Manicure Monday (39): Beautiful Player

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another Manicure Monday post. Did you enjoy the extra hour that we got yesterday? I wish we got an extra hour every day. I think I could get a lot of reading done with one more hour in the day. :) Today's Manicure Monday book is Beautiful Player by Christina Lauren. If you follow me on Twitter, you've probably already seen me gush about this one. I like the whole series but this one just might be my favorite. Will and Hanna are fantastic together and their romance is hot but also super sweet. I've already re-read my favorite parts of the books several times over, which is always a sign of how much I like it. Hope to have a review of it up soon though I want to write the review for the previous book in the series first. We'll see how that goes. Anyhow, on to the manicure!

I had an idea for this manicure ever since I got it. I like the simplicity of the covers in this series as they usually only feature one color and then black and white. I knew I wanted to incorporate the stripes into the manicure as well. For this look, I only used two nail colors and black acrylic paint.

Cult Nails Tempest (white)
Color Club Rebel Debutante (green)

I decided to do a gradient using the white and green polishes. This actually turned out harder than I expected because the polish is a jelly (meaning it is slightly sheer). Because it was sheer, it was hard to get a really even gradient and it did not blend really well with the white. I did my best but this certainly is not my best gradient. I used a regular makeup sponge to dab color onto my nails, concentrating more color at the tips to get a graduated color shift.

After putting top coat on that, I used a really thin nail brush and black acrylic paint to paint stripes diagonally onto each nail. You guys, thank god I used acrylic paint that I could wipe off because I had to do the stripes on each nail at least 5 times. Apparently painting straight lines is not my strong suit. I started off with thicker lines and moved onto thinner stripes as I moved down my hand. I was trying to mimic the cover with the darker stripes gradually moving onto two thing stripes in the shirt. 

I did something a little different on my thumb and just used a solid green base and splattered black paint onto it. To do this, I used a little coffee straw to blow paint onto my nail to create a splatter effect. I think it matches the cover quite well.

This is the whole look together. Overall I like how it turned out. Though it was harder than I thought it was going to be, the final results were worth it. If you haven't picked up Beautiful Player, what are you waiting for? It's the perfect escape read and I am really glad I picked it up on release day. Now to decide if I also need a digital copy....

Thanks for coming by today. Let me know what you think of this manicure in the comments below. Have an awesome week!

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