Nails of the Week: Birthday Manicure

Hey guys! Sorry I haven't posted in a few days, it's my birthday week and I'm trying to get everything ready! I figured a good place to start is with a birthday mani!

It's one of those face masks and nails kinda evenings, I try to save one evening a week for this. Every girl has to make time to pamper themselves!

I chose this really cute, true baby pink colour by OPI called "It's a Girl!" and what better colour to layer on pink than more pink!? I'm using this Hello Kitty by Sephora in "Pink Sparkles" that I picked up on sale with a Sephora haul from not too long ago. It was on sale, I couldn't help it! This colour combination kind of reminded me of pink cupcakes with sprinkles and I relate that to birthdays so I thought this would be fitting :)










Here's a step by step on how I did this manicure on myself:

First I started with clean, nail polish free nail beds. This is really important if you want your manicure to last. You want to wash your hands and scrub off any debris and oils that are on your nail beds, and take off any old nail polish that might be remaining.

A trick that I learned to help keep your manicure mess-free, is to rub petroleum jelly (aka Vaseline) around my nails and on my cuticles. This will keep the nail polish from seeping onto the skin and cuticles and even if some does end up on your skin the jelly makes it come right off with little effort. Be careful not to get any on your nail bed as that will affect how long the nail polish will last. Usually after I apply the jelly, I go over my nail beds with a q-tip and acetone to make sure they're clean and ready for nail polish application.

I apply the first coat of the OPI base colour...

And a second coat...

And a third!

I make sure to let each coat dry before applying the next, and after I had applied three coats I take some extra time to make sure it's nice and dry before adding the sparkle top coats.













I only want half of my nail bed to have sparkles so I add one layer starting in the middle of my nail bed down to the tip. I apply a second layer but closer to the tip just to get some more sparkle on that area.























Because I used 3 coats+ in total for this manicure I want to make sure I give it a good chunk of time to dry. I made sure that I could sit and wait for this to dry for 20 minutes before continuing my evening.

And voila!

No Flash

With Flash

Super cute and easy manicure, that anyone can do on themselves or friends for a cute spring/summer look. Pretty and girly, you can't help but love this cotton candy pink and sparkle combination. Perfect for prom or any special occasion!

Hope you enjoyed my manicure tutorial and try this out for yourself. I will be posting my weekly manicures as I go, so please subscribe or check back often for more manicure ideas! Please leave any suggestions or manicures that you would like to see in future posts in the comments box below. More daily photos and fun on my Instagram, follow me @fernonje :)

Happy Hump Day!
xoxo
Ashley