The manicure itself was a fail, although I'm embracing what I like to think of as the concept of F.A.I.L. "Fail - And I Learned!" What I'm rocking today is Finger Paints Give Pink a Chance and Finger Paints Paper Mache. I've got the pink on the nail and white on the tips. I finally bought some stick-on French guides, and I'm having a good time...screwing up a French royally!
I'll update the pics to this post tomorrow night, but in the meantime, I give you what I've learned about using guides for a fun French mani: Don't get in a hurry. If you don't have time to do it properly, just don't do it unless you're willing to accept sub-par results. It requires time for the base color to dry enough to be sure that the guides won't peel the color off and that you won't ding the base color while trying to apply the guides straight. It also requires time for the tip color to dry enough to be sure that it won't drip/string off the guide when you remove it.
I'm a pretty impatient person, and I reaaaally love the notion of having all these color combos to play with, but I'm just going to have to learn that funky French manis are strictly for applying on the weekends when I have the time to dedicate myself to a job well done.
UPDATE: For your viewing pleasure/displeasure...
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| Indoors |
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| Outdoors, full sun |
It's pink enough for me. :P
ReplyDeleteI agree, making sure that your base is dry is crucial. A trick I learned, thanks to a very kind comment a while back is to take the guide tape and stick it to your skin, then apply it to your nail. Sticking it to your skin first (make sure you aren't wearing lotion) takes down a little of the OMG! Sticky! ness about them but they will still stick and do their job.
I make sure to run my finger along the edges firmly to really seal the tape down as best I can and I make sure that they follow the contours of my ridges so that I don't get bleeding.
I paint on the first coat of the tip colour and let it dry a few minutes, then I paint the second coat on one nail then immediately grab tweezers and peel off the guide, bending it back on it's self as much as I can without mucking up the works. Then I move on to the next nail and repeat. :)
Awesome tips, Ice Queen! Thanks!
ReplyDelete(Get it? "Tips"? HAHAHAHA!)