I love painting my nails, but I often feel that after a few days of being painted, they get weak and brittle. I think this is because they don’t get enough air with all the varnish on top of them. So I’ve started only painting the top portion of my nail, leaving the beds to air out. I call it the half mast manicure. I think it works. My nails don’t feel weaker, but they still get to be pretty.

The way I achieved the manicure I have in this What I Wore is I painted a majority of the nail with Revlon 571 Posh (green), let it dry completely, then applied Sally Hanson Salon Effects 240 Check It Out (houndstooth) to the top of the nail, leaving a stripe of green exposed. I cut the nail strips in order to save as much as possible, but that meant losing the handy strip tab that separates the strip itself from the white backing and the clear cover. So if you’re not good at pulling near invisible clear plastic coverings off of sticky things with one hand, you may want to just let the extra go to waste for the benefit of your sanity.

Jacket from Talbot’s via the thrift store
Vest is from Ross
Green shirt is from somewhere that I forgot
Skirt is from the thrift store
Socks are from Target
Houndstooth Converse are from a vintage shop, now defunct.