Whimsy rose garden nail art

I did it! I finally did the floral nails that I've been longing to do for quite some time now. I scrolled through quite a few pages of Google images to find inspiration. I LOVE how these turned out. What do you think?

Taken indoors

I remembered to take a picture while doing these nails.

Taken with flash

Here they are, halfway done. Flash overkill, I know. :P

Taken with flash

And here they are, complete!

I used a dotting tool for the flowers, a small nail art brush for the leaves and a black nail art pen for the outline of the flowers.

The colors I used for this design:
Base:

• China Glaze - White on White

Flowers:

• China Glaze - Strawberry Fields (couldn't resist a bit of shimmer!)
• Essie - The Girls Are Out (shimmer, again)
• A pink Love & Beauty polish from F21.
• Two nameless local polishes.

 Leaves:

• Sally Hansen - Mint Sprint
• Sally Hansen - Green With Envy

I used Seche Vite as a top coat and it sealed all the colors in nicely.

Taken indoors

Taken indoors (matte)

Oh, I added my Orly - Matte Topcoat after a couple of days to see if I would like it matte. Nahhh. Glossy is the way to go!

Taken in the shade outdoors

Taken indoors

This is China Glaze - White on White before I did the design. You can probably tell from the picture that only my thumbnail had two coats and the rest only one. In my haste to get my nails done, I forgot to take a picture with all nails layered with 2 coats of White on White. ><

Thanks so much for reading.

Part 2 of my US haul

 And here's the continuation to part 1 of my haul.

I didn't realize how many base and top coats I bought until this post. I actually only meant to get the Seche Vite Fast Drying Top Coat but here's what I ended up with:

Sally Hansen Complete Care Extra Moisturizing 4-in-1 Treatment

Hmm, this is supposed to strengthen, moisturize and help nails grow faster. I have only used it twice so I can't say for sure whether it works as advertised.

Sally Hansen - Double Duty Strengthening Base & Top Coat

I went to Target, couldn't find any OPI base coats so I went with this. It is pretty decent and I love the brush!

Sally Hansen - Insta-Dri Anti-chip Top Coat

I like this top coat. I would use it for every day manicures. It dries a little slower than the Seche Vite but who cares?! A few more seconds of drying time don't matter to me.

Orly - Matte Top Coat

This is my first matte top coat ever. I used to look at matte nail art and think they were the coolest things ever but somehow once I applied this on my own nails, I didn't really like the look of it. I think I'm more of a super glossy top coat finish kind of girl. Maybe I'll give it a few more shots - see if I can appreciate the finish.

Orly - Bonder Rubberized Base Coat

I actually bought this as a nod to my mom's old Orly Bonder Base Coat which is what I first used when I was younger. Orly's bottles are way huge which is great because I won't have to run around looking for a new base coat once the others run out.

Seche Vite - Dry Fast Top Coat

Ahah! For all the hype that people make about Seche Vite's Top Coat, the print sure came off the bottle fast. I'm kidding. It's great and really works - seals everything in super quick! The smell is strong though and I don't think it's 3-free?? Still, I wish I'd gotten the huge refill bottle. I've been getting back into the swing of nail art and I've been using this Seche Vite as a top coat for the designs. This definitely beats the heck out of local top coat. ;)


Also, Happy 4th of July to those celebrating!

Random fact: I followed a link to Bonnie McKee's new video American Girl yesterday. The song is mehhh to me but I love a video with fun cameos.