The Lite Side of Life: Mani Monday: Smiley Face Mani

Hello Lovelies!

This Mani Monday I wanted to display a mani I have been pondering for a while now and finally got around to doing it. A mani that is sure to put a smile on your dial :) Firstly, thanks to Heather from Glitter & Gloss Blog for featuring my mani from last week as her favourite choice! Secondly, one of my manis was featured in the March 2013 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine (South Africa), I could have died with excitement, more about that below! Here is the Smiley Face Mani:

If you recall, I recently won a Revlon hamper to the value of R1000.00 packed with goodies for winning a weekly Mani Monday competition run by magazine giant Cosmopolitan (South Africa) in coalition with Revlon (South Africa). Cosmopolitan called me a few weeks ago wanting to feature my winning Girls of Summer Mani in their upcoming issue in a spread about Manicure Mondays, of course I could not say no :)

Now, that all that goodness is out of the way, let’s move on with todays Mani Monday shall we. For this Smiley Face Mani I highlighted the smiley face on plain yellow accent nails with pops of yellow lines peeking through black nail polish on all the other nails. I used striping tape to achieve the line detailing on the nails and used a stamping kit for the accent nails (needed some free hand touching up though). I used Revlon Nail Care Calcium Gel Nail Hardener as a basecoat, Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Mellow Yellow x3 coats as a base colour coat, Essence Nail Art Stampy Polish in Stamp Me! Black x1 coat for nail art and top colour coat and Revlon Nail Care ColorStay Gold Standard Top Coat as a top coat.

You will need:

Base coat nail polish
Base colour coat nail polish (I chose yellow)
Top coat colour nail polish & for nail art (I chose black)
Top coat nail polish
Stamping kit with smiley face stencil (or you can draw on the smiley face freehand with a toothpick)
Toothpicks

Method:

1) Apply base coat nail polish to nails, wait for it to dry completely

2) Apply base colour coat to all nails, wait for it to dry completely

3) Apply striping tape to tips of all nails (except accent finger nails aka ring finger nails)…place the striping tape around where you would paint a french tip. Make sure you firmly press down the striping tape so that there are no air bubbles, this will ensure that there is a clean, neat line left when you pull the striping tape off later

4) Paint all nails (except ring finger nails) with x1 coat of black nail polish, you will paint the nail polish straight over the striping tape. The principle works the same as it would with painting on white french tips using french tip guides

5) Immediately after painting on the nail polish remove the striping tape from the nail. I find it best to work nail by nail, paint one nail and remove the striping tape immediately and then only move onto the next nail, I find this leaves a cleaner, neater line. Repeat steps 3-5 on all nails

6) Now you can start working on the smiley face nail art for the accent nails. I used an Essence stampy stencil for the smiley faces on the accent nails, however for some reason I had trouble getting the stampy design to transfer onto the stampy stamper. The Essence black stampy nail polish I was using was a matte effect nail polish, I'm not sure if that had a negative effect or not. The stampy design only very lightly transferred onto the nail and at that, some of the design didn’t transfer at all so I had to go over the design freehand. This is clearly apparent in the shaky smile of the smiley face! Like wise if you don’t own a stamping set you can apply the smiley face freehand with a toothpick. However, I do highly recommend the Essence stamping set, available at Dis-Chem (SA drugstore)…this has been the only time I've had a little trouble with it, most times it works a charm once you get the hang of it. More discussions on how to use a stamping set here

7) To apply the smiley face freehand, you could dot on the two eyes using a toothpick dipped into the black nail polish and slowly draw an upside down ‘C” shape for the smile…if you have a steady hand then your smile will look better than my shaky attempt! No shame though, I think it adds character haha :)

8) Once all the nail art is dry, apply top coat nail polish

9) Look down at your mani and totally feel a huge smile creeping up on you, ‘cos you can’t help but be cheery with a mani like this! This mani automatically made me start thinking of the childhood rhyming song ‘If you happy and you know it, clap your hands…' la la la…c’mon tell me I’m not the only one!