31 Days: Day 9 - Rainbowtastic

My first instinct for ‘rainbow nails’ was to do some kind of gradient, but since tomorrow is gradient day I thought I’d do a variation of my Happy Rainbow Time mani, which remains one of my absolute favourites. And it’s been almost a year since I posted that.

Today I used:

• essie rock solid
• essence btgn base sealer
• Manhattan Quick Dry 53F
• acrylic paint
• essence gel-look top coat
• Seche Vite

First I applied my bases, four coats of 53F and Seche Vite.

53F is a bright, faintly warm pink crème, it’s just the kind of pink I adore. It’s pretty sheer, so four coats are the absolute minimum for an opaque result.
I like how evenly 53F applies, if you don’t mind the sheerness you could easily wear it in two coats. The viscosity is very nice, runny enough to level well, but not so thin it pools. The only issue I had was the brush, it’s a bit short and round and just doesn’t hold a lot of polish. I had to figure out exactly how much to wipe off as I pulled out the brush.
Great colour, very nice application, less than exciting pigmentation. Overall this gets a cautious recommendation.

This is 53F in two coats without top coat:

And here’s 53F in four coats with Seche Vite:

After the base colour was dry I assembled my acrylic paints, mixed the shades and applied rows of each colour with a dotting tool, staring with a diagonal row of green dots and working outwards from that according to the spectrum.

After I was finished I sealed the mani, first with gel-look top coat, then with Seche Vite.

So excited! I love rainbow dots and the indigo and violet even look right without tweaking the photos.
Now what to do for tomorrow’s gradient?