This time with texture!

Ever since I got my matte topcoat, I had these grand plans of doing tone-on-tone awesome manis. I finally gave it a shot with this manicure; two coats of butterLondon Chancer, followed by the matte topcoat, followed by dots of Seche Vite on top. It would be lovely!

Well, it's not bad, really. A girl at 7-11 admired it without me actively waving my nails under her nose or anything. The sparkles from Chancer show up really nicely. But it's BUMPY and irritates me. You can see the topography on my thumb. I think I like smooth nails better. It could be that my bottle of SV is beginning to get gloppy, it could be that I'm still incompetent with my dotting tool, but it feels like there's STUFF on my nails that I should scrub off. This manicure won't last long.

Also, the formula of Chancer was really tough to work with. Streaky coverage in the first coat, too liquidy to avoid a ton of clean-up, and with all of the shimmer in it, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a royal pain to take off unless I go with the foil method.

We can chalk this up to a learning experience, I think. I learned that I prefer smooth nails, and also that I need a new bottle of SV.

Matte French

So first, let me apologize for the state of my cuticles -- you can see a lot of residue from my clean-up attempt. It washed off later. Hmph.

I bought a matte topcoat the other day ($1.74!) at Target and wanted to do something with it. I had grand ideas but a simple french manicure seemed like a good idea. So I painted two coats of Sally Hansen's CSM "Haute Chocolate" (I really love the deep brown with red and gold undertones), and let it dry. Then a coat of NYC "Matte Me Crazy" topcoat. I've been using Seche Vite for so long that I really wasn't used to it being tacky as long as it was. I free-handed SV on for shiny tips, and I really liked how it looked. Minus the cuticle mess.

A few hours after my mani was done, I grabbed lunch, and taking a burger out of the bag, I barely touched the side of my thumbnail to the bag and half of the polish slid off.

I think I'll try a coat of SV before the matte topcoat next time I feel like going matte, which will likely be soon. :)