First Before & After (& After) NOTD: Orly's Mysterious Curse/Royal Velvet

Hello!

One of the things I love on my favorite nail blogs is when people post before-and-after pics of manicures that they change up after a day or two in some way. So, I thought I would do this myself, since I often will try to get extra mileage out of my manicures. I've noticed that some people are apologetic if it's just a 'typical stamping job', but I don't think there is any such thing. I love to see the different combinations of colors and stamps, even if it is just one simple stamp put on a base polish. It inspires me...So I warn you now that I will likely do that often here. :)

Here is my first documented attempt. A few days ago I posted about how much I love Orly's Mysterious Curse (can also be found under the name 'Royal Velvet'). I still love it. I believe epic poetry will be written about it, and that future generations will mark its release date with a national holiday, celebrating with cupcakes iced in duochrome frosting...yum, I love frosting...nom nom nom...Wait...what was I saying?

Oh yes, the manicure. After wearing it for two days, I decided to try some stamping on it. I wanted something that played up the halloween-y goth-y feel of it, but didn't want to do something really obvious like webs and spiders. So this is what I did (notice I couldn't bear to cover all of the nails with stamping, lol):

Before:

And afters:

You can see the accent tips on the very edge of the nail better on this hand.

Close-up of the accent nail...Great paint job, such clean cuticles (NOT).

And I had to include this one even though it's a bit blurry 'cause it shows the duochrome a little. :)

I stamped a background pattern on the accent nails with China Glaze Avalanche using Cheeky Plate D. Then I used Sally Hansen's Silver Sweep to stamp the cross, using Bundle Monster plate BM-13. To finish it, I put a very fine line of Avalanche at the top of every nail right at the tip...I saw this look on some Pinterest board, and really liked it, but am not great at it yet.

I like how this came out. The background stamp gives it a little dimension, and makes the contrast between the silver and the dark blue less stark. The colors work well together, and the whole thing has a goth rock kind of feel to it, at least IMO. :)

One word of warning. While stamping doesn't kill the duochrome effect completely, it does lessen how much the nail shows the full purple color. So if you were to cover every nail with stamping, that would definitely alter the duochrome effect of this polish somewhat.

After wearing this for a day I wanted to add a little something to it, so I did this:

On my pinky and my thumb, I layered stripes of crackle polish, first a silver (Sally Hansen Fractured Foil) and then over most of it, but leaving a little showing, a purple (Sally Hansen Vintage Violet). I've like the idea of having an accent nail on the ring finger, and then some sort of complimentary accents on the thumb and pinky. It adds just a little flare to the manicure, and leaves most of the nails showing the main color. and I think these crackles went well with the colors I used to stamp--not perfectly, but that's okay, close enough. What do you think? :)

Oh, and...I love that you can see Mysterious Curse's shimmer in the light on these pics. :)

Thanks for reading,

M.