St. Patrick's Day Mani #2: Irish Tuxedo

     How is everyone's weekend so far? My weekend is off to a great start, I spent the morning with my husband before he went to work, and tonight I am going shopping with my mom.
     Today I am going to show you another St. Patrick's Day manicure called the Irish Tuxedo. I did a black and white tuxedo pedicure a few weeks ago here. I've been wanting to do a tuxedo manicure for a while now, so I decided to do a green one for SPD.
     First, I used one coat of Get A Clue and one coat of Incognito from Color Club's Alter Ego Collection. I used one coat of each color to try and get a nude color for my base, but it ended up being more pink than nude. In the end, though, I liked how the green and pink looked together.
     I then used green acrylic paint to paint the bow ties and tips, and then I used my dotting tool from Sephora to make the buttons. The acrylic paint keep peeling off of my tips, so I put a coat of Revlon Emerald City over the paint on my tips to make the manicure last longer. I then topped everything off with a coat of Poshe.

 The picture below was right after I was finished, before I cleaned the paint from my skin around the nails. 

     Overall, I really really liked this manicure. The hardest part was making a straight line for my tips. This manicure is a somewhat toned down SPD manicure, but I just love how the green looked! I'm calling this the Irish Tuxedo manicure! 

     What do you think? Have you every tried a tuxedo manicure?

St. Patrick's Day Mani #1: San Francisco Splatter!

     Who out there is ready for the weekend already?? ME!! Does anyone have any fun plans this weekend? My niece's birthday was earlier this week, so my husband and I are going to her birthday party Sunday, so I'm excited about that.
     So, if anyone has been reading the Mermaid Nails Facebook page, you will notice that I am featuring St. Patrick Day manicures from now until March 17th, which is St. Patty's Day, and if I have more that I didn't get to post before that day, I definitely will be posting them after, as well. However, I thought it would be fun to see your SPD manicures, too! So, I would love for you to post your manicure on the Mermaid Nails Facebook wall, and I will feature them all on a special SPD blog post! Can't wait to see them!
   
     Now, onto the first SPD manicure that I am going to show you...

     I've wanted to do a splatter manicure ever since I saw it on The PolishAholic's blog here. Basically, what you do, is tape off the skin surrounding your nail, and then put some nail polish onto a paper plate, dip a straw into it, and blow through the straw to get the polish to spray over your nail, so as to get the splatter effect. You then take the take off of your skin, and do the next nail. So, after wearing Sinful Colors Olympia for a day, which I will later review, I decided to "splatter" it with Sinful Colors San Francisco.
     Olympia is an avocado green cream, and San Francisco is a hunter green shimmer. I think they look lovely together:

     The shimmer in San Francisco contrasts so nicely with the cream of Olympia. 

     The biggest problem I had with doing the splatter manicure was that I couldn't get enough polish to pick up on a straw if the polish was just dabbed on the plate. I actually just had to stick the straw down into the polish bottle, blew through the straw once to get the big clumps off, and then blew the rest onto the nail. 

     I definitely would recommend using a cheaper nail polish, like Sinful Colors or Wet N Wild, because this technique wastes a lot of polish. I was surprised at how much it did waste and look at the mess I was left with when I was finished:

     However, I love the result, and I think it looks very Irish! ☺

     What will you be wearing on your nails for St. Patrick's Day? Will you be doing the splatter?