Brushes with disaster

I had all kinds of wonderful things planned for my nails that would use my brand new brushes. My preferred design was a peacock manicure that would use the fan brush to make a feather effect. If that failed, I wanted to do a variation of these nails. After a series of unfortunate events, I ended up doing neither.

First of all, I noticed that my strengthener had gotten quite thick, to the point it was becoming a bit difficult to use. Having seen many people add water or nail polish remover to their polishes to dilute them, I decided to give it a try. I carefully added a very small amount of water, sealed the bottle, shook it to mix it up, and....disaster. The strengthener became filled with tiny bubbles and did not seem to dilute at all. I made a mental note to buy a new one when I had a chance and managed to get a fairly even coat on each nail.

With that completed, I decided to attempt my peacock nails on my thumb nail. They did not work AT ALL. I tried a different variation on my pointer finger, with equally disappointing results. So I removed the polish and attempted to reapply the strengthener. After at least a dozen failed attempts to get an even coat on my thumb nail, I realized that it was a lost cause, took the strengthener off all of my nails, and left them bare for the night.

The next day I bought a new bottle of strengthener and attempted to do my back-up design, which requires leaving unpainted triangles on the bottom of your nail. I was not very good at making these triangles look even. To be honest, I gave up fairly quickly on that one because I was already frustrated from the previous night's difficulties. I finally settled on doing this design, because it was pretty simple and I could still use my brushes. Here's the end result:

The base coat is LA Colors "Morning Glory", and the design is done with Sephora's "Queen of Everything". I enjoy the bold pattern, though if I do this again I might consider using a light purple or pink for the design to see if that looks better.

My stamping set came in this week, so expect to see a few of those designs coming up!

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