Half Way Through the Month and My First NCC

Today's post is for the May Nail Challenge Collaborative prompt, skittles.  I asked my hubby what color I should work with this time, as I was feeling like I always pick the same colors.  He searched through my pinks for what he called "Bazooka Pink".  These are the colors he picked. 

I have said this before....skittles go agains my sense of order.  I have found the key is to keep at least one thing the same or similar across all five tips  In this case, it is the colors and accents.

With Flash

Artificial Light

This is three coats of the poorly named Essie Forget Me Not.  Forget me nots are blue not pink!  Good bubble gum pink though!  Although this applied smoothly, it was a bit thin and a cuticle flooder.  This is one from a mystery package from No More Rack.

Next I created a skittle with striping tape and some lovely pearls from Born Pretty sent to me for review.

I love these baby pearls!  You can find them HERE at the Born Pretty Store.  They are 1.5mm, the perfect size for some detailed embellishment.  The convenient wheel holds an abundance with a good selection of colors.  They are flat plastic pearls with a pearl finish on the top only.  I only mention this as I ran across a few that had the pearl finish on the bottom and not on the top.  Other than this, they are well made, no rough edges or little pieces of plastic jutting out like I have found on some of these plastic half pearls from other manufacturers.  It is a good thing too since I usually just file them off, but these babies are too small for that kind of manipulation.  Don't forget to use the code at the end of this post for 10% off your order.

Just a quick note, the wheel and the pearls are plastic and the friction created during shipping creates a lot of static electricity.  When I received my wheel, there was so much static electricity in the wheel that when I slid the first section open, several pearls jumped right out of their little beds!  In order to make them less static, and therefore easier to manipulate, just huff a breath or two into the wheel.  The moisture from your breath will reduce the static.  You may have to do this for each section as you open it.  I learned this little trick from working with seed beads in jewelry making.

After creating different designs with striping tape, I added two coats of China Glaze Unrefined, a matte textured bubble gum pink, and peeled the tape off.  I probably let Unrefined dry a bit longer than necessary before removing the tape, but I love how it ended up looking like frosting!

On my ring finger I stamped with Vivid Lacquer VL 009 and Konad Special White and filled the hearts with more Unrefined.

Finally I added the pearls with top coat.  Once again, I used embellishments on a mani I did not want to top coat, so the pearls look a little messy because of the top coat on the dotting tool I used to place the pearls.  (How's that for a run on sentence?)  The pearl finish on these is very smooth and would look smooth under a layer of top coat.

Here is a close up of my favorite tip.

So girly!  Seems I have been breaking out of my dark, vampy manis more and more lately!  Don't worry, I will never go fully to the girly side!  I am too much of a geek for that!

Here is my code, if you want to use it!  If enough people do, they will sponsor a giveaway for us!  Don't forget to check out the other skittles from the lovely ladies at The Nail Challenge Collaborative!