NOTD: A Somewhat Successful 1st Konadicure

I bought a bunch of konad items a couple of years back and have played with it from time to time but haven't had any success with it. I ended up getting frustrated and put it away. A sweet and generous blogger friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, sent me an awesome gift a couple of months ago. She sent me the expensive Rescue Beauty Lounge nail polish in Scrangie and some discontinued Sally Hansen chromes. Thank you so much! You know who you are! I finally worked up the courage to try to dress up my poor, mangy nails. My nails have gotten really soft since I stopped taking GNC's Hair, Nails and Skin formula (or whatever order the name is in). I wasn't sure if it was doing anything but now I know that it was helping to strengthen my nails a bit.

I won't review Scrangie extensively since I know many reviews are out there. It is a lovely holo purple shade and I really like it applied as a single coat since it applies as a light purple. Unfortunately, my application skills are horrible and I can't get an even coat with just one application so I had to apply two coats. It's beautiful plum color.

I then decide which konad design I want to use and which color of the chrome to use. The first design and color that I chose doesn't come out well. I think that I needed a brighter chrome color for it to show better so I switched and it still wouldn't come out well.

In this picture it shows up nicely but I took it outside in bright sunlight. Otherwise, you can't see anything in normal lighting. I also noticed that when I put it onto the stamper, a lot of the lines were not showing up. I think that maybe the lines are too fine and unfortunately, most of my plate designs are like that.

I switched to another design, which reminds me of tiger stripes. I am one of those people who do not tend to like animal prints so this tiger design really doesn't appeal much to me. However, for the first time ever, I was able to get a good konad print!

Here is the print on my left hand. Oh, please excuse the really messy application. This was taken soon after I finished my konadicure and I didn't even clean up my fingers. I like how this design shows up really well and I'm happy that it actually turned out!

Next I do my right hand and it is an epic fail! Well, maybe not quite epic but it is somewhat a fail.

First of all, my middle finger is all wrong! The stripes are going from side to side! LOL! Okay, I could reasonably say that this was intentional since it's my middle finger and I wanted to do something interesting. Unfortunately, my left hand's middle finger was already done properly so I couldn't make it match. If you look at the rest of my fingers, the design is pretty much straight up and down rather than at an angle like my left hand. I really like it at an angle.

I did my base coat and top coat with Deborah Lippman Hard Rock, which I like very much. It is the one top coat that really helps to make my manicure last for a decent amount of time. With normal top coat (OPI), after one day and having washed my hair, done dishes several times plus my normal wear and tear of doing housework and work (I'm really hard on my hands), I would have tip wear and/or chipping. I have done all of that and so far my nails look like it was just done, sans the messy polish on my skin.

Now I will have to go and look for more konad designs with thicker lines and see what happens. Do any of you have problems with the small designs and/or designs with fine lines?

*Kat*