Where I Wish I Was

I went on a many year nail polish hiatus. I just recently got my groove back and not without a little guilt at spending yet more money on, well, paint. I used to use the hobby excuse, but now I knit, crochet, weave and spin. I have bins full of yarn in my house (hoarding yarn is much like hoarding nail polish... Or maybe I am just a hoarder in general).

I just like color, dammit! So, now that I can again have long, decent nails, I decided to paint again. then I discovered the world of "nail art". I pretty much suck at it, but damn is it fun! So I will preface with this, if you come for swatches of the latest collections or perfect, clean cuticles, leave now. If you don't like swearing, get the fuck out. I'm just doing this for fun, so hopefully someone will enjoy it!

So let's do this!!!

I started buying nail vinyls and playing with them. Then I discovered the sponge gradient. THEN I saw the most awesome palm tree manicure ever and I had to try it. It turned out a little sloppy, but I still love it.


This is how it looks in direct light from the window. it's not super sunny out today.

I really botched the pointer nail. This is what happens when you don't take your time. Then I smeared it all up trying to fix it.


Here it is at my desk, in less direct natural light.

The nails I saw had all palm trees. also, the trees were mirrored, they didn't all lean the same way. The vinyls I have are all the same and because only one side is sticky, there's no way to mirror the direction of the tree, so I decided to also do dolphins.

I feel like the placement could have been better with the dolphins and my nails are super curved so it's hard to get the vinyls to stick evenly.


Here's my right hand. Not too bad. I was too lazy to wait for another top coat to dry so I could use a vinyl for the waves under the dolphins, so I tried to free hand it. Yeah... no.

Here are the vinyls I used. They are Bundle Monster from Amazon:

 I used the martini ones yesterday. Definitely getting more of those!!! EEE! I gotta find some vino ones. I'm seeing wine colored polish with antique gold wine bottles and glasses. I like these vinyls. They stick really well, which is useful for me because my nails are so curved and vinyls tend to not lie down flat. With how sticky these are, I can push them down and fake it if they don't lay completely flat. I'll show an example next time.


AAAAANNNDDD... The polishes!! First is Color Club East Austin. I fucking love neon corals. My favorite neon coral of all time is the ORIGINAL china Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy. It's the neon coral by which I measure all neon corals. Anyway, East Austin is much lighter and peacher than that color, but it's still a rockin coral and it is most definitely neon.

Next are two Cirque Colors - Plastik and Rehab. I'm am obsessed with Cirque's Vice Collections. These are from the 2016 collection and I missed out on ONE freaking color in the collection which happened to be, you guessed it, neon CORAL! Damn! If anyone know where I can find Sin City, the neon coral from the Vice 2016 collection, please let me know, I will buy 3 bottles!! Anyway, Plastik is a medium pink/fuchsia creme. I wouldn't call it eye-searing neon, but it is definitely bright an summery. Rehab is the blurple to end all blurples. I absolutely love this color and it is one of my top 5 polishes of all time.

So I did a coat of Color Club East Austin over my basecoat, then I covered my fingers and cuticles with liquid latex and waited for it to turn completely dark pink (that's how you can tell it's dry). Be really careful not to stick your fingers together (I recommend at least one hand at a time, if not one finger at a time) otherwise the latex from each finger will stick to each other and pull off of your fingers. Don't skip this step, if you do, you will have a huge mess. And if you have dry fingers and cuticles like me, you'll never get this polish off with a clean up brush. trust me, the latex is worth it and is super easy to use.

After the latex dried, I grabbed a makeup sponge and put a stripe of each polish on the sponge to create the gradient. Then you just dab the sponge on your nails carefully, moving from side to side and maybe up and down by like a millimeter to blend the colors. Don't move it too much vertically or you will create mud.

I ended up doing about 4 coats and I feel like my left hand could have used more (it doesn't apply as thick as when you paint, so don't worry about having a mound of polish). Once it's mostly dry, slap on a quick dry topcoat. When that is completely dry, 10-20 minutes, do the vinyls. If you do more than one vinyl like I did for the dolphin nails on my left hand, you'll have to wait for the black to dry (use a one coater and remove the vinyl immediately, and carefully while the polish is still wet), then do another topcoat before doing the next vinyl. I you skip the topcoat, the vinyl WILL pull off your polish unless you wait literally hours for it to dry completely.

Top it all off again with a quick dry top coat. Just make sure you wait til the black is almost completely dry before adding the topcoat or it might smear like a few of mine did because I am impetuous and can't be bothered to wait for drying.

Here's what I will do differently next time:

1. More coats of the gradient and maybe wait a little longer in between. I think I may have just been picking it back up with the sponge because I wasn't waiting long enough between coats.

2. Place the vinyls more carefully. I did like the dolphins but they were just a bit too big for my nails and didn't fit quite the way I wanted them to. If I do this same mani, I will get the mirrored palm tree vinyls.

3. Less black on the tips. For the little islands from which the palms grow, I would only do a mound in the corner like the middle nail on my left hand, that way it doesn't cover up the coral so much:

 4. Pull the vinyls off more carefully and do a better job cleaning up the image.

5. Wait for the black to dry more before putting on topcoat and maybe find a topcoat that doesn't smear as much. I had this same issue with this topcoat and stamping.

Now enjoy this kitty picture because... kitties.

Maksim and Daenerys