First Attempt at Using Nail Art Microbeads!

As you may have seen in my post from yesterday, I ordered some microbeads off of bornprettystore.com to try, and couldn't wait to try them! It took me about 4 tries to get this right. I tried it first with the technique of just using clear polish to hold the beads down and sealing with a topcoat. The first time I screwed it up when I put a topcoat on it. The second time I opted to not put a topcoat on, which was okay...for about an hour, then they started falling off at the slightest touch. So I put a topcoat on and screwed them up. The third attempt I tried with a different topcoat (OPI topcoat instead of my Seche Vite, which was really bubbly.) It got rid of the air bubbles, but I didn't wait long enough and ended up just dragging the beads off when I tried putting the topcoat on.

As you could probably guess, I got frustrated, my mom actually had to calm me down and look it up online about how to do it. After my little freak out session, we concluded that nail glue would probably be the best option for me. So the next day when I went out I stopped by Sally's and picked up some nail glue and tried it. And it worked! And I don't think it looked too bad either. Take a look! :)

For this I used three coats of China Glaze Urban Night and a coat of Seche Vite over all nails excluding the one with the beads. For that I just did three coats of Urban Night, applied nail glue, attached the beads, waited about a half hour, and applied a coat of OPI Topcoat. You could use Seche Vite over the beads, but mine has a ton of air bubbles in it so I only used it on the other nails. Top coat with a ton of air bubbles really shows through over the beads, even if it doesn't show that badly over regular polish. 

This actually lasted about 2.5 days before I started popping the beads off myself! I probably could have gotten another couple days of wear out of this if I hadn't of popped them off myself. The nail glue I used is the one pictured below, which worked well. Instead of applying small drops of it I put a big glob on and then spread it out with the large end of my dotting tool. I imagine using brush on glue would have been better, but I didn't think of that at the time. Oops!

The nail glue I used.

I used this end of my dotting tool to put the beads on. I dipped it in a little tiny bit of glue and wiped it off so that it was still tacky. You could also use a toothpick, but I imagine that'd be much more difficult.

And now, just to show my failed attempt, the first time I tried it, pre topcoat.

Do you see how much of a stringly, ugly mess that was? I used seche vite instead of a clear coat so that contributed to it being really really stringy since it dries so fast. So I definitely do NOT recommend using Seche Vite to try to apply them.

Also, like I talked about in a previous post, do you see how these microbeads aren't the same size? It's really noticeable in close up shots like this, but it's not that noticeable otherwise, unless you get the largest bead and the smallest bead next to each other.