Stripes, Stones, & Sparkles!

Happy Holidays, everybody!

No matter what you celebrated this past week/weekend, I hope you had a wonderful time :-)

I am SO excited that it is FINALLY getting warmer! Slowly but surely, the temperatures are rising! I can't wait to take Mufasa to the doggy park! (here is a cute pic I took of him the other day...I need more memory on my iPhone to store the bajillions of pictures I take of him!)

I had a tough time coming up with idea for a mani for some reason.  I couldn't decide on colors OR design. UGH! I decided to just go with a sparkly pink with a dark plum...not very bright for spring, but I looooooove my deep reds and purples. :-)

Unfortunately, the glare from the top coat makes the stripes look a little bit sloppy, which totally sucks!

I started with my Rimmel base coat, and layered two coats of NYC Plaza Plumberry on top of that for my thumb, middle, and ring fingers.  For my pointer and pinkies, I applied 4 coats of Milani Disco Lights to get the pink sparkle to cover the whole nail without any bald spots.

Once my pinkies and pointers were completely, and I mean COMPLETELY dry (if you don't wait for it to dry completely the striping take might ruin your mani!) I placed my striping tape in the desired pattern on each finger and painted a generous coat of NYC Plaza Plumberry over the tape.  After about 5-10 seconds, I removed the tape.

For a little bit of added sparkle, I took a flat back gemstone and put it on each pinky near the base of my nail while the NYC Plaza Plumberry was still tacky.  Finally, I sealed off the mani with a coat of Sally Hansen Green Tea & Bamboo nail strengthener.  I wouldn't recommend this as a top coat, although I think it is a GREAT base coat -- it takes too long to dry, and even after several hours, when I had my hand against my shirt, the imprint of the cotton material was visible on my nails...not super-noticeable, but I am definitely sticking with a fast drying top coat from now on.

I will have another post up tomorrow for my Monday Blues! Can't wait!

I hope everybody enjoys the rest of their weekend!

:-)

P.S. Don't forget to enter our GIVEAWAY! It closes this Friday, so get your entries in! We have some AWESOME prizes up for grabs!