My dry periods are hitting me hard, and they’re hitting me often. 🙁 It’s not that I’m not painting my nails, but I just can’t bring myself to do more than take a quick instagram pic and move on. And it’s frustrating me. I’ve been able to push through it and capture a few of my favourites, so hopefully you’ll be seeing those over the next couple weeks. I also have my Oct Julep box swatched and photographed, so I just have to force myself to edit them and I’ll be able to get that out to you. *sigh*
ANYWAY. Last year I supported a friend while she was applying to my alma mater for grad school, and she got in! (Yaaaay Jenna!) In thanks for my help, she got me a gift while she was traveling in Europe: nail art stuff! Haha. She knows me so well. 😉 So let’s take a look at what I did with the PUPA Milano Nail Art Mania Bubbles Set she got me!
I’ve never tried anything from PUPA Milano before, and the set I got was PUPA Milano Nail Art Mania Bubbles in 002 Violet which included a bottle of microbeads and a bottle of matching violet polish. The polish went on lovely, though it had a pretty strong smell.
After letting my first coat dry (yes, what you see here on my non-microbead nails is a SINGLE COAT) I put a second coat on my accent nail and poured some ‘bubbles’ on top. I made sure to focus my coverage on the top, so that I could pour on some silver to make a gradient-look at the tip. The silver is Essence Effect Nails 3D Pearls in 03 It Rains Money. I patted in some extra beads wherever there were gaps in the coverage, and then gently patted down the whole thing so that the beads were good and stuck in the polish.
What you see pictured is polish and beads without any topcoat. I tried putting a layer of topcoat on this look after, and while one layer was okay two made it look really chunky and gross. The whole thing lasted about 2 days with two layers of topcoat though, which is good to know.
I didn’t jump on the microbead bandwagon when it was a trend (always late to the party), but I somehow still ended up with a billion bottles of microbeads. This was my first attempt at using them in a mani, and generally I’m happy with how it turned out so you might see more of them in the future. 🙂
What about you: still loving the microbeads trend or completely over it?
Thanks for visiting!! xx
