Valentine's 2013

Last week I wore two different designs during the week for Valentine's Day.  The first design was my first attempt at using striping tape and the second design was straight out of my good ol' comfort zone...plaid stamping.

For the first design, I started with a coat of Milani's one coat glitter in Red Sparkle.  Once that dried, I taped off 4 lines at random on most of my nails with striping tape.  Then, one nail at a time, I painted on one coat of Finger Paints Black Expressionism and immediately peeled off the striping tape to reveal the red glitter beneath.  On my ring finger, I stamped a hearts design from Bundle Monster plate BM-317 using Konad Special Polish in black.  Then I finished all the nails off with a coat of Seche Vite top coat.

The only thing I don't really like about the Milani one coat glitters is that when they dry, there always seems to be a few dull looking spots that top coat doesn't even seem to help.  I still loved the look but I kept thinking it might have turned out better if I had used Nubar Fire Sparkle like I did for Valentine's Day last year.

For the second design, I started with two coats of OPI Mod About You.  The plaid design is from Konad m60, stamped first with Konad Special Polish in black, then again with Konad white.  I was planing to stamp a single heart on each tip, but I could see the black lines showing through the first heart I stamped.  So I quickly scrapped that idea and grabbed the first red polish at hand, China Glaze Red Satin, and my dotting tools.  I used the largest dotting tool to dot one heart on each nail.  Then I re-dotted over the hearts using China Glaze Ring in the Red to add some glitter and also because Red Satin was a bit jelly and not quite opaque enough by itself.

I loved both of these designs but of course, big shocker, I loved the plaid more!