31 Day Nail Art Challenge 2.0, Day 1: Red or Orange

Hello everyone, and welcome to the official start to the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge 2.0. As I mentioned last week, I've been planning this for a couple of months now - and yet, I didn't really have an idea for my very first manicure! Kind of silly, right? But when I saw this design on Instagram, I decided I had to give it a try using an appropriate color scheme for the challenge!

Fun fact about this manicure - after I snapped a couple of photos in my "classic" pose, I decided that these nails should be mattified, so I painted them with matte top coat. The end result was pretty awful (since I had a lot of layers of polish going on here, somehow the matte top coat did some shrinking and made the red polish shrivel up a LOT), and I didn't have any other photos, so this is the only one I've got for you. Sorry about that!

Anyway, to achieve this look, I started by painting all my nails with OPI Alpine Snow, except for my pinky finger, which has OPI Coca-Cola Red. Then, I taped off sections on a couple nails and painted on Coca-Cola Red. Finally, I freehanded the stripes with Essie Cocktails & Coconuts, and topped it all off with top coat.

As much as I love the idea of this manicure, I can't help but feel like the lines are sloppier than they should be. But, I decided to post it anyway because the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge 2.0 is about improving, and freehanding is something I really want to improve over the course of this challenge.

Here are the colors I used for this manicure. They're all from HB Beauty Bar - you can get 15% off your entire order with the code POLISHCHALLENGE at checkout.

You can see all the manicures from the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge 2.0 in the Inlinkz link-up below (be sure to check out the talented ladies that I am collaborating with!):
** Please note that this Inlinkz is for the three of us only. Any links that do not belong to the three of us will be deleted **