French finish nail varnish

[Anf]

I have just been asked to do French manicure nail varnish for 3 bridesmaids as i am doing french gel on the bride, but won't have time to do gel for everyone.

I've never done french nail varnish before and i'm slightly nervous, what sort of drying times would techs recommend in between the layers? Was thinking i would need to do base coat, french pink, white tip (maybe twice?) then top coat but all suggestions are completly welcome!

Also, when i do french with gel, i do a swipe accros the top of my white smile line to make it neat, can this be done with varnish?

Need all the suggestions i can get from techs that do it succesfully.

I have 4 friends volunteering for practice, got the first one monday (1st april - hope they arn't kidding me and are actually comeing) and could do with some sort of direction by then

Thanks in advance
Anf xxx:Scared:

 

[Steph86]

I personally do one base, one pink, one white (unless its to thin or patchy- then id do a second coat) and top coat, but being so use to gel cure and apply i now loathe doing varnishes i find base and pink dry fairly quickly, its the white that needs more time. But as it is also a little fiddly it has more drying time too. Just don't jump on to top coat to quickly as it will smudge your lovely work! I don't use the back brush with polish... I just do it free hand.
Id love to hear if/how others do tho... Xx

 

[JuicyLucy]

When you say you are doing gel for the bride, do you mean gel enhancements or gel polish?

If you are doing gel polish I would use this on the bridesmaids too, ordinary polish is no quicker and you have the hassle of drying time on a busy day.

If you don't do gel polish you need a good quality quick dry basecoat. White for the smile lines, probably two thin coats. You can swipe the smile with a brush dipped in remover if necessary if you have no pink base. A light translucent pink floated over the top and a good quality quick dry topcoat. As Steph says, timing is important so as not to smudge your work.

With that many layers of polish, they will need to be very careful for quite a while

 

[Anf]

I do Bio sculpture Gel, i did suggest they all had gel, but they are not all in the area until the day before and i can't get to them because of the rehursal until 6pm so i just can't fit in 4 sets of gels. Also only one of the bridesmaids wanted to pay the price of gel.
I also posted this thread up on the Bio geek page and it's been suggested after prep to do the white smile line in gel first, then the base coat up to the smile line, followed by the pink and the top coat. This sounded like quite a good idea, as the white wouldn't chip or peel then. What do you think?

 

[cookieface]

And use the bio sculpture upper arch brush for a sweep smile line then fill in he remaining free edge with a #4 brush! Easy peasey xxxx

 

[Anf]

Thanks ladies for the advice, have booked in a couple of friends to have a practice on x