Independence Day Stars & Stripes Mani

From my Instagram with Walden filter

I hope you all had a great 4th of July! This is just a low-quality, 1-pic post, because it hides how horrible this mani came out! I was inspired by this mani by LizAnne, which I saw on Nouveau Cheap's Independence Day Manicure Round-Up. I am not a nail art person, and this mani totally confirmed that for me!

For the stars nail, I used Revlon in #730 Royal as the base (love that color, but it stinks!). I tried doing the dots (RGB in White) with a toothpick, because I have no nail art tools, but they were coming out all deformed, so I got out a bobby pin and finally got it looking okay. However, after waiting for a couple hours, I used Gelous to smooth it out and get the polish wet before I used my Seche Vite, but it made the white streak into the blue polish (this also happened when I tried to use Gelous over my stripes after letting it dry overnight, so I would advise just not using Gelous - things did not bleed when I only used Seche Vite).

For the stripes, I did a base of RGB in White. This is a pretty good application for a white - streaky at 1 coat, but opaque and smooth at 2 coats. Much better than the touted 1-coat white Rescue Beauty Lounge in Underwear/ware! Unfortunately, when I took my mani off the four nails besides my pinky (which didn't have RGB as a base) were badly stained, even though I had used base coat. This also happened after my Lynnderella mani with RGB in Haze as a base, so I think RGB's have something in them that stains my nails. I used a ruler and an X-Acto knife to cut 2-milimeter strips of Scotch tape and taped them on the completely dry White. Then I painted over with Chanel in #475 Dragon. It was hard to get the tape to stick all the way down around the curves of my nails (even though I pushed hard with an orange stick), as well as the tips. You also have to work fast and deliberately to remove the tape so the polish doesn't dry too much over the tape. I used a toothpick to push the red strings of polish back in line, but also had to use the toothpick to fill in red and white lines and make them look cleaner. It took me so long, and I was super annoyed, but committed to sticking it out. This looks incredible when done by other people, but I suck! Worn July 4-5, 2012.

What did you do for your 4th of July nails? Do you like theme nails? And do you have any suggestions to help me out if I ever get brave enough to try again? Also, do you have any suggestions for a good, opaque white creme?