Mermaid French Tape Mani

I've been in love with Revlon Minted for a while now, but it's sometimes just not quite blue enough for me. When I was checking out my stash, I realized that I had literally ZERO creme blues. So of course I went and immediately ordered the beautiful China Glaze For Audrey, a gorgeous exact match to Tiffany's shade of blue. When I got it, I just kind of admired it for a little while before trying to figure out what I was going to actually do with it.


Another polish that I've been ogling over for a few months now is OPI Mermaid To Order, which came in my big Sephora by OPI pack of minis. (What a great Christmas present that was!!) It's such a unique shade of blue though that I've had trouble trying to decide what I wanted to pair it with, but after holding For Audrey up to pretty much everything in my collection to find the best match, I realized that these two beauties looked like they were made for each other.

For Audrey went on perfectly smoothly and completely covering in one coat, but the idea of only having one coat of a main color on my nails is preposterous to me, so I threw a second coat on. I decided to try a tape mani for this design, and thought the colors I picked would look fab with a triangle French design, so I taped off my thumb after giving For Audrey about an hour and a half to dry (plus my UV nail dryer!!), and... realized that the tape was waaaay too tedious. The designs were coming out off center and crooked no matter how hard I tried, so I decided that I have a steady enough hand and just freehanded the rest of my nails. I think they came out great!

The colors blended together a little too much for my taste once I got them on my nails, so since I wanted them to stand out, I outlined the border using my Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen in White. The white one is my favorite because it's super opaque and easy to use; I was even able to do my right hand and make it look nearly as perfect as my left!! (I didn't take pictures of it, but trust me on that one.)
Overall, I'm super satisfied with this mani. Not only are the colors gorgeous together, but the quality and formula of each polish was flawless. I'm pretty sure this is my favorite mani I've done in a while!!

Let me know what you think :)

More pics under the cut!