Tuesday 30 October 2012

Gemini MUA Manicure

MUA recently launched a range of five different colour-combos of micro-beads for nails called Nail Constellations. I ordered a couple of shades online as I was finding it difficult to track them down in any Superdrug stores and the other day I experimented with giving myself a manicure using the lilac/peach/green shade Gemini.

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Above: the beads look like cake sprinkles in the bottle – but will they make my nails look just as yummy?

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I chose a light purple colour to use as my base shade. The base shade will peep through the beads and especially when they start to fall off so you should choose a colour bearing this in mind.

The first time you use the Nail Constellations you have to remove the plastic top of the bottle and remove the safety sticker. This is actually a bit of a delicate task and there will be some spillage no matter how careful you are so choose your location carefully!

The beads were surprisingly easy to apply. I painted all my nails with one coat of nail varnish. I then painted quite a thick second coat on my thumb nail and immediately poured the micro-beads over my nail. I did this over a rectangular piece of plastic packaging to catch all the spillage. The beads stuck to my nail quite well and there wasn’t actually as much spillage as I was expecting. The top of the bead container is quite narrow so only a few beads are dispensed at a time. I did have to keep tipping it upright then upside down again to maintain the flow of beads. When I was happy with the coverage on my thumb nail I gently used the pad of my index finger on my other hand to very gently press the beads down into the nail varnish. I then repeated with my ring finger then painted all my other nails with a second coat of purple.

I only painted the tip of my beaded nails with topcoat, as the colour of the beads is soluble and fades when they come into contact with top coat.

I then simply took the top off the bead container and held it upside down inside the bottle to use as a funnel that I poured the excess beads that I had caught in my rectangular plastic container back into.

I was really pleased with the results; I think my beaded manicure looks really cute. Unfortunately it’s not a long-lasting finish and many beads fell off within a few hours, and nearly all of them were gone by the following morning. I would definitely use topcoat over the whole nail next time and not just the tips in spite of the slight fading in colour as the remaining beads had faded a lot by next day anyway. I had heard before that this kind of manicure only lasts for a couple of days so I wasn’t too disappointed. I will definitely do this again next time I’m going out to meet my friends as I know they will love it when they see it – we are all big fans of cake and my nails look like they’re covered in sprinkles!

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