OMD 31 Day Challenge - Day 11 - Stripes

Ugh...this manicure is not what I was hoping for. It took FOREVER (over 2 hours!) and didn't turn out the way I had envisioned it.

Anyways, with that small rant over...I started on all nails with two coats of Barielle Going to the Chapel (white). It's a fairly decent white, I use it quite a bit; two, sometimes three coats is all you need. Once that was dry I painstakingly applied striping tape in random thicknesses to both hands (yes, both hands!). I then painted two coats of OPI Skull & Gloss Bones. I had to use two coats because it couldn't cover the white in one... Then I taped AGAIN and added a random stripe of China Glaze Pool Party (which also didn't photograph well at all!). It was ridiculous how long it took to do this, and it was sooo thick with all those coats by the time I was done, I had a serious case of chubby nails going on!

I liked the end result but boy did it take a looong time. I have some ideas on how to do something similar in a quicker fashion. Perhaps I'll give it another try one of these days.

Thanks for reading!

Don't forget to check out all the other manis here

Teal and Orange Lasers

Happy Friday!

I know teal isn't quite green...but it's pretty close. So I think it counts as a good closer to the week of green!

Both polishes today are Barielle polishes and both were dreams to apply. The teal is A Bouquet for Ava, and I've used two coats on all fingers except the ring finger. The ring finger is two coats of Gotta Have Fate as the base. Gotta Have Fate is more color accurate on my finger than it is in the bottle in the photos. For some reason it looks really washed out in the bottle. Once it was completely dry I used striping tape to create the laser pattern and then used one thick coat of A Bouquet for Ava. I removed the striping tape and voila, orange lasers!

I really liked these two colors together...looking at this manicure again perhaps there may be some more orange/teal in my near future.

Thanks for reading!

Essie with Striping Tape Accent

Today I have a manicure using all Essie polishes. I opened up a polish drawer and these colours were all together and looked so tempting all lined up that I just had to use them all!

I started with three coats of Da Bush on my pointer, middle and ring fingers. (what's with that name?!) On my thumb and my pinky I did two coats of Armed & Ready. It's a gorgeous olivey green with a beautiful copper shimmer. The shimmer shows up really well in the bottle but is sort of hidden on the nail, but when the light hits the nail just right, wow...just wow. Anyways, on my ring finger I taped off four sections and filled them in with Armed & Ready (dark green), Eternal Optimist (pink creme), Chinchilly (grey), and Antique Rose (pink shimmer).

Three of these polishes can be completely blamed with starting my addiction! The first three polishes that I bought in my collection are Chinchilly, Eternal Optimist and Armed & Ready. I stood in the store mesmerized by Armed & Ready and just had to buy it. I guess this manicure sort of pays homage to my start on the spiral of way too many nail polishes!

Thanks for reading!

Monday...boooo :( Luckily it's almost over. Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Just a quick post today since it's so late. It's almost my bedtime! Today I have some blue and silver stripes. These nails really reminded me of cheerleader nails, I wanted to grab a pompom and fling it around with these nails!

On every finger except my ringer finger I started with three coats of OPI Your Royal Shinie-ness. I then put a strip of striping tape near the tips of my nails and painted a coat of China Glaze Want My Bawdy over the top and then pulled off the striping tape to reveal Your Royal Shinie-ness. I reversed the colors on my accent finger, I used two coats of Want My Bawdy as the base for the accent and covered the striping tape with Your Royal Shinie-ness.

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Yellow Rays

I looooove striping tape! I love how it makes such clean and crisp lines and easily adds interest to a manicure.

Today I have some yellow rays, made using striping tape. This mani sort of reminds me of sun rays breaking through the dark of the morning just itching to lighten up the day.

For my pointer and pinky finger I used two coats of Wet N Wild Night Prowl. On my middle and ring finger I used three coats of Joe Fresh Pineapple. If I were wearing Pineapple by itself I likely would have done one more coat, it was still sort of streaky, darn yellow polish! Since I was planning on covering it up though I stopped at three coats. It was opaque, just not perfect, but good enough for the next step! Once Pineapple was dry I arranged striping tape in a sort of ray pattern and then covered it with a quite thick coat of Night Prowl as the yellow didn't want to be covered that easily.

The purple flecks in Night Prowl were more prominent in real life than I was able to catch in photos. You can see the gorgeous purple quite clearly in the bottle.

Looking at the photos now, I should have tried a matte top coat with this mani! I love mattifying manicures, and now I want to see what this would have looked like. Oh well...maybe next time I'll remember!

Thanks for reading!