Stars and Stripes - Happy 4th of July!

Happy July 4th everyone!  Leading up to July 4th this year, I took part in an Independence Day themed swap on Facebook and my awesome swap partner, Cari, sent me a box full of Salon Perfect goodies and some candy.  So after I came down from my sugar high, lol, I got to work on putting together a look for July 4th.  Using a bunch of the items she sent me, here's what I came up with this year.

For my thumb and index nail, I started with Salon Perfect Blue Ribbon.  This was my first experience trying any Salon Perfect polishes and I was pretty happy to see I only needed 2 coats of Blue Ribbon for decent coverage.  The star designs are from a Salon Perfect decal kit that Cari also included in the swap package.  I topped these blue nails with 2 coats of Seche Vite, just to try and even out the edges of the decals.

For the red and white stripes on the rest of my nails, I decided to do a reciprocal gradient instead of regular stripes.  I started with one coat of Salon Perfect Sugar Cube, then sponged on a red and white gradient using Sugar Cube and Salon Perfect Paint The Town Red.  Once that dried, I placed 3 strips of striping tape onto each nail, then redid the gradient with the colors on the opposite ends as the original gradient and quickly removed the striping tape.  I finished off these 3 nails with just one coat of Seche Vite.  The gradient isn't quite as smooth as I would have liked.  But I didn't want to blend the red and white much more because I was hoping to minimize the amount of pink through the center of the gradient.

I've been wearing this all week and it's starting to show a little wear in real life compared to the pictures.  Since July 4th is a Friday this year, there is sure to be some celebrating all weekend long, so I may take this off and do another July 4th manicure sometime today.  Have a fun and safe holiday everyone.  'Murica!