Black Half-French with Silver

I've been in a hell of a funk lately, and when I asked the man re: color suggestions, he casually tossed out that I never do a classic french mani look.  Well, there's a reason for that:  my polish buddies have referred to the classical white-tipped french mani/pedis as "stripper nails" in a years-long running in-joke.  On top of that, I'm convinced it looks pretty dated in a vague late-90s sort of way.  But as a concept, the two tone look is something I can certainly work with.

outdoor, shady & overcast daylight

I started with 2 very thin coats of Esmaltes da Kelly black soap bubbles - a sheer black jelly polish ideal for leadlighting-type nail art.  It ended up a little bit more streaky/uneven than ideal, but any more layers would have darkened it up enough to ruin the dramatic contrast.

outdoor, overcast daylight

I've stamped using MoYou London Frenchy 17 (a whole collection dedicated to thwarting the stripper nail stigma!), first with the broad french tip in black, then with a cute curved band with dangling stars & lightning bolts.  The ribbon is stamped in MoYou London Mercury, which is, like all true chrome polishes, rather a pain to work with - it dries extremely quickly, so it has to be both heavily slathered on the plate to fill and distribute correctly, and then picked up and placed on the nail even more rapidly than other stamping polishes.  The results are so worth it, though, with this fantastic mirror gleam.  Topcoat had this whole thing more shiny than a new piano.

outdoor, overcast daylight

Where to buy:  MoYou London stamping polishes & plates can be purchased both directly from them (be sure to check out both the UK and the US sites - they will have different stuff in stock at different times!), and from plenty of online stockists.

~Michelle