milani | Nail Smiles

After the bright green of my St. Paddy’s Day manicure, I needed my next design to be toned down to balance things out. I’ve seen a few other examples of white stamping over nude colored nails and decided that would be the perfect combination of subtle yet playful I was craving…also, I have a meeting coming up at work so super jazzy nails wouldn’t cut it (even though my bosses love my nail art for meetings with visitors I like to tone things down).

I’m really pleased with how the designed came out. The Sephora by OPI Bare To Be Different polish was very translucent. The first coat was so clear that I decided to switch to Milani Creme Brulee for the second coat. On my ring finger I used Sally Hansen Nail Prisms South Sea Pearl, which is a duochrome (color shifting) topcoat, but it didn’t photograph well. The color adds a green shimmer that can shift to pink depending on the lighting, but the photo just shows glare :\. Apparently it also looks fantastic over black, so I’ll share when I attempt that.

The stamping plate is QA65 from BornPrettyStore.com, which I got on sale for only 99 cents, regular price is $2.99, but keep an eye out because they regularly have amazing sales. The plate stamped clean and all of the images are great designs, I can’t wait to try the others. As you can see in the photo my nails are currently short, the images were large enough to cover my nails, one of my thumbs I had to double stamp for full coverage. If you have long nails you will probably need to double stamp with these images which are under an inch long.

Originally, my ring finger was just going to have a single diamond pattern, but since I stamped it on my nail REALLY off-center I decided to just stamp it all around and make a pattern. As Bob Ross would say, there are no mistakes, just happy little accidents. Or as I would say, it’s a mistake, but also an opportunity to get creative!

Either way I love it! I think the stamped pattern would also look really pretty in green with little flowers added or stamped and staggered in two different colors. Have you tried stamping over nude? How’d it turn out?

Sally Hansen Double Duty Base and Top Coat
1 Coat Sephora by OPI Bare To Be Different
1 Coat Milani Creme Brulee
1 Coat Sally Hansen Prisms South Sea Pearl on ring finger
Stamping with Sally Hansen Xtremewear White On (note, my bottle is older and thicker, stamps better than when brand new, but new still stamps well)
1 Coat INM Out The Door Top Coat and another coat after stamping
Stamping plate QA65 from BornPrettyStore.com

I feel like I should go drive a fast car right now! The original plan for this set was to do stamping on top of the colors, but I liked the simple look so much that I stopped while I was ahead. I feel like the racing stripe on the thumb really makes this manicure pop and I can’t stop staring!

Also, I’m officially in love with holographic nail polish and now I know I’m going to want more. I picked up this LA Splash “Sparkling Torpedo” at Bed Bath and Beyond on a whim to get my order up so I could use a $5 off coupon. It was fairly solid at 2 coats, but I did a third for good measure. Well worth the $3! The coral-reddish color is 3 coats of Milani “Just Peachy”, which I found at the dollar store – totally worth it, this color is fabulous. It’s super shimmery and applied really smooth (not thick), but doesn’t dry super glossy so use a topcoat for extra shine.

My Seche Vite topcoat is almost out so on the same trip I picked up Orly’s Sec ‘n Dry to see how it compares. I used Orly on most of my fingers, but the pinky’s got the dregs of the Seche. I think the Seche drys slightly faster, is also slightly glossier, but thicker so potentially more difficult to apply. The Orly polish is toulene free (it still smelled strong) and applied smoothly. I bumped a nail probably 10-20 minutes after application and got a small smudge, so for now I will say that I think Seche probably still does a better job. I’ll keep an open mind since I have only tried the Sec ‘n Dry once.

Which fast dry topcoat do you prefer?