A-England Saint George, Dragon, DLC Devil Grass Ombre

Yay my first ever attempt at an ombre. It was very easy to do, and very messy, and turned out beautifully. And then it got all messed up thanks to one tiny little bottle of speed dry top coat.

First off, application of all three polishes was beautiful. I pretty much love everything A-England puts out, and had all of the polishes until the Burne-Jones Dream collection was released. I would have them all anyhow except that Royal Mail sucks and won't ship them internationally anymore which forces me to wait until they reach a distributor. And since they sell out so freakin' fast when they're released and I'm not willing to deal with that (which means I'll never get an Enchanted Polish...ever), I'm forced to wait. Which I hate.

Jerks.


Devil Grass was my base and I gave it two coats. It's a pearly very light green polish, so light that you can barely tell that it is green at all, with two shades of very small green glitter in it. So it goes very well with Saint George and Dragon. Now as it's my first ombre I didn't really manage to blend them as well as they should be, I think. I also didn't grind them into the sides so you can totally see the Devil Grass there. But here's the first attempt.

Pretty good job for a first try, if you ask me. I was pleased anyhow. Then I got up the next day, started getting ready for work, and got a good look at what happened. When you do one of these, you do your base and then hafta let it dry, right? I used Seche Vite. It shrunk the Devil Grass at the tips of my nails so badly that it screwed the whole manicure. It was all jacked up. I was not pleased at all. So don't ever ever ever use SV with the Devil Grass, k? I did not have that issue with either Vision of Cosmic Importance or Preacher Woman.

I did the best I could to patch it up so I could live with it but it broke up whatever blend I had managed. Now I think it sorta looks almost striped. Not sure I like it as much. So disappointing because I hadn't taken my good pics of it yet. Lesson learned.

Since I used Saint George to patch up the tips...and didn't wait for it to dry all the way...it dragged the color through the other ones and darkened the overall look as well. Sigh. It's not horrible but it looked so much better before.

Glamour Shot anyhow:

Live and learn.

Jess