Purple Saran Wrap Mani (First Attempt)

Polishes used:

Orly - Lollipop (base - light pink/lavender creme)

Nicole by OPI - Light a Candle (first color - light purple tinted silver)

China Glaze - Coconut Kiss (top color - grape purple)

This is my first time doing Saran Wrap nails. I originally watched Chelsea's video to get an idea of how to do this technique, but ended up changing it quite a bit. She paints her nails one at a time and then uses the saran wrap immediately to take off some polish and make the pattern. I prefer putting a few drops of polish on a stamping plate, then dipping into the puddle of polish, and then dabbing that onto the nail. I found this gives a more intricate, finer pattern. I also didn't like using the saran wrap. I found that it was a bit sticky, and took off too much polish. I tried using tissue like Rebecca did but the tissue I was using was really soft and ended up flattening out really easily on the nail so the pattern from the folds wasn't as visible as I wanted. It ended up looking like I just sponged some parts of my nails. I ended up using the wrapper from a pad (yes lol THOSE PADS - the ones us lucky girls get to use a few days per month) and found that this worked the best for the finer more intricate pattern that I wanted. The wrapper was very thin paper and very crinkly. 

Going into this mani, I originally wanted to do a metallic light purple color on pink. I imagined it being really pretty in my head and thought it would be along the lines of Bregje's work. I love how she stamps with similar colors and it's very subtle and understated and pretty in that way. Unfortunately, it just looked like my nails were a weird dirty silver gray color after my first round of dabbing. I think because the pattern doesn't have crisp lines it's hard to see the pattern when the colors are so similar and it just becomes one color especially at arms length. It was getting really late so my only hope of fixing my mani was adding another color on top. Coconut Kiss worked perfectly with this technique. Since it's a two-coater, I could go over spots I wasn't happy with and they would become darker than other spots and create a cool pattern that way. I would definitely recommend using two or three coater polishes that are somewhat sheer on the first coat as your top color for this technique. When I was using Light a Candle, if I went over a spot too many times the color would just take over, making my nail a solid color without any pattern. You can barely see the base of Orly Lollipop anymore. I think the only nail where I could clearly see all three colors was my thumb shown below. 

I think this is a really fun technique. It's very easy yet creates stunning nail patterns. It's also great for me right now because several of my nails are splitting into layers and I don't want to file/buff them out too much because it would weaken the nail. The layers show through creme and shimmer finishes and make my nail look lumpy and I need some kind of pattern to hide it. I had been using chunky glitter for this purpose but it's really a pain in the behind to remove. I think this technique would also be good to "refresh" a mani by hiding minor chips when you don't have time to redo your nails completely.