Toe Nail Designs

So I realized I left my whole mani kit at my dads last week. Luckily, I had some back photos that helped me get by. I'm going to be picking up the kit on Friday, yay. Basically, it has everything I need (cuticle creams, clippers, polishes, nail art stuff).

One of my back designs I was saving for later was again another toe french. This time, with white tips (oh white polish why do you curse me!) I used OPI Nail Polish Alpine Snow
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For the artsy stuff I used nail art items from Viva La Nails which were given to me for review.



The cool star sparkles are actually "Dazzlers", and the pictures do it no justice. When they capture the right lighting they shine back beautifully. The only downside is they are thicker than most glitter.
It requires a few good top coats to seal them in so they don't snag off.



The bottom flower design is from their white nail stickers collection. They're also thick, and kind of like a foam. A real pain to put topcoat over. I suppose the only good thing is they give a 3D effect, AND theres some silvery sparkly spots on it, so it's not just white. Still, if ordering I'd probably pass.

I promise, new nail stuff up here monday and no toes!

A French Manicure

It snowed this morning! Eek! I really dislike snow, and cold. It's actually just mild and windy now and most of the snow has melted.

Last week I was sporting a french pedicure on my nails for most of the week. I decided to also do a french manicure and test out my new nail art brushes.



For the finger nails I used OPI alpine snow (2 coats) and then fixed the smile line with acetone & a craft brush. It may not have been the best idea because the Alpine snow does not remove well with acetone. It took me forever to get decent smile lines and even then they were a bit off.

I then applied 2 base coats which I let dry, then I used acrylic paint (like craft store paint) in white with my new nail art brushes and dotter to do the design.



The beauty about using acrylic paint for the nail art is you can wash it off with warm water and soap and start again if you make a mistake. Once done I sealed with 2 coats of Rimmel London 10 day lasting finish. Which BTW is a great top coat. My nails didn't chip for many days.



For the toes I used acrylic paint for the smile line too. It worked OK. I say ok because on the big toes with the paint becoming lumpy after requiring 2-3 coats of paint for good coverage. I did the nail art with acrylic paint also and again sealed with 1-2 coats of top coat. With acrylic paints its a good idea to cap the end of the nail (essentially, paint the free edge/tip). If water reaches the acrylic paint it will begin to wash away.

O.P.I. Alpine Snow

I've been looking for a really great coverage white polish. So I picked up O.P.I. Alpine Snow. At the time I was hoping for a pure white creme and thats exactly what Alpine Snow is. In school growing up I always painted my nails with white out, hoping for this exact result (of course, white out looks horrid on nails). I worked with this color on a previous post with MAC Bad Fairy.

O.P.I.  Alpine Snow Swatch

The polish takes 2-3 thick coats for full coverage. It's exactly the color I want, however it has some serious flaws. Maybe it's just my bottle, but I'll outline them here. 

My bottle of nail polish has the almost consistency of melted marshmallows. Its THICK. Which is really hard to get non streaky or non lumpy nails. It also takes a very long time to dry even one "thin" coat of the goopy polish. Blah. However, painting it thin can cause lots of streaks or what looks like shadowed areas.

Also, I tried to do a few french manicures with it. It was a pain to clean up the smile lines with a craft brush and acetone . Acetone seems to have a harder time removing this particular color over the others I've used. I'm not really sure why. I'm wondering if I just got a funky bottle.

All in all, I love the color, but I can't see myself using it as much as I'd like (I love white nails and traditional french manicures with bright clean white tips) so I'm going to continue looking for that perfect pure white polish. Any tips?

M.A.C. Bad Fairy Konad nail art on O.P.I. Alpine Snow

I was planning on doing another swatch of O.P.I. Burlesque today, however, I really wanted to do some nail art stamping. So I went with what I wanted to do rather than what I SHOULD be doing. hehe.

I started with 3 coats of O.P.I. Alpine Snow. It's a pure white color with very good coverage. It did take 3 coats for decent coverage, but they dried well. Each coat of nail polish didn't have to be thick.

O.P.I. Alpine Snow base
M.A.C. Bad Fairy
Konad Nail Art Plate M54

I did the nail art using Konad stamping plate M54 and M.A.C. Bad Fairy from the Venomous Villains collection. It is not the easiest polish to stamp with as it's very sheer. But It created a beautiful dainty image on the nails. It looks splotchy close up, but I assure you its not. If you decide to stamp with Bad Fairy then I'd suggest double scraping the plate and hoping for the best. It slightly shows up on the dark pink stampers so you can get an idea of placement.

Flower Nail Art

Tomorrow, hopefully, I shall go back to the Burlesque Swatches.

On a side note, I'm trying to rebuild my Blogroll list. If you'd like to exchange blog roll links please email me or comment.