Actual NOTD: Red, White, and Blue

I like to post my nails of the day in order, but today I'm skipping ahead because this look is time-sensitive: it's my 4th of July mani. Last year, I went with simple skittles in red, white, and blue (aw, look at my shorties in those pics), but this year I went a little more fancy-er. I knew I wanted crack—this is the year of crack, after all—and I knew I wanted to try the flag plate I'd been saving for this holiday; this is how it turned out:



And here are both my hands before I did the stamping; I have to show you both because they don't quite match:





The base color on my fingers is Sally Hansen Insta Dri in Whirlwhid White. My right thumb is Barry M Indigo, and my left thumb is 17 Fast Finish Knockout Red (which I recently got from Gem; I'll have a post about the other lovelies in that package soon). It tickled me to use colors that had come over from Britain like the Pilgrims did. The crack is all Pure Ice: Jetsetter (blue shimmer), Show Stopper (red creme), Flash (white creme).

I used the Barry M and the 17 for the stamping as well, though that part almost didn't happen because I couldn't find the plate. It wasn't with my other plates, nor was it listed on the page in my spreadsheet where I keep track of which plates I have, but I was sure I'd gotten it as a swap extra from mrsrexy, and I remembered her saying she expected to see me use it next 4th of July, but as my search for it went on, I started to wonder if I'd somehow gotten confused and made the whole thing up in my head. But then, when I was putting away things I'd pulled out looking for the plate, there it was, still in its packaging.

I don't have that much stamping experience, so the flag was a real challenge for me—I'd somehow have to get the stripes red and the star background bue. I experimented with doing the stripes first and then stamping the blue next, but it was too hard to get it placed correctly relative to the stripes. I tried stamping the whole flag with red and then freehanding the stars part; I could get the retangle of blue down but no way could I make dots tiny enough to fit enough "stars" in. Finally I tried filling in the blue part, scraping, then filling in the red pat, scraping, then stamping. I had to work fast so the blue wouldn't dry and not pick up, and it was hard to keep the blue from getting into the red section and vice versa when putting the polish on the plate and scraping, but I managed to have some success. I messed up a lot, and had to redo the polish on both ring fingers after removing really crap flag attempts. I never got it anywhere near perfect, but my left hand was better than any of my practice trys. On my right hand, I attempted to fill in missing places with a striper, but I had no plain red one and had to use red glitter instead. When concentrating on putting in the missing bits, I failed to notice a blob of polish running down the brush and when that ended up on my nail I'd about had it. I scraped the blob off, covered up what mess I could with a white striper, added some top coat and called it good, even though it's not that great.





Maybe by next year I'll have improved my staping skills enough to do better flags. (Or maybe I should move to a country with a simpler flag!)