Polish Days: Vintage

Things got a bit hectic last month and I didn't get to participate in the monthly Polish Days challenge, but I'm happy to have prepared something this month. The theme of this month is to be inspired by or incorporate something vintage. I actually jumped the gun and had this done in time for last Tuesday because I confused the challenge day. I've been waiting since then to share this with you.

For this challenge, I initially wanted to swatch and do some nail art with the most vintage polish in my collection which was actually my mom's when she was my age. That didn't quite work out since the polish is falling apart and is sadly unusable. Instead, I started looking through my pinterest board of vintage nail polish ads and decided to copy one that actually featured some nail art...

For this manicure I followed instruction (see bottom of this post) that went along with the vintage Cutex polish ads. Using Zoya Rekha, I painted around the half moon of the nail and all the way down to the tip. I then removed the polish from the tips. I did cheat a bit by using my angled cleanup brush with acetone rather than a tissue to clean the tips and even out the half moons. The hardest part was resisting the urge to wrap the tips as I painted the nails red. I kept forgetting that I would be removing it anyway. I did add a top coat to seal everything in and wrap the tips...

The look of partially polished nails is quite interesting. I reminds of my mom teaching me how to paint nails when I was a child. Rather than paint the full nail, it was popular to paint only the center portion from cuticles to tips, leaving a thin, bare stripe along the sides. The idea was to make the nails appear longer and narrower, therefore prettier. I still need to try that at some point...

Before I found the vintage instruction and realized that the white portions of the manicure were bare areas of the nail, I did try to recreate the look using scotch tape, red and white polish. The contrast was a bit too strong and it was difficult to keep the lines straight and the polish from bleeding into each other. I was not pleased with the look and I'm glad that I tried it the old fashioned way. Thinking about it now, scotch tape and hole reinforcer use was probably not too common in nail art in the 1930s... bare nails makes so much more sense... ;)

The look appears to have been rather popular and was featured in multiple ads. Here are a few Cutex Polish ads from 1936 and 37 which feature this look...

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The instructions which helped me realize that the tips and half moons actually had no polish...

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I had lots of fun with this manicure! As an added bonus, I think this type of manicure could last quite a while... just think about it... no tip wear :)

Thanks for looking!
Anutka :)

Take a look at these other vintage inspired manicures...

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