My Basic French Mani

Alright, so here is my first attempt at a real french manicure. Seems simple right? White tips and a pink or nude nail. Well for an average, and slightly clumsy, beginner, I wanted to see how simple it really was.

If you are anything like me you cannot free hand the tips. So I turned to the guide strips. Using these was a bit of a challenge at first, trying to line them up to form a nice line at the right height. I am sure with more practice you can figure out where to put them without taking many many attempts and wasting time like I did.

The next step was painting the tips, which I was successful in doing. Waiting for the tips to dry allowed me time to chose a polish. My choice was P2 Colour Victim, in Charming. This is said to be long lasting and extra shiny. It was a pinky gold colour, with lots of shimmer, which really appealed to me.

So after wrestling my guide strips off, I cleaned up the minor smudges that bled under my guides with a Q-Tip dipped in nail polish remover. Then I painted two coats of my pink on top of the nail and tip. After that dried I used a clear top coat, just to seal in my new fancy manicure.

So overall I would say that a french mani done with guide strips is relatively easy. And I am sure for those of you who are not as handicapped in the art of polishing,you will get stunning results with much less struggle than I did.

I love this idea because it looks very fancy and professional, but can be done by anyone. If I can do it so can you, trust me!

Canada Day

I know these are late but I got into the spirit pretty far into the day. (I actually kind of forgot... oops!) So here are my Canada Day ideas. They are not too special, just simple things I was fooling around with.

The stripes are just from the Konad plate m44, a plate of patterned tip designs. I used two coats of Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in So Poppy for the bottom, and White On as the stamping colour.

Then using a nail art pen, I wrote the word Canada as an after thought. Not one of my best, but an attempt at some Canadian spirit.

This one was a creation my Mommy did. She used Konad image plate m56, also full of patterned tip designs. She stamped it three times, also in White On over two coats of So Poppy. Clearly these are my most Canadian colours...

It was cute, a leaf design maybe for the maple leaf in the flag? I don't know exactly it was just an experiment. The glitter topcoat (which I don't know what she used) made it look very festive and reminded me of another holiday - Christmas.

Maybe I will try the leaf one for Christmas, but aside from that this was pretty much a Canada Day flop. Does anyone else have a better Canada mani? I would love to see yours so I can look better next year!

Lime Yellow Triangle Print

Okay so these were done with Konad plate m64. I really like this plate because the full designs are fun and really interesting to do. Here are the supplies I used.

My base coat was this Golden Rose polish, a brand I have never seen before except on a tiny island in Greece, where I bought this one and several others. It is number 54, and I call it lime yellow because it is a mix of lime green and florescent yellow.

It needed four coats, which was pretty time consuming. If you try this design maybe use a thicker base so you won't have to do so many. Any florescent yellow colour would work.

I stamped the image using Essence Show Your Feet, in Caribbean Sea. I did the patterns in different directions each nail, because itvwould have been to hard to try and match the lines perfectly. I have never used a non-Konad polish to stamp, so this was a very successful first try!

Of course I used the Special Polish Top Coat, since this design was all over and I definitely did not want to smudge it.

I think it worked out pretty well. The stamping pattern looks green in some lights, blue in others, and the yellow/green base is really noticeable. Its neon and bright and screams summer fun to me.

This is one of my funkiest designs, and I will be trying it again in other colours very soon.