30 Mani Marathon - Manicure 11: Polka Dots

The 11th task in the 30 Mani Marathon is Polka Dots.

To represent Polka Dots, I began with one coat of Sinful Shine Royal Flush (pink). Then, I free-hand painted half of each nail with Sinful Shine My Krypronite (teal). Next, I used a large dotting tool to add the dots on each side in opposite colors. Lastly, I've sealed the design with a coat of Dreams Nail Lacquer top coat.

Ombre - Teal

Today's manicure is an ombre effect of different shades of teal from dark to light.. 

The colors I have used are, from thumb to pinkie:

Bondi New York - Tavern On The

Color Club - Wild Cactus

Sinful Shine - My Kryptonite

Bondi new York - Teal Magnolia

Bondi New York - Lady Liberty

Products Used:

One coat Beauty Secrets Moisturizing Base Coat

Two coats each Bondi Tavern On The, Color Club Wild Cactus, Sinful Shine My Krypronite, Bondi Teal Magnolia, Bondi Lady Liberty

One coat Seche Vite Top Coat

Shattered

Today's manicure begins with base coat, two coats of Sinful Shine Royal Flush, and one coat of Seche Vite top coat.

To that, I used Bundle Monster stamping plate 208 and Konad special white stamping polish to add the cracked design.

I wanted some sparkle, so I added a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust, and finished with a coat of Seche Vite top coat.

You'll notice that in the before after pic, it looks like two different polishes...bizarre! The top pic was taken in afternoon sunlight, the bottom pic was taken at sunset. It's interesting how different kinds of sunlight can change the appearance of the polish in pics so drastically. The funniest part, is that neither pic looks exactly like the polish color. Purpley-pinks are so hard to capture accurately. Oh well!

Products Used:

One coat Beauty Secrets Moisturizing Base Coat

Two coats Sinful Shine Royal Flush

One coat Seche Vite Top Coat

Bundle Monster Plate 208

Konad Special White Stamping Polish

One coat China Glaze Fairy Dust

One coat Seche Vite Top Coat

My Nail Care Routine

I've gotten some questions regarding my nail care routine, and what I do to keep my nails healthy. The answer is, not much...I don't do anything special to my cuticles or have an intricate mix of potions to make my nails grow out strong. My routine is very basic, I have outlined it below and added a few pics for reference.

The first step in a fresh manicure is to remove the previous polish. For this, I just use the cheapest remover from whatever store I am at when I remember that I'm out of remover...I use the nourishing formula. The cotton pads I use for removal are Face Secrets Disposable Facial Cloths. These lint free pads can be found at Sally Beauty, and are around $5.99 for 50. I can typically use one pad to remove two manicures, using half of the pad per manicure. For more difficult polish removal I will end up using one pad. I always wash my hands after polish removal, I personally don't like the smell of polish remover.

The next step is to MOISTURIZE! It doesn't matter what you use for this step, as long as you use something to moisturize your nails and cuticles. Above are a few things that I rotate depending on my mood or how my nails feel that day. Pictured are JR Watkins Aloe & Green Tea Hand & Cuticle Salve, LUSH Lemony Flutter Cuticle Butter, and Julep Essential Cuticle Oil. Whatever you use, rub the product into your nails, all the skin around your nails, and even into the skin up to your first knuckle. I do this every time I start a new manicure, which is about twice a week.

Step three, shape and clean. After moisturizing, shape your nails however you prefer. Mine are square at the tips, so I use the darker file above to create the squared tip. I put my finger on the desk, use the file to create a T shape with my finger, and use a side to side motion with the file to keep the tips even and straight. The metal file with the rounded tip is great for cleaning under the nails. I purchased the metal file at Walmart, and the darker file at Sally Beauty.

After I moisturize and shape my nails, I wash my hands again to clean away any dust from filing, and any residual oil or product that may still be on the nails. I use this cute little monkey nail brush that my bestie gave me to scrub my nails clean. 

Pick your products! Base coat, polish color, top coat. Today I have used one layer of Beauty Secrets Moisturizing Base Coat, two coats of Sinful Shine Royal Flush, and one coat of Seche Vite Top Coat.

And there you have it! All of my nail care/new manicure steps from beginning to finish :)

Diamond Studded

Today's manicure begins with a gradient of Sinful Shine My Kryptonite and Sinful Shine In The Limelight.

These are the steps I use to create a gradient. *Normally, I will paint one coat of the lightest color that the gradient will contain as a base color for the gradient polishes to grab on to (or a coat of white for a neon gradient). This time, however, I forgot to start with a base color, doh!, and just started with plain base coat.* Using the back of a metal stamping plate for a palette, I placed some Kryptonite and some In The Limelight next to each other. Taking a small piece of cosmetic wedge sponge (very lightly dampened with water and squeezed out), I dipped the sponge into both colors at once, and lightly dabbed it onto the nail keeping the lighter color toward the tips, and darker color toward the cuticle. Since I forgot the base color, the polishes didn't want to *grab*, and I had to repeat the dabbing 3 or 4 times for each nail (waiting a bit between dabs to let the polish dry) to reach desired opacity. I then added a layer of Seche Vite to smooth out the gradient.

Next, I used individual holographic glitter pieces from Sinful Colors Watch It Shine, stacked against each other to create a wavy pattern down the length of the nail.

For this step, I used the 'water marbling tool' from my Bundle Monster Nail Art Kit to fish the glitters from the bottle and place them in a stacked design. This was not as tedious as I had thought it would be, it took maybe 5 minutes to complete each hand. 

The diamond glitters have lots of pointy sharp edges, so it took 3 or 4 coats of Gelous gel top coat to smooth them out completely. When applying the Gelous, I kept it concentrated to the strip of glitter, rather than covering the entire nail with each coat. When they were fully smoothed over, I finished the manicure with a layer of Seche Vite top coat.

Below is a picture of the polish and materials used for this design, minus base and top coat.

Products Used:

One coat Beauty Secrets Moisturizing Base Coat

Gradient of Sinful Shine My Kryptonite and In The Limelight

One coat Seche Vite Top Coat

Glitter accents from Sinful Colors Watch It Shine

Four coats Gelous Advanced Gel Top Coat (Concentrated to the strip of glitter)

One coat Seche Vite Top Coat

Raging Rock Stars

I created this manicure for a Will Hoge rock show Thursday night. I wanted something bright and fun, with a musical design. *Bonus pics from the show at the bottom!*

The base color is two coats of Sinful Shine - All The Rage. Over that, I put a sparse layer of the glitter pictured above, Icing - Radio Superstar. 

I was somewhat disappointed as I flipped through the book I keep my stamping plates in, I thought I had more music related stamp designs. It turns out all I have are a few piano-type stamps, and this wavy musical design. I love the way this one turned out though, despite not having many to choose from. I must get more music stamps!

The stars are very hard to get from this this bottle of glitter polish, which ended up working out for me. After I placed the stamps, I fished out the stars and individually placed them onto the nails around the stamps with a dotting tool. (There is one star peeking out from the stamping on my pointer nail, it was the only one that came out naturally when applying the glitter. I left it where it lay, and I think the music pattern on top is pretty cute.)

The star glitter has some sharp edges at the points, so I went over the design with a coat of Gelous gel top coat to help smooth it out. If you look close at my ring finger nail, it is slightly smudged...I learned that Gelous will do this to your stamps if you aren't super-super careful. I know that now :/ lol. Over that, I applied a nice coat of Seche Vite and it *almost* smoothed everything out completely. I still had a few star points poking up which I could have solved with another layer of Seche Vite, but it didn't bother me enough to add another coat.

Products Used:

One coat Beauty Secrets Moisturizing Base Coat

Two coats Sinful Shine All The Rage

One coat Icing Radio Superstar

Stamping Plate M22

Konad Black Special Stamping Polish

One coat Gelous Advanced Gel Top Coat

One coat Seche Vite Top Coat

*Bonus pics from the Will Hoge show!*

Sinful Shine - All The Rage

All The Rage is the second color I have tried from the new Sinful Shine line of Gel Tech polishes. 

This is two coats of All The Rage, pictured with no topcoat. It really is very shiny on its own, just like they claim! 

I really like this color on me, and it's a great base for the design I did on top, Raging Rock Stars.

Sinful Shine - Bottoms Up Part-Two, Plus Zoya Natty Comparison

In my Sinful Shine - Bottoms Up Part-1 post, I said I was going to experiment with this new Sinful Colors formula and see how long it would last. I made it four whole days, and then had to change it out for a Raging Rock Stars design for a rock-and-roll show I am attending tonight. Here's what my left and right hands looked like at the end of four days of wear.

I applied the same base and top coat on both hands, the left with one coat of this color, and the right with two. Right away I noticed a difference in that the hand with one coat looked much nicer. It could be a fluke, I dunno....but I had some tip shrink right away on the right hand, and it wore unevenly. When I wear this color again, I'm going with the one coater. It held up amazingly over the course of 4 days, I'm really liking this new formula so far.

When I bought this color, I was thinking that it looked very similar to Zoya Natty, which I already owned. I bought it anyway, because I love this color, dupe or not! When I looked at them side by side, I realized that Natty is a deeper, darker shade of stormy blue. Bottoms Up is a bit brighter. Below is a comparison.

Sinful Shine - Bottoms Up Part-1

A few days ago, a good friend of mine showed me an Instagram pic of what seemed to be several *new* Sinful Colors polishes, with shiny chrome-like caps, and a new name on the bottle. Being an avid collector of Sinful Colors, I was immediately intrigued! So yesterday while I was out, I stopped in at one of my fave Walgreen's to see if they had these mysterious new colors, and they had a whole new display with more new colors than I had expected! I limited myself to 5, for now, and this is the first one that I have tried so far.

Sinful Shine w/ Gel Tech - Bottoms Up

The new display claims that these new *gel type* formulas are 'more glossy than a patent leather shoe'. Years ago, I used to get gel manicures regularly, but this is the first *gel type* polish I have used from a bottle, that doesn't require a UV light to cure. So I decided to do an experiment to see how long and how well these polishes will last. 

On my Left hand, I have a base coat, one coat of Bottoms Up, and Seche Vite top coat. On my right hand, I have a base coat, two coats of Bottoms Up, and Seche Vite top coat. There two things I find interesting about this side-by-side comparison of both hands. One, is it just me or does the Left side just look *better* with just one coat? Two, the right side has a teeny bit of shrinkage, mostly obvious on my ring finger. I plan to wear these until there's noticeable chipping, I just hope that doesn't take *too* long haha.

Products Used:

One coat Beauty Secrets Moisturizing Base Coat

Left hand - One coat Sinful Shine Bottoms Up

Right hand - Two coats Sinful Shine Bottoms Up

One coat Seche Vite Top Coat