July 4th Mani

Hey ladies! As promised, here's what I really ended up wearing for July 4th/Independence Day. I started off alternating between red, white, and blue (OPI Red Dazzle, Pure Ice Super Star, and Ulta Blue Streak). I put the blue on my pinky only (since the American flag only has a small amount of blue, after all), then red on the ring and pointer, and white on the middle and thumb. (Warning: the picture below is with no cleanup yet, I wasn't done! Please be forgiving of my white messiness!)

Then I added some star shaped nail sprinkles, which you may remember from one of my first posts, to the white fingers (the white looked really stark against the red and blue and kind of boring). I store these by color in a pill organizer I bought at a local drug store.

And here is what resulted! I randomly added two each of blue, red, and iridescent stars to my thumb and middle finger. The iridescent stars look kind of pink in the picture, but in real life they were more clear.

Here's the middle and ring finger for detail. You can see the stars lift up a little off the surface, which is kind of annoying as they sometimes chip off. It's a good thing I only needed this mani to last for one BBQ because it wasn't going to make it much longer! For future reference, I would have placed them more deliberately on flatter areas of my nail and secured them with nail glue, but this was just a quick fix for my disaster mani earlier in the day. I also wanted you all to see Red Dazzle as I don't see it very often and it is by far my favorite red (and I don't really like reds). My camera is giving it kind of an orange tone, but in real life it's bright red.

What do you think? Did I do better my second time around? I loved this mani once I had it on. It's too bad Captain America isn't out for a few weeks, because it would have worked perfectly for that movie as well!

xoxo,

Amanda

51st post: 4th of July Mani, Take One

Happy 4th of July, fellow Americans :) Hope you enjoyed the long weekend. And for all my international readers, how was your Monday? Tonight I'm going to show you my first take on my Independence Day mani, which was a complete failure, in my mind.

Let me start with my vision: red and white stripes with blue crackle over it. Then I decided I needed a blue on the base too with the crackle over it. So I started with a nail wheel experimenting with different colors and decided on OPI Red Dazzle (best red ever, hands down... a major dusty, but it's a beautiful, vibrant red with red glitter), Ulta Blue Streak (I know I've used this about a million times now, but it was perfect!), and Pure Ice Super Star (white) with OPI Turquoise Shatter on top. I tried using horizontal stripes, vertical, diagonal... all to see which one worked best with the crackle. On the wheel, it seemed diagonal stripes of blue, white, and red with the crackle applied vertically worked best. But on the nail: nope. It was just a gross, misguided mess. The Turquoise blended into the blue, the red clashed with the turquoise... yuck. Well, here you go, if you must see. It's not a sight I'm proud of.

Sigh. You only get one finger because cleanup was a beast (3 types of polishes, multiple coats, weird angles... you get the idea). This is the finger that came out the best, and I'm not sure why there's a shadow in the picture because it didn't show up on my camera *shrugs*. On the bright side, I loved Turquoise Shatter over white so that may become an option later on?

So what do you ladies think of this mani? I ended up taking it off immediately and I switched to another 4th mani... but I'll show you that tomorrow. :)

xoxo,
Amanda