ABC Challenge: I

Hello! Yes, I've been slack again, my bad! We suddenly lost two full-timers at work so I've been covering a LOT of hours (yay more money for polish!!) so I just haven't had the time to polish / post! I've got a few posts lined up now so we should be good for a wee while =P.

Right - we're up to 'I', and I chose OPI In The Cable Car-Pool Lane from the San Francisco collection. This is definitely a Fall / Winter colour, but I'm rocking it in Spring, 'cause I can XD click through to see how I made it more Spring-friendly ^_^

For these photos I used two coats of In The Cable Car-Pool Lane and even though I did my best-est to apply it evenly, I still had some bald spots after the second coat =/. I actually used three on my middle finger because the bald spots were so obvious, and some still hung around. You need a super-steady hand for this one!

Having said that, the colour is kinda worth it. It's not the most unique shade (apparently it's almost a dead dupe for OPI Anti-Bleak from the Mariah Carey collection) and I have a couple of other similar shades in my collection, but the finish sets it apart - it's almost a jelly. Definitely a useful Fall / Winter shade. You can easily see this shade wrapped around a hot cup of something by a fireplace with a snuggly blanket!

In an effort to do something different and maybe nudge it toward being a bit more Spring-y, I added some water decals from, of course, BornPrettyStore.com. So maybe I'm a touch obsessed with that site... It's not an addiction! I can stop when I wanna! *ahem*...

I put together a super quick mini how-to for the water decals - they're crazy simple to use. They come in a sheet with all the designs on, so you cut out which ones you want, remove the plastic overlay then dunk 'em in water for maybe 20 seconds, until the decal starts sliding around on the backing paper. If you've ever applied a temporary tattoo, the feeling will be familiar =P. Once the design slides off the paper, it's pretty sturdy so you can position it on your nail with a bit of room for re-positioning. Once it dries out a bit it's stuck for good! They recommending applying a top coat to make them stay longer but every time I've used them, the polish has given in before the decal. They sit flat on the nail so they're not going to catch like studs or rhinestones.

I bought a sheet of 20 decals for US$1.86 (NZ$2.28) and I haven't used half of them yet! There's a tonne of designs available on the site (I just bought a sheet of music notes, staves, treble clefs etc) so there's definitely something for everyone even if you're not the flowery type.

These are seriously the easiest and fastest way of getting pro-looking nails. After painting my base colour, it probably took a maximum of two minutes to apply the decals and top coat. You really can't get any faster than that for nail art! They're darn near impossible to mess up, too. 

So this post turned into something more like a crappy infomercial for water decals XD whoops!! I just think they're brilliant and useful and foolproof. They're especially great for people like me who can't freehand worth a darn (believe me, I've bought the brushes, I've tried with polish, paint, watched youtube tutorials... I'm truly seriously completely useless at freehanding nail art!!) but still want fancy things on their tips. Consider them a nail artist cheat sheet ^_^.

Oh, also, I've disabled commenting on my posts so if you have any questions / comments / requests, head over to the 'Contact Me' section up the top and find me by email, Instagram and/or Twitter. Thanks so much for checking in!! I've got at least the next two posts ready to go so stop by again soon ^_^.