Ciate Very Colourfoil Manicure

Having the time to sit down and give myself a funky colourful manicure is a great way to relax on a lazy afternoon. That and a mug of tea and caramel digestives infront of an episode of Criminal Minds.

I bought the Ciate Very Colourfoil Manicure set from TK Maxx more than a year ago and realised I had only used it once. Probably because it does take a bit of patience, it isn't a method you can do in a quick spare moment.

I settled down with some snacks and cracked on to create this pink, blue and silver manicure.

I started off by painting my nails with two coats of Cheers To You from China Glaze. This is a silver metallic varnish from CG's 2010 Christmas collection. To get a successful foil manicure you have to wait until your base polish is totally dry.

Then paint a thin layer of glue which came in the Ciate kit and wait for it to go clear and tacky. Using the foil, colour side facing upwards, I dabbed the foil on the nail to transfer the foil. 

I continued doing this method with several colourful foils until I had evenly covered the entire nail. Because I painted my nails with a base colour it didn't matter that the foil didn't always transfer, I think it just adds to the look. 

After the clean up process I sealed in the design by using a generous coat of Seche Vite. The beauty of foils is that no two manicures are the same, even if you use the same coloured foils, the placement will always be different. 

Removal is easy as well, just normal nail polish remover does the trick. 

I picked up my nail foil kit for £9.99 in TK Maxx as it was reduced from £18.

Have you ever used nail foils before?

Ciate Nail Foils

If you saw my last post which was about my Vogue magazine purse, you would have seen I have spent the first part of the week in Falmouth, Cornwall for a spa break.

Mum and I went shopping in Truro and spent a long time sifting through TK Maxx for bargains. One of the things that caught my eye was a Ciate foil nail kit. It was under £10.

In this kit you get a Ciate nail polish, the one in my kit was Pepperminty, foil nail glue, a swatch wheel and a selection of foils, including pink, blue, silver holographic, yellow and pink. I had used nail foils before without too much luck so I was keen to test these out to see how they compared.

First step is to paint your nails with two coats of the polish, and you can use any base from any brand you like, but it is nice this kit came with a polish. Wait for this to totally dry. Then paint on a thin layer of the glue, wait until the glue becomes clear (it has a pearly sheen when first applied) then take the foil, place it on the nail and press firmly.

Remove to see the foil has transferred to the nail. However, I found if you lightly and quickly dab the foil you get a nice random coverage. I used pink and yellow and finished with a top coat.

This is a bit messy, I was a bit trigger happy with the glue but hopefully you get the idea! I like the random placement of the foils but you can totally cover the nail with the foil. I think these bright foils would look brilliant with a dark, vampy base polish.

All in all I enjoyed using the kit, it is nice to add some extra sparkle to a manicure and it looks different to a glitter topcoat. The process didn't take too long either.

Have you tried nail foils out before? What did you think?