An American Holiday

Good Monday morning, Kitschies!  I hope you enjoyed your weekend.  Mine consisted of some time at the clinic (very productive time), a bit of time with the bestie and two of her kids and then cleaning and chores for the rest of the time.  I'm really behind on prepping pics for the blog, but I did manage to get one or two sets done.  This is one of them.

Last Monday was Presidents' Day here in the US.  I didn't get the day off, but I did a mani to celebrate!  Just a side note...my next holiday off isn't until the end of May. *sad Megan*


Here's what I used: Orly Royal Navy (after shaking and shaking and shaking for about 5 minutes), Finger Paints Easel Come, Easel Go, Studio M Magic Attraction and Art Deco nail art polish in red glitter and white.

A note on Orly Royal Navy.  This is one awesome color, but the fact that the sparkle *always* separates from the base color is the suck.  I don't know what the deal with that is, but if you take the time to shake it, the color pay off is worth the effort.  Blue jelly base with blue (almost teal?) sparkle is so right on the money!  On to the mani pics!

Full sun pic.  Ignore the tips - I had quite a bit of shrinkage with the silver for some reason.  The day after I did this, I filed down the tips a bit and got rid of the ugly shrinkage (my nails needed a little cleaning up anyway). 

I also got a bit of shrinkage along the edges, too.  I love Seche Vite, but I hate it, too, because of all the shrinkage I get (among other things).  I had been using ChG speed top coat (whatever the name is), but I picked up the SV top and base coats a few weeks ago at Sally's because they were BOGO, but ChG is my go-to/preferred brand.

If you click on this one to make it bigger, you can really see the gorgeous sparkle in the blue.  I loved this mani and I got LOTS of compliments!  I like it so much, I wore it for 4 days.  And without much tip wear and no chipping.  I'll definitely be doing something like this for 4th of July!

Oh, how'd I do it?  I started out with two coats of Royal Navy on the whole nail.  Then I took Easel Come, Easel Go and painted the outside corner.  It was missing a little something so I did one coat of Magic Attraction over the top of the silver metallic polish.  Once that all dried a bit, I took my red glitter striping polish and went along the edge of the silver polish.  Repeated that with the white and the red glitter again.  For the final touch, I took the red glitter striping polish and went from the inside edge, about 2/3 of the way down the nail and dragged it in a diagonal to the top.  Top with a coat (or two, I think it was) of top coat and you're good to go!

 So now that the awards show season is over, what shows are you looking forward to watching?