Reverse French Manicure Nails and How To

I saw a wonderful nail polish style in Miss von Xtravaganz's blog and wanted to try it out with different colours. While she had a glamorous matte black and shimmery gold tones, I did mine with a deep, dark purple and bright turquoise.

H&M Capri Breeze on the bottom, Opi Ink on top.

I used Opi Ink, a gorgeous shimmery purple for the main color and bright Capri Breeze by H&M for the accent.

Here's how to do the look:

1. Choose your colors. I recommend having shades of the same depth or using the lighter one as the accent color to achieve a harmonious look.

2. Grab the accent color and apply it on clean, dry nails or on top of your favourite base coat. Paint right next to the cuticles and allow the polish to fade out towards the tip. Paint very thin layers and apply three or four, until you are satisfied with the colour right next to the cuticles. Allow to dry.

3. Take your main colour. Apply it on the nail by first putting the brush down in the center of the nails and carefully pushing it towards the cuticle until the distance is as you want the polish to be situated. By pushing the polish rather than brushing it you can control where it ends better. Don't worry if your cuticle line accent isn't perfect with the first coat of the main color, you can do little modifications with the later layers.

I did two layers of Opi Ink, but you should add until your shade looks as you want it to. If you still want to fix the cuticle line, take a small brush and dip it in the main color and fix the lines carefully with the brush quite dry to avoid accidents.

4. Add a thick top coat to hide any fixes or little irregularities on the nail surface. There can be some due to so many layers of polish. I use Seche Vite top coat which is great for smoothing the surface. With Seche Vite you should allow the surface to dry a few minutes to avoid the polish shrinking.

Very Shimmery Nails

For this manicure I used OPI Ink (shimmery dark purple), purple glitter polish, purple and blue glitter polish and Essie Shine of the Times flakie. I really like how much depth the use of different glitters and finishes gives to the nails, and this much texture hides any small imperfections.

Femme Fatale Sinister Calling

I love purple nail polish, and this one by Femme Fatale is no different! It's called Sinister Calling, and it's a purple toned glitter polish. On my pics it's on top of two coats of OPI Ink, a dark purple shimmery polish.

See how many different kinds of glitter it has? There's rose, turquoise, silver and purple in different sizes, and silvery stick glitter and even little stars!

Nails by Anniina

My friend Anniina made me gel nails once again, she's so lovely! I was planning a photoshoot to get some material for a CD cover art project. I needed something feminine for the picture, so she made me these nails!

They are stiletto nails done with clear UV gel and then painted with regular nail polish. Anniina did a gradient with white, lilac and two pinks and topped it all with a gradient of shimmer polish in three shades.

Unfortunately I had to re-do the varnish for the shoot because the white just didn't work against the background I had :( But they were pretty for the time I had them, and the base gel nails worked wonderfully with another nail polish.

Here's what the nails looked like in the photoshoot.

The white in the gradient was problematic because it made the snow look dirty or yellowish. The shade of white was not the same (and the snow was a bit dirty, it's just not supposed to look that way ;P). The dark purple is Opi Ink from Opi, and I painted the nails with this sort of French manicure style but with more edge to it with the intention of not having to worry about my cuticles. I think it worked great! Anniina made the nails so carefully that the cuticle ends are really nicely finished so I'm proud to show them off. But boy did my fingers freeze!

Nails: ELF and OPI

 

Polishes used are ELF Dark Glitter Purple with OPI I Juggle... Men. I used Mavadry for a top coat, it dries the polish super fast and is perfect for an impatient person like me, who can't stay still until the polish sets!

ELF Dark Glitter Purple is really dark in the bottle, but a bit lighter on the nails. It's opaque with only two coats and has tiny blue and red glitter, as well as bigger pale pink glitter.

OPI I Juggle... Men was an impulse buy on eBay, it's a sheer polish with blue and red sparkle. The picture suggests a blue shift, but there's none in real life, it must be the light!