I Am ... Such a Spazz

LMAO, so I had it in my head that my blogiversary was on January 19th ... in other words, TODAY, and I planned a cool mani & got all set to post, and just thought "Hmmm, maybe I'll double-check the date" so that I'm not early ... nope, not early, LATE.  By like almost a week LOL.  My 1-year blogiversary was in fact on the 14th.  At least I did post that day, the matte-ified flower marble, but I think that this is proof that I am, in fact, a total spazz.

So, here we have my belated blogiversary mani =)  Something never before seen on MSLP!  Glimpsed only when I hauled them in the first place:  nail foils!  I've heard so much good & bad about these, and I can say I had a little bit of both worlds applying them, but overall I'm impressed & I'd do it again & think my results will improve when my technique is not so amateur. 

The main complaint around the blogs seemed to be that the "special" foil sealer that comes with the nail foils causes crinkling/wrinkling/cloudy/anti-bling crappiness.  The 2 tips to combat that downfall were to let the glue set fully after applying the foil, and to use a regular-to-slow drying top coat.  I did a test on a nail wheel of 6 different top coats I was able to find in my stash:

Left to  right:  Nubar Diamant, Sally Hanson Salon Clear'd For Takeoff, ProStrong Instant Thickening Top Coat, Cina Top Coat, Seche Vite, Foil Sealer

Here are the results with red foil, in the same order.  Some of the cracks are due to my application, not the topcoat, but you can see there's a wide range of wrinkling & clouding:

I chose #3, the ProStrong topcoat.  My biggest challenge was getting the foil onto my nail without any creases.  Creases = spots the foil doesn't stick & you either get a bare patch or have to go back & re-foil which sounds easy but I was impatient & some of my patches turned out better than others.  I used China Glaze Devotion as a base color so the bare spots weren't  glaringly obvious, but I didn't clean up at all so excuse the mess:

Here's the actual roll, and a comparison on my thumb where I thought maybe I could get away with Seche over the ProStrong (not so much):

Not my finest mani, but good enough for a day. Final verdict - still pretty damn bling, even with the issues I had. Unfortunately it didn't wear for crap & here we are after a day at work:

You can see totally half of the foil on my index finger is gone.  Maybe I should have done 2 coats of topcoat?  The nails that fared the best seem to be the ones that went on smoothest, so maybe if I improved my technique the wear would improve?  We'll see ... I've got a lot more of this stuff to use LOL.

Thanks for reading.

~Colette