Yellow bead manicure

My sister passed on to me the Chi Chi pearl bead manicure clear polish as she thought she would hardly use it as it wasn’t very often she did bead nails and when she did she could use a normal top coat over the beads to hold them in place rather than the bead polish.

So I wanted to give the pearl bead manicure clear polish a go to try it out for myself. And to see if it could perform as a normal top coat as well.

I chose the pink and yellow bead mix from Chi Chi in the bead manicure set and then tried to choose colours from my collection that matched the beads in the mix. The pink I chose is a little darker than the beads but other than that I think I did alright.

So after putting down a layer of chip skip and OPI nail envy as my base coat, I painted my thumb, pointer and middle finger with 2 coats of pastel yellow polish. It was still a little patchy on 2 coats but while the second coat was still whet I dipped my finger into the bead jar, then brushed off any excess beads and pushed in any overhanging beads. I then applied 2 coats of Chi Chi pearl bead manicure clear polish to seal the beads in.

On my ring and pinkie finger I applied 2 coats of pink polish then put stripes of the yellow and blue polish I chose on top. I probably should have put down a coat of white first to make the colours brighter as well. The things you realise in hindsight. I then put a layer of Chi Chi pearl bead manicure clear polish on top to see if it worked as a top coat. Short version, it doesn’t. The bead polish is sticky so that the beads stick together but that means your nails can pick up dust and thing which makes the shine fade, so would not recommend this. I will use this polish for beads or just a clear polish but not as a top coat.

This gives a fun bead manicure, however the beads don’t last long. The beads get caught on things and lift so Individual beads come off all the time and I had mine on for almost 2 days before I lost a big chunk of beads. Also the bumpy texture can take some getting used to.

I like how putting down different base colours changes how the manicure looks. In the jar the bead mix looks a lot darker and the yellow doesn’t stand out much but the yellow base colour changes it. I previously did a different bead manicure with a different blue bead mix and put a blue base colour down and this just emphasised the blue. I would be interested in trying other base colours on both bead mixes to try other combinations and see how that changes the overall look.