Barbie Nails

I love a good dress up party!!

Over the weekend I attended a friend's 21st birthday party with a 'flashback' theme. We were asked to dress as a character we remembered from our childhood, and I, of course, chose Barbie. Princess Barbie to be exact (I already had the tiara, so why not?). Plus I've spent my entire life waiting for an excuse to wear a ball gown!

I figured this called for quite a special nail design, so I started experimenting with a few of my colours (shades of pink) and eventually decided on a pink, glittery French manicure. Unfortunately though, the nails on my right hand are significantly shorter than those on my left hand, and so I had to use some stick on fakeys to make the look work.

I prefer round nails, but they all seem to come in a square shape, so I had to file off the corners in order to get them looking (slightly) more natural on my fingers. Also because the nails I bought weren't all that long (and my nail beds are quite long and my nails are very skinny) a couple of the shapes (mainly my ring and pinky fingers) didn't really work, so I had to stick them higher on my nail than I would have liked in order to get the tips of the fake nails to line up with the tips of my natural nails. In the end this is what I ended up with:


You can see how much space there is between the end of the fake nails and my nail
beds - it is especially noticeable on the pinky and pointer finger in this photo!

I wish I had taken a photo of my own nails while they were naked (it's not a sight people often get to see!) to show how much bigger these look on my hands than my regular nails. Because I have long skinny fingers I thought they looked absolutely gigantic on my hands but I think I needed the larger area to get the design looking good. And I was glad to have the French tip already on the fake nails so I could use it as a guide when painting them as I have never done just the tips before! Unfortunately I am not ambidextrous so I know my right hand would have looked like a finger painting if I'd gone without a guide while painting with my left hand!

I chose a very pale, sheer pink for the main colour. It was a Bluesky Shellac colour I bought from a cheap supply store at my local shopping centre. I didn't want to buy an expensive bottle because I HATE sheer colours so knew I would never use it again, but obviously needed something sheer so it didn't look too tacky. Even though it was sheer I hoped that the base pink colour would have helped conceal the lines where the fake nail met my real nail, but I think it actually made it more noticeable - very disappointing! 

For the tips I chose Gelish 'Carnaval Hangover,' which is another one from the Neon Rio collection. It happened to match my dress perfectly so I was very happy with the colour! It is a very Barbie pink too and I can tell I'm going to use it a lot! I've got it on my toes at the moment and don't fancy changing it anytime soon!

I took this photo after I'd completed the base colour and the tips. I meant to photograph each stage but it was getting quite late at night (I underestimated how long this whole process was going to take) and so rushed through a few steps and forgot to take photos in between!


You can see how much more obvious the join is! I was really disappointed with
how this turned out but didn't have the time or resources to re-do it al so I dealt with it.

After curing the base colour (I only did one coat as I thought if I did two the tips might be way too thick by the end and start to peel) I roughly painted the tips with the bright pink colour and cleaned up the smile line using an eye shadow brush dipped in alcohol. It came away a lot smoother than I thought, but I had to remember to wipe the brush in between each stroke otherwise I got hot pink smudges on the rest of the nail which were harder to remove with the brush!

For the glitter component (glitter improves everything) I used Gelish 'Vegas Nights' which is a stunning fine silver glitter that sparkles really nicely (especially in sunlight). I like to use it a fair bit to dress up colours when I get bored of them, but it seemed absolutely perfect for a Barbie manicure! After applying the glitter I felt it needed a little something extra so I used a couple of pink diamantes as an accent on the smile line of my ring fingers. I stuck them on with a dab of top coat (before curing) and once I'd put them in place I cured that for two minutes before applying the final top coat over the top of the accents (adding a little extra around them to hold them in place). This was the end result:


Barbie Nails!

Flash Off                                                   Flash On
They were the perfect match for my dress (and my ring)!

Overall I was happy with how they turned out - I think they would have been perfect if it weren't for the horrible join lines! It was for that reason that I ended up removing them the day after the party as I knew they were only going to get worse! That and I'm not used to having such thick nails so I was finding it difficult to perform even the simplest tasks with my hands!

I just had to include a photo of the removal process. It was horrible! I don't have any acrylic nail remover so had to soak the nails in acetone until the gel polish was removed and the fake nails dissolved! I did my hands separately so I could still use the other hand (to operate the TV remote and my phone), and it took around an hour and twenty minutes (for each hand!) to completely remove the colour and nails. It was about halfway through soaking the first hand that I realised I could have dealt with these nails for a few more days if it meant delaying this process, but by then it was of course too late, haha.

The skin around my cuticles is still suffering
almost three days later!

I really did love this design and will have to try it again on my natural nails so I can show it off for a bit longer!