Lacquer-Loving Lawyer: A Nail Polish Blog: My First Dotticure!

As my base manicure, I used Rainbow Honey's Kitsune from the new Yokai Collection. I had a preview post here on the Rainbow Honey Yokai Collection with pictures of the package I received and of the three polishes swatched on nail wheels by themselves and in combination with other colors and matted. The Yokai Collection polishes are limited edition for Autumn 2012 and were released only days ago on October 13, 2012. The polishes are available on Rainbow Honey's website for $10 each. These are good sized bottles at a half ounce each, and $10 is a very reasonable price for these indies that are so professionally produced and look like little mini works of art. The first of the Yokai Collection that I wore was Kitsune. I reviewed Kitsune here. I wore Kitsune all of last week as my manicure, and then on the 7th day, on Saturday, I tried my first dotticure over Kitsune!

Kitsune is referred to as the Magical White Fox on Rainbow Honey's website. The base is a gorgeous cream color, like the color of French vanilla ice cream or like eggnog. With its golden microflakes and its small sparkling holo and red-orange glitter, this creation looks like a beautiful stone. The polish has amazing depth and the microflakes and small glitters don't just sink into the polish but show right at the top of the manicure. It's like someone cut a slab of perfect natural stone.

The colors in Kitsune made me think of fall and fall colors. In my preview post on the Rainbow Honey Yokai Collection, I had tried Kitsune over different fall shades of nail polish, but then it occurred to me that instead of layering, I could add dots of my favorite fall colors of nail polish. If I had practice with nail art, I might have tried to create leaves or other fall shapes instead of dots, but I ended up really liking the dots. They were very whimsical, and I was happy every time I looked at them. Even my husband liked them. The lady behind the register at Walgreens complimented me on them. Unfortunately, I took them off the next day. I would have wanted to keep wearing them but the underlying manicure was not going to be able to last more days, and I had to go to court this Monday and felt I should wear something a little more serious.

I don't have dotting tools per se. I tried the bottom of the handle on my one dotting tool, but it didn't make a dot as wide as the handle. On the other end is very tiny dotting tool, maybe for drawing small eyes or pupils on tiny faces on small nails.

A chopstick worked well for the larger dots I wanted. At first I was not getting enough paint on the chopstick so my dots were dimpled and not filled out. Then I had too much paint, and my dots were very thick, sticking out in 3D. No problem. For not enough paint on dots, I could go over the dots once I learned to add more paint to my "dotting tool." For too much paint, I could dot over it with a wiped off chopstick again and again until enough paint was taken off.

On my first fingernail I did, I smeared the dots as I learned, but I had enough coats of top coat on there that I was able to use acetone to remove the dots and start over without removing the original manicure polish (Rainbow Honey Kitsune).

All kinds of nail art would look nice with Kitsune and these colors I used. I could see a funky French or half-moons or stripes or a tape mani looking nice.

It was so much fun to create this dotticure!

In the pictures below, I have:

Zoya Tamsen, dots created with a chopstick
China Glaze Papaya Punch, dots created with a chopstick
OPI Deutsch You Want Me Baby?, dots created with a hair pin
Sparitual Solstice, dots created with a hair pin
topped with 1 coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat.

That was over the original manicure of: base coat, one coat of Sally Hansen Persistent Peony as "underwear," one coat of Rainbow Honey Kitsune, one coat of Seche Vite, one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat, one coat of Gelous, and three coats (one each day) of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat.

Sunlight
Left Hand

Sunlight
Left Hand
My jeans in the background

Sunlight
Right Hand
I didn't intend for some dots to be touching on my pinkie finger, but my hands shake a little, so the dotting tool did not always "land" where I planned. I liked the end result, though, and in the future I may deliberately make dots touch.