Adventure Red-y and a failed experiment in Liquid Sand

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Hello. I am sorry for being so absent, but I have been ill and am only beginning to feel myself again. For my return to health, please allow me to show you the lively manicure I wore this past week. China Glaze Adventure Red-y is a highly pigmented blood red. It is almost a one coated too!Forgive the tip wear; this was five days into the manicure and it was about to be removed.

I wore two easy to apply coats of Adventure Red-y. On my accent finger are two coats of China Glaze Lubu Heels which applies a bit sheerly but soul build to full opacity on its own in three coats. I chose to accentuate the red glitter by adding a coat of China Glaze Ruby Pumps on top.

I really like how this simple manicure tuned out, but being completely honest, it was not what I intended. What I planned to show you was the miserable failure seen below.

I was hoping to find a way to turn any of my favorite polishes into a textured finish like the OPI Liquid Sand polishes. I had seen a couple of pictures of salt manicures and thought that a finer grain salt might yield the kind of finish I wanted. I took table salt and ground it in my spice grinder until it was fine and sandy. I painted the nail with Lubu Heels, then dipped my wet nail in the salt. I let it dry for a few minutes and added two more coats of Lubu Heels and finished with one coat of Ruby pumps. The picture above was taken after wearing the manicure for about 3 hours.

What all those salt manicure tutorials don't tell you is that the salt, even while encased in polish, sucks any moisture it can get. So what happened within a very short time is a salty residue began to ooze out and collect around my cuticles. It got so bad that it looked as though I had a fungus growing around my nail beds. Yuck!

This picture above was my first attempt using just Lubu Heels (one coat, salt, and two coats more). The picture was taken minutes after painting, before the fungus like symptoms began.

It was because of this manicure that I went into work one day last week with naked nails. The horror! I know that this isn't my most beautiful post, but now, hopefully, you won't suffer the salt manicure like I did.

Photo courtesy of Thoughts of a Midwestern Girlie Girl

And just so you aren't left with a bad taste in your mouth from my overly salty fingernails, Daanielle of Thoughts of a Midwestern Girlie Girl was kind enough to let me show one of her amazing swatches of OPI Stay the Night. This is what a textured sand finish polish should look like. Isn't it lovely?

Take a look at some of the pretty manicures and polishes at the Nail Files.

Have a good weekend.
~Alexis