A layering experiment

So I was cringing while removing that Kleancolor Metallic Purple konad from my Gelish manicure.  I should have guessed it would stain since it stained my friggen stamp!

I'm actually beginning to wonder if it's going to be a real problem painting over Shellac/Gelish.

Well I might as well keep trying anyways right?

So I painted over it with LCN Magnetic polish in Iron Magic.  I found this polish really goopy and wasn't happy with the application nor the magnet effect this time around.

So I wondered what it would look like if I layered over the magnetic polish and I used Sally Hansen HD in DVD here.  I think this polish needs it's own tag since I use it in pretty much every layering experiment.  I like this a lot but it sadly you can't see much of the magnet effect anymore.

So I know you're probably thinking 'holy shit that's a lot of layers of polish', right?  I've got on 4 coats of Gelish infused with glitter, 1 thick coat of magnetic polish, 1 coat of DVD plus a top coat.  It's really not noticeable at all.  It's surprising to me too actually.

Later
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Adventures in UV Gel

This is a french I did for the Princess with Shellac.  It looked awesome but chipped on Day 5.  I'm still having problems with this.  So now I've picked up a Gelish base and top coat to see if I have better luck.  With the Shellac base and top coat I'm getting chipping every time around Day 5-7.

So it probably wasn't the best time to try out glitter when testing my new base and top coats but I did it anyways.

I used Gelish Foundation, 1 coat of Shellac Romantique, pressed some glitter into the tips and 2 coats of top coat.

Then I stamped it with Kleancolor Metallic Purple and Konad plate m4 with a coat of my trusty NYC quick dry top coat.

But look what the Kleancolor polish did to my stamper:

It might be a bit hard to see, but it's definitely stained!  If it does that to the stamper then imagine how badly it will stain your nails!  I've never had a polish stain my stamper like that before.

Anyways I'm crossing my fingers that the Gelish will hold up better than the Shellac.

Later
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Oops

So apparently this post never actually made it to my blog 2 weeks ago.  Well here's a manicure pre-Shellac obsession lol.

2 coats of Sally Hansen Salon Manicure in Commander in Chic.  Pretty medium gray.  Can't say enough about the formula and brushes on these polishes - I love them!

I stamped it with one of the new Revlon foils - Princess (light blue) and plate BM205.  Again I could not get a good photo no matter what I did but it was just an okay mani anyways.  These new Revlons are good but not great for stamping.  They are more like Sally Hansen Celeb City in that they have a somewhat grainy finish as opposed to Pure Ice Silver Mercedes which is a smooth and clean metallic.

Later
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As girly as it gets

I have no idea what possessed me to do this.  Maybe it's something to do with the fact that my nails are looking somewhat clean and natural now.  Anyways I'd previously tried and failed several times at the konad french tip plate m19.  I figured it would be perfect to do over Shellac because I can remove the mistakes without ruining the base.  And I did have to re-stamp it several times but I was pretty happy with the end result.  I used Billie French White to stamp with.  I topped it with one coat of Yves Rocher Pastel Mauve.

Then I stamped it with vines from Konad plate m36 in the same Billie French White and added a little fuschia gem.  I feel like I need to be going to a wedding or something lol.  It also looks like my nails are fake.  I do like it, but next time I'll do it in black :)

Later
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A chick on a mission

And my mission is to get rid of this damn yellow staining.  I never thought I'd actually post this but ugh...my nails are gross underneath all that polish.

Admittedly I only use base coat about 30% of the time so it's my own fault for letting them get this bad.  I know this will be a somewhat slow process to get them white again but once I do, I won't let this happen again.  So I soaked them in lemon juice for 10 minutes then gave them a scrub with baking soda and a toothbrush.

Then I lightly filed the surface.  My nails are fairly weak so I didn't want to go crazy on the filing and make them too thin.  So you can see that this will probably take 3-4 rounds of this to get them white again.

But in the meantime to protect them...

I Shellac'd (is that the right word? lol) them with a translucent colour.  I used base coat, 1 coat of Romantique, 2 coats of Negligee and then top coat.  I had a much better experience with application this time around.  My free edges are capped off nicely too.  Now this still looks a little yellow but it's really mostly the lighting because I wore this manicure to work the next day and there was no yellowing visible at all.

I wanted to use a translucent shade so that it would help hide the yellowing and it did a good job I think.  This is so funny to me because I have had crazy polished nails every single day for the last year.  I actually kinda like it.  Pretty soon my nails should be naturally white again and I may even be able to leave the house with absolutely nothing on my nails!

Later
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