Not exactly my first time.

First of all, I have to say, I love black nail polish. Why I waited 36 years to buy my first bottle, I have no idea. I've had dark colors (I did a silver/purple French that I'll post that looks black) but I never bit the bullet on just straight black.

I got a bottle about 10 days ago. Orly Liquid Vinyl. I can't say enough good things about it. I've used it with almost every manicure since then.

I started off with a base coat (also an Orly brand but I'm not sure which one), two coats of the Liquid Vinyl and a coat of quick dry Seche Vite.

Then I taped off the sides of the black to make a V at the bottom of my nails and painted the V Orly It's Up to Blue. Before it completely dried, I removed the tape and painted on another coat of Seche Vite.

Once that dried, I used some nail art stickers I picked up at Sally's and adhered the flowers to my nails followed by, you guessed it, one last coast of Seche Vite.


I wore that to San Diego for the weekend and picked up some more polish from Ulta while we were there. In my haul, I grabbed a silver and a gold Orly skinny bottle of polish and used the silver to highlight just the V on my nails. By that time, it had been three days since I painted my nails and I took everything off when we got back to AZ.

If you're wondering about the title of this post, it's because this was actually my second attempt at using tape to do a manicure. My first attempt was only so-so. If you're a Facebook friend you've already seen it but I don't have the heart to include it on the blog yet. Maybe another day when I want to laugh at myself or see how far I've come.

*I have to point out that I took all my pictures without cleaning up my cuticles until the last one. That truly drives me crazy because my nails look so much better without polish everywhere. Told you I was a novice!