Happy Chinese New Year! I decided to celebrate with traditional lucky colours of red and gold in a half-moon mani considering it's a new year in the lunar calendar. Usually it's good to wear red clothes on Chinese New Year, but since I don't really have anything red I figured I could at least wear red on my nails :>
I used one coat of Orly Luxe as a base, and one coat e.l.f. Smokin' Hot on top. In terms of colour, Smokin' Hot is almost a dead-on dupe for
butter London Pillar Box Red, but application is another thing entirely: not as smooth due to a strange brush that seems to be cut unevenly, and the coverage is not nearly as good. Luxe shows through the single coat of Smokin' Hot and changes it from bright, classic red to a darker brick red.
The half-moon look is super easy to do: all you need are the circular reinforcements used to fix torn holes in paper. The hardest part is making sure your base colour is completely dry before placing the reinforcements, otherwise the adhesive side will pull off the polish! Then simply paint your second colour from the reinforcement to the tip and pull the circle off immediately. It's best to use a not-too-thick polish with high coverage for the base colour. Even though Luxe fulfills both requirements, it still took
forever to fully dry. I tested it by gently placing a reinforcement at the tip several times--and pulling off a little polish in the process each time--before it was finally good to go. The nice thing about testing at the tip of the nail is that Smokin' Hot later covered up all the missing bits.
My parents warned me that this year would be a bad year for Rabbits, but Chinese horoscopes online promise it's a good year career- and money-wise, so hopefully the latter is right!
Are you celebrating Chinese New Year? What's your astrological sign?
