How To Prevent an 80's Flashback

Yes, I am alive, and I'm also home for the weekend! I was finally able to go shopping today at the mall not far from my house instead of just browsing online at websites for clothes that I want. Also I was able to go to Target since the nearest Target from my school is about 25 miles away and I don't have a car. I learned today that Target now sells Sinful Colors, which was a surprise, but I got Mint Apple which is a pretty mint green/blue color with extremely fine glitter in it (I'll swatch it later so you can get a better understanding of what it looks like). Also at Target, they had part of Justin Bieber's One Less Lonely Girl nail polish collection for Nicole by OPI. While I detest the Bieber quite a bit, the colors in the collection are quite pretty. I bought I'm a Belieber which is a medium purple creme that I just couldn't pass up, even though it is by the Bieber. I also got My Lifesaver (a mint green creme) at my town's Walgreens along with Sinful Colors San Francisco (an emerald green). I love Walgreens, I just wish they had had Green Ocean for St. Patrick's Day; they only had Irish Green! Grr....

Anyway, as you've probably seen on Chloe's Nails, she's done quite a few patchwork manis. I had wanted to try one of these kinds of manicures for a while so I decided to try one last weekend. I picked out Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri Magenta Motion, Sinful Colors Let's Talk, and Sally Hansen Xtreme Hard as Nails Black Out. Using Magenta Motion for the base color, I used Let's Talk and Black Out for the other two colors of my patchwork. Well.. it didn't exactly turn out the way I thought it was going to look....

Ouch. It looks like the 80's just struck. It reminds me of this shirt that my mom had in the 80's with the same type of style and colors. And I walked around for about a day before I realized this. After that, all I could think was that if I wanted to pull off this mani as it was at the moment, I'd have to find some leg warmers, big plastic hoop earrings, tease my hair up big, and get me some of those Madonna black rubber bracelets. And there was no way in hell I was doing that. This 80's problem required a makeover, and stat!

That's much better! In order to stop the 80's madness, I reached for a bottle of Wet n Wild Wet Shine Kaleidescope and Sinful Colors You Just Wait. I used Kaleidescope on top of Black Out and layered You Just Wait over Magenta Motion. I left Let's Talk alone since I didn't want to over kill it with the layering. But now my mani no longer looked like I was in the 80's, and looked very nice now.

So how do you prevent an 80's flashback with your patchwork manicure? Just follow these simple tips:

Tip #1: Don't use all of the same type of finish for all 3 colors or for even 2 of the colors. (see 1st photo)

Tip #1: Black is a good color to use in a patchwork, especially a creme one or shimmer one.

Tip #3: Glitters are your friends, use one for your 3 colors or over one of your 3 colors.

Tip #4: There's no shame in using lighter or darker shades of the same color. Monotones are fine as I learned with this experience.

So that's pretty much it I guess. I hope you all learned from my experience and try to avoid 80's flashbacks. Unless you know, that's what you're going for...

-Amanda