Teal Fishtail Braid Manicure: Inspired by Knitting!

My sister has recently taken up knitting, and one of her first projects is a scarf! I was totally inspired by her scarf to do some nail art - and so I did my first ever fishtail braid manicure!

For this manicure I used Exposed Aruba 52, Exposed Aqua Baby 59 (I've swatched the Exposed polishes before), and Boots Totally Teal. I wanted the colours in my mani to match my sister's scarf! I first did a base of Exposed Aruba 52, then painted diagonal lines of Aqua Baby, and Totally Teal, before starting again with Aruba. So basically it's just painting diagonal lines on top of each other, until you reach the end of your nail!


I didn't use any special brushes to paint the lines on - I just used the nail polish brush that came with the bottle. I topped it off with PA Premiere Grande Nail Polish in AA42 - a gorgeous green-blue flakie! I love flakies, although I don't wear them nearly enough. Another thing I wanted to say - you can't really tell the difference between Aruba and Aqua Baby in the photos, but they are different enough in real life. I'm not sure why they didn't show up on the camera!


For the fishtail braid manicure, it's probably a good idea to use colours that are opaque in one coat - of you use one of those loser "4 costs and you still see VNL (visible nail line)" typo polishes, then you'll need multiple passes to cover the polish underneath. Both Totally Teal and Aqua Baby were quite opaque, but for Aruba, I had to do two coats over the same line to get it to be really opaque.


So there you have it - my first ever fishtail braid manicure! I really like this - it's a great piece of nail art, and do easy to do too! I can't wait to try out other colour combinations!

Syrup Manicure and Sparkles: China Glaze Beauty and the Beach and Fairydust

I tried my hand at the syrup manicure the other day. I liked colour, but I didn't really like how the manicure itself turned out. I think I kinda sucked at the gradiation. So of course I did what anyone covering up for a failed syrup gradient manicure did - I put glitter over it! Here's the final look.

The syrup manicure uses just one colour, typically a very sheer jelly, in order to get the gradient effect, in contrast to other gradient manicures that use two colours. The sheer jelly shade would then be applied in successive coats to give the gradient effect. For this look, I used China Glaze Beauty and the Beach, which I bought like, in a haul a long time back, but haven't used til now (shame, I know). Anyway, I thought that since it was such a sheer jelly shade, it would be perfect for the syrup manicure.

In order to get the gradient effect, I started off with a coat of Beauty and the Beach all over the nail. I then applied a second coat of Beauty and the beach from three-quarters of the nail, and a third coat from halfway up the nail. The last coat was applied just to the top quarter of the nail, nearest the tip. That created the gradient look.



Sadly, I wasn't very pleased with how the gradient turned out. I felt like the gradient was too sudden, and wasn't very "gradient"-like. Anyway, I decided to salvage it by adding glitter on top. I mean, glitter makes every manicure look better, right? So on went a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust. Muahaha, now with my tips all covered with glitter (holo glitter, no less!) noone's going to notice that the syrup gradient isn't done right! How smart am I, seriously?



Anyway, if I had done the syrup manicure bit properly, I think I would have liked this a lot more. Although China Glaze Beauty and the Beach is annoyingly sheer, when layered it has a gorgeous lit-from-within glowy shimmer that I love. And of course, its annoyingly sheer nature makes it perfect for the syrup manicure. I also like China Glaze Fairydust - I swear, this polish just looks good over anything.



So there you have it - my failed attempt at a syrup manicure, and an equally fail attempt to cover it with glitter. Maybe next time I should do a few practice nails before jumping into these things. But for now, this is perfect for the spring and summer seasons - bright, happy, and tropical.