Ciate - Chalkboard Manicure

Hey guys,

Has anyone else noticed that this month seems to be FLYING by? I have my cousin's wedding to go to next week and that suddenly just dawned on me, so of course I was scrambling and crawling through my closet trying to figure out what dress to wear. Why is it bad luck to wear black to a wedding? BLACK IS THE BEST!

So a couple weeks ago I got a fantastic package in the mail from Miss Melissa over at Claw of Cthulhu. Aka Nail Polish Bestie, aka just all around awesome chick. And inside was the Ciate chalkboard manicure set. This was my first experience with Ciate so I was kind of excited. Now You can totally get this same look with some nail art pens and a good matte topcoat but this is still fun. The kit includes a matte black, 4 chalk pens, and a matte top coat.

At first I put the matte black on over top of my regular basecoat. BIG MISTAKE. the matte wanted to dry and crack like it was a straight up crackle. So I removed and put it on without a basecoat like the recommend. Much better plus it had a fantastic chalky matte finish, perfect matte.

Then the chalk pens, I found them a bit hard to work with since all the liquid chalk seems to want to pool really easy once it gets going. And my yellow pen was totally shot, the nub wouldn't spring back out.
So I just attempted some random designs. Waited for it to dry then slapped the matte top coat on.

Overall I think this is pretty cool, but I don't think buying the set it totally necessary, unless of course you want to!