Nailene French Manicure Kit

I'm sure you all know by now how I feel a bout french manicures, so I won't get into that in this post. :)


Despite my feelings about french manicures, I get a surprising amount of emails and requests for them! So, when I received the opportunity to try out some french manicure kits from Nailene, I thought it would be the perfect chance to address all of those requests.

This is the first kit I tried. It includes a clear topcoat, an opaque white creme, a sheer pinky beige and a sheer warm pink with blue duochrome plus 42 tip guides.

Since guides were included in the kit, I used them for these french manicures.

Please excuse the 'bruises' on my nails. French manicures aren't ideal for hiding them!





For this manicure, I placed the tip guides on my nail after my base coat was completely dry. I painted one coat of the opaque white over my tips, waited for it to dry and then removed the tip guides. I used two coats of the sheer pink beige on top and I sealed it with the included topcoat.



Here's the same manicure with a few decals from the Nailene Bedazzle line.

For this look, I started with white tips and then applied two coats of the sheer pink with blue duochrome and sealed it with the included topcoat. Since this polish has a little more color than the other one, it caused the white tips to appear yellow. Normally, I would start by painting tips first, but for this shade I would recommend doing the tips last.

Here's what it looks like with the white on top instead:



I should point out the difficult part of doing the white tips second while trying to use the guides. I'm sure you've all experienced it before. If you try to place the guides on top of an already polished nail, they will often peel off the polish when you remove them. You can remedy this a little bit by removing some of the stickiness from the guides. Put them on the back of your hand once or twice- it causes them to become less strong and sticky and reduces the chances that it will peel off the polish on your nails. You also should wait until the base polish is 100% dry before attempting to use guides on top.

And here it is with a Bedazzle decal:



This decal was a little too stiff and wouldn't lie flat on my nail. You can see in the photo that the edges of the decal are sticking up and visible. It may have been too cold out when I tried to apply the decal- it might become more flexible if you warmed the sheet between your hands or near something warm first.


This kit was extremely straight forward and easy to use. It would be perfect for beginners and people experimenting with the french manicure look. People looking for a more natural looking french may not be satisfied with the white tip polish included in this kit because it is very bright and stark.

If you're looking for a more natural french manicure look, try using two coats of the sheer pink beige color as your tip color and then one coat of it as your base color. Alternately, you could add some white and sheer pink into the clear topcoat to create a custom tip color.

Nailene French Manicure Kits can be purchased at any drugstore.