Hello and welcome! This week I’m taking a little bit of a detour from any sort of festive/seasonal manicure designs, and going with a nautical theme!

If you read last week’s post about having winter manicures from then on out, then this will be a surprise. Turns out I was lying. I completely forgot about this weekend, and the fact that I’m going on a three day cruise with my mom! I didn’t actually forget about the trip, just about what that meant for my nail art. So of course, I want to theme my nails to what we’ll be doing.  But I also haven’t had much time to think about a design.  So I went for something easy and classy.

What I Used:

• Base Coat:  Bundle Monster – Base Coat
• 1st Color:  KL Polish – Snickerdoodle
• 2nd Color:  Maniology – bam! white
• 3rd Color:  Formula X – Brain Power
• Top Coat:  Glisten & Glow – Top Coat
• Maniology Poli-Peel cuticle protector
• sponge
• Maniology Seascapes stickers
• Twinkled T clean up brush, size #2
• nail polish remover

I started with base coat and then one coat of KL Polish-Snickerdoodle.  it’s not quite a one coat polish, but I knew I was going to go over it with a gradient.  So I just let it be.  Next, I applied liquid latex all around my nails.  But you’ll soon see that I didn’t add enough, so I still had to clean up in the end.

One coat of KL Polish – Snickerdoodle

Liquid latex around my fingers

Then I added the white to nude gradient, but I really questioned whether it was needed or not.  I actually did this manicure just hours before leaving, so all extra steps made me stress out.  Because of that, I did one and a half coats of gradient.  Some nails just needed a little extra attention.  And since there wasn’t enough liquid latex, it left a ring of polish on my finger.

Then, before adding the nautical nail stickers, I had to look up what they were.  Since I bought them in the summer, as a kit, they were just a free sheet with no instructions.  So I could not remember if they were water decals or stickers.  And experimenting wasn’t an option this time.  But lucky for me they were stickers, and extremely easy to cut & place.

The first coat of gradient

Stickers added before the clean up

This design ended up much more adorable than I was expecting.  And there weren’t any hiccups, which made it much less stressful.  But looking back, I’m missing the Christmas/winter theme.  I guess it will just have to wait for the next design.

Final look – left hand

Final look – right hand

Hope everyone enjoyed their week!

Update:

Since my nails are still short, I wasn’t expecting any chips this week.  And other than some wear at the tips, there really weren’t any.  But i noticed just before taking this design off that they corner of my thumb nail was lifting.  So it was actually just minutes away from chipping.  Either way I’m still happy with how they lasted because the last thing I wanted while I was away from home was to try and keep myself away from picking at a chip.

Very little wear & tear this week

Very little wear & tear this week