Nail of the week: Stylish French Manicure

This week I did a little spin on the traditional french manicure by sticking with a neutral palette and adding painted accents. For the base color I used my favorite neutral that I have talked about many many times on this blog, "sheer rose" by Revlon. It is the perfect color for my olive skin tone more then the traditional french manicure pink. It can be a bit streaky which is the only unfortunate downside to this amazing color so it requires 2-3 coats to get a nice semi opaque finish suitable for french manicures. click here to purchase

For the dark brown tips I used a shimmery brown called "rockin rockette" by Orly. I applied the color at an angle to give the smile line an unusually high edge. Most of the time french manicures actually cheat the length of the nail a bit by painting the smile line lower on the nail plate to make the nail appear longer but this actually had the opposite effect and made my nail bed appear elongated with a smaller tip. Orly is not my favorite salon brand (that would be essie) Im not crazy about their formulation and the awkwardly large cap of the bottle that makes wielding the brush a wee bit difficult but I really love this color, its formulation is a bit gloopy but it is usually pretty opaque and streak free in 3 thin coats. I purchased it at TJ Maxx for $3.99 click here to purchase

I finished the french manicure by applying a thin coat of the flaky topcoat "night in vegas" by Essence. This just so happens to be an amazing dupe for the now discontinued "shine of the times" by Essie, and is one of my favorite nail polishes of all time. It adds a certain je ne sais quoi to whatever color you layer it over giving it shine, dimension, and an otherworldly pop.  Im going to be so sad when I run out of this stuff. I did find a store here in egypt that sells Essence cosmetics but sadly...this color is not among them. (weeps). I purchased it in Fred Meyer stores in portland for $2.99.

To add the painted accents I used white and black water based acrylic paint click here to purchaseand a small size dotting tool to draw the flower and my accent finger and the rest of my fingers. I finished off by adding one 3mm size rhinestones to the center of my flower .click here to purchase. I finished by adding a thick coat of topcoat to seal in my design. This is very important when working with acrylic paint since otherwise it can be washed off! I hope you enjoyed this week's nail art design. Thanks for reading.