Blue, Green & Purple Watercolour Mani

OPI GelColor Passion, Essie Mint Candy Apple, OPI Fly, OPI A Grape Fit, China Glaze First Mate, Ozotic 505

My second watercolour mani! This time in blues and greens, with a bit of sneaky purple. I had this on at the same time that I received my package from Picture Polish. PP recently had a sale and I bought Ozotic 505 and Ozotic 530. I couldn't resist adding a coat of 505 to this mani. It gave it a subtle bit of shimmer and sparkle.

Watercolour Nails

OPI GelColor Passion, OPI Hot & Spicy, OPI Dutch Tulips, OPI The "It" Color, China Glaze First Mate

While I'm rocking the gel mani, I wanted to attempt watercolour nails. I saw this on Chalkboard Nails  (and also followed Sarah's link to Rebecca Likes Nails and this video at BeautyGeeks) and really wanted to try it, but one of the necessities with this mani is a base that won't be cleaned off with nail polish remover, so you either need a super thick top coat, or a gel or shellac mani. I had tried it once with just a top coat and I failed miserably. 

This time however, it was a bit more successful! Everyone else uses acetone to do the watercolour, but I used non-acetone remover, because I was slightly worried about ruining the gel. It still seemed to work how it was meant to. Since my gel mani is just kicking butt at looking perfect and not chipping, I figure I should keep it on a bit longer so I'm going to do this again! Probably in greens and purples. 

OPI GelColor Passion

OPI GelColor Passion

Over the weekend, one of my best friends got married, and I was lucky enough to be one of her bridesmaids. The day before the wedding we all got manicures and pedicures. I knew that if I had a regular manicure, with my luck there'd be a chip the next day and I didn't want to have to worry about fixing my nails on the big day, so I got an OPI GelColor manicure. I ended up with Passion, which is a pale (almost peachy looking with my skin) pink. I took this photo this morning and they're still looking absolutely perfect, even though they were banged around all weekend! 

It's meant to last at least 2 weeks (3 weeks if you don't mind it growing out from your cuticles) but I'm not sure if I can last that long with the same nude manicure! I've read that you can paint regular nail polish over it and remove it, so long as you use non-acetone remover. Has anyone used regular nail polish over a gel manicure? Any tips? I'm thinking of stamping over it when I get bored.