Nice mani, but rubbish topcoat!!

After my first go at a gradient mani (I won't post that, it's not worth the two minutes of your life you'd waste reading it ;) ) I decided to have another go combined with a dot manicure. I was really pleased with how it turned out until I put on topcoat - and subsequently ruined it :(

I decided it was still worth posting though, if for nothing else it warns others not to use that particular topcoat!

in sunlight

I started with three coats of NYC 'Pinstripe White' on all of my nails, then waited for it to dry completely. I then applied the gradient on to my thumb and ringfinger using the following colours;

• China Glaze 'Below Deck' (dark purple)
• NYC 'Downtown' (reddish purple)
• Sally Hansen 'Fairy Teal' (teal)
• MUA 'Ameretto Crush' (peachy pink)

before the gradient

 I then dotted on the same colours in a random pattern on my other fingers with a mixture of large and small dots.

You can see the mess a gradient manicure makes in the pic below, total nightmare to tidy up but worth it :)

Indirect sunlight

 The next step was to add white dots on to the nails with the gradient pattern carrying the theme through all of the nails.

Finally, I added topcoat. Now, normally I use Seche Vite but my bottle has less than half left now, and as anyone who has used it before knows it starts to get a bit thick and gloopy about then, and causes some major shrinkage on your nails. So I decided to give another top coat I have a go - OPI Rapidry.

BIG mistake - as you can probably see in the pic below the dots all bled after I applied the top coat. At first I thought I hadn't let everything dry enough (although I was sure I had), but tried using Seche Vite on my other hand and it was absolutely fine. Therefore I can only blame the topcoat and won't plan to use this again!

Sunlight

 What do you think, have you ever used this topcoat before? Did you like the mani before it all went wrong?

I'm away to take this mani off now and put on some plain polish *sob*

Fx

P.s. if the mani was staying I would clean up my cuticles a bit more as there is some staining, but didn't see the point really :)