OPI Pink of Hearts 2013

I love the breast cancer awareness sets that OPI puts out every year. This year's set included a nail art component in the form of rhinestones and pink ribbon decals.

In this manicure I used three coats of OPI Pink-ing of You, and two coats of OPI More than a Glimmer on my ring finger. I added one of the OPI pink ribbon decals on top of More than a Glimmer and to my other nails I added a rhinestone near my cuticles.

Racetrack Nails

After wearing Zoya Godiva almost every day since it arrived, I decided I needed to spice it up a little bit with some simple nail art.  For this look I'm trying a simple strip down the center of my nail with a little bling.

I started with Zoya Nyx, dabbing a line down the center of each of my nails.  On either side of that line I painted Zoya Godiva to frame Nyx.  I repeated this process one to two times more in order to reach an opaque finish that showed no visible nail line.

While the polish was still wet I dropped a silver rhinestone near my cuticles in the center of Nyx to add a little extra sparkle.  I was hoping the incredibly slow drying time of the PixieDust polishes would help to anchor the rhinestone in place.  And help it did!  The rhinestones pushed down through the color and the sidewalls of the rhinestones were held in place by the polish.  When the rhinestones popped off, a hole could be seen in the polish straight to my base coat.

While sparkly and awesome, this manicure wins the "Most Annoying Manicure" award of the year!  Poor rhinestones didn't even last twenty-four hours before I popped them off; the texture overload on my nails was too much for me to bear.

What are your thoughts on rhinestones?

Glittering Flowers

Happy Pink Wednesday!  For this manicure I used two new-to-me nail polishes and it was my first time using rhinestones on my nails.  Many firsts here :)

I'd ordered the M.A.S.H. twelve color rhinestone wheel in January but hadn't really found an application to use the rhinestones.  Suffice to say, I'm going to try and incorporate rhinestones into a lot more manicures - I love how this looks!

This is three coats of Essie A Crewed Interest stamped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Presto Pink using Bundle Monster plate BM-224.  I'm not really pleased with the formula on A Crewed Interest: it just doesn't cover well.  It's opaque, but incredibly streaky.  I probably should have done a fourth coat of it because there were still patchy areas, but since I was stamping I just went with the three.  Formula issue aside, I LOVE wearing this.  I love that the colors have high contrast (for being in the same color group) and I love the sparkle of the rhinestones.

To adhere the rhinestones I'd added a drop of Presto Pink where I wanted to place the gem and then used a tweezers to lower the rhinestone into place.  I added a thick layer of Seche Vite to keep everything together and so far it's holding up great!