Saturday, February 11, 2012

Dark Green and Amber Halfmoon Mani

  I was looking through my giveaway entries on Rafflecopter, and I saw many suggestions regarding incorporating nail art in my blog. I am a fan of nail art, but I never really have given it a try. I have so many untrieds, and I like to wear shades on their own first before I combine them with others. Also, I don't have a lot of experience with nail art, and my hands are shaky (I have to clean up after painting my nails a solid color!) I also lack nail art supplies. I don't own any Konad products, and I only have a couple nail art polishes with stripers. I just ordered a set of dotting tools from ebay, so I'm going to try to do nail art more often.
I used OPI Opus in Amber and OPI Here Today Aragon Tomorrow for a halfmoon manicure. I saw a tutorial on Pinterest. I put on two coats of Opus in Amber (I actually wore this for a day by itself beforehand). I then used reinforcement stickers as a guide. It turned out alright, but it got tipwear almost immediately after! You have to peel off the reinforcement stickers while the polish is still wet, so I put on a thick coat of Here Today Aragon Tomorrow. That is probably why it got worn on the tips so quickly. 
Here Today Aragon Tomorrow is from the Spain collection. It's a VERY subtle shimmer in a dark green. I actually wore it before and didn't even notice the shimmer. You can see it with the flash, but in person, it's barely noticeable. Opus in Amber is from the holiday 2004 collection. It's pretty old! (definitely the old formula) It's pretty brilliant though.
Here it is without the flash. There's room for improvement, but this is the first nail art that I've ever done. Practice makes perfect!

Here are the supplies I used: OPI base coat, OPI Opus in Amber, OPI Here Today Aragon Tomorrow, Seche Vite topcoat, paper reinforcements for a guide, plastic cuticle pusher to clean up around the edges, and a small dotting tool to fill in imperfections or spots missed
My rarely seen right hand with reinforcement stickers before adding the green. It helped to have the edges stick up for easy removal since my left hand was still wet, but the green got in many places that it wasn't supposed to. Needless to say, my left hand looked so much better.
This is Opus in Amber by itself. I am wearing two coats of it.

Also, my 100 followers giveaway has about a day left. You can win five bottles of nail polish. I still am overwhelmed by the turnout and I'm glad that everyone is enjoying my blog. Make sure you enter if you haven't already! You just have to be a follower via Google Friend Connect, but you can earn up to 21 extra entries. CLICK HERE TO ENTER MY GIVEAWAY!

4 comments:

  1. The lines look great!! Need to pick up some of those stickers!

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  2. Thank you :) I'm excited to try this out with different combinations of colors.

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  3. Cool way to do your moons! The stickers remind me of 3 hold binder page reinforcers but i think they are for nails only right? Opus in Amber was an impulse buy from me about 8 years ago and I have been crazy for it since...best shade out of that holiday collection in my opinion!

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    1. They actually are page reinforcement stickers! I bought them at Staples! I never tried the ones made for nails, but I'm sure these worked just as well and they're probably less expensive. Originally I wanted to do a Ruffian mani, but then I chickened out because I was afraid I would mess up without a guide and then I just saw the reinforcement stickers on my desk and figured I'd give it a try. I love Opus in Amber! I thought it looked better on my nails than it did in the bottle. I also have Melody in Mocha but I have yet to try it.

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