please pardon the dry cuticles/hands, they were in my pocket...)
This mani was a labor of love that involved various techniques. The base navy blue color is Rescue Beauty Lounge (RBL) Dead Calm. It's a lovely blue creme and one of my favorites. It's gorgeous, applies beautifully, and is a rich navy blue that is blue and not black. One of the pains with dark blues is sometimes they can come off as black in most lighting. The glitter on all my fingers except the ring finger is Girly Bits Star Spangled. It's a blue tinted base with blue and red fine glitter and micro red bars/tinsels/long glitter (whatever you want to call it, I tend to call them bar glitter since they're long like a bar). I like the red bars, but since they're so small, it's hard to see; however, they remind me of fireworks (probably her intent given the name). The blue isn't opaque on its own, so that's why I layered it (also to conserve it) over Dead Calm. The ring finger is a BundleMonster plate 20 (the stars) stamped in Konad white SP over Dead Calm. I sealed it with top coat and then did a partial tape/hand nail art. Used tape to make the diagonal (to give it a clean line - think of using tape around a door frame and other places when you paint your house), painted the bottom half white with OPI. Used a Nubar nail art brush/pen in red to hand paint on the red stripes. I could have used tape to make the lines straight, but I didn't want to wait for the white to dry completely, which the tape requires. So it was a little labor intensive, but not that bad. I like how it looks and I like how the accent nail allows me to be festive and/or clever without having to spend the time to do it on ALL my nails, which would have been really labor intensive.
I'm thinking of perhaps doing a gradient (first ever) and then using OPI Black Spotted (just arrived from Holland from a friend!) that I have. I've seen the gradients underneath OPI Spotted and it's pretty fantastic looking. I've got the sponges, finally, to do a gradient, so perhaps it's time!
