Thursday, August 15, 2013

Dazzling Chevrons

I finally decided to try out the famous chevron mani by @SelenaDee_Nails on Instagram! This design is not only popular, but very simple and appealing. I thought this design would be perfect for the Jonas Brothers concert I was going to that day, yes I was totally there for their comeback, and they were just as great since the last time I saw them in 2008!


I swapped out the bright red that Selena used on her thumb, index and pinkie fingers for Essie's Butler Please, a rich blue. This was the first time I used my new polish and I was honestly a bit confused. To my surprise, Butler Please is a crelly polish! It applied like a cream but was somewhat sheer and dried matte. It was opaque in two coats but with one more coat it was much brighter. 


When I know I'm doing a full silver glitter nail, I always apply one coat of a metallic silver polish first. I do this so that there won't be empty spots if the glitter doesn't cover my whole nail, meaning I'll need less coats of the glitter polish. My go-to glitter is Essie's Set in Stones, it's packed with sparkle and will never disappoint! I layered three coats of that over one coat of Silver Mercedes by Pure Ice, a metallic polish.


For the accent chevron nail I started off with a few coats of Superstar! by Pure Ice, a creamy white. This isn't my favorite white polish, its a bit old and thick. I thought I had grabbed I Will! by Loreal but realized I hadn't and was too lazy to walk a few steps to my room to switch them out, haha so I thought this would do. When doing this tape mani, you have to make sure the white is completely dry before moving on, or else the tape could ruin the wet nail. I added a coat of Seche Vite to speed up the drying time. 

In the mean time I was cutting up the pieces of tape for this design. I don't own any zigzag scissors so I followed @Jewsie_Nails tutorial for her easy chevrons. Using a regular piece of tape I folded it (sticky sides out) and cut an angled line down the fold, and then did it once again to get a thin v-shaped piece of tape after I opened it up. 


I placed the pieces of tape on my dry nail and pressed them down to make sure no pieces were oddly lifted up. Then I painted two coats of Liquid Leather by China Glaze on my whole nail and quickly but carefully lifted the tape off of my nail. Ta-da! You're left with a beautiful chevron accent nail! I used my black and white nail art stripers to clean up any empty/uneven lines and I had a very clean and pretty chevron. 

One coat of Seche Vite on each nail and the design was done! I'm pleased with how this came out and I'm definitely doing more chevron manis in the future now that I know how to do them. I hope you all like this and try this out! Have a great day!