Contribution to the ME/CFS & Fibro Awareness

Hi guys!

Here I have my manicure to share with you for the ME/CFS & Fibro Awareness day:

May 12th has been designated as International Awareness Day for Chronic Immunological and Neurological Diseases (CIND) since 1992. The CIND illnesses include Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), Fibromyalgia (FM), Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS).

May 12th was chosen as it is the birthday of Florence Nightingale. She was believed to have suffered from ME/CFS. If you want to know more about the cause or the illnesses, visit this website: http://www.may12th.org/

I am a member of an awesome nail polish loving community, and one day Becca from A Certain Becca Nails and Kirsty from FairyTales Nails created a Facebook page to spread the word and make more people aware of this day and the illnesses behind.

As I suffered from a non-visible illness a few years ago I know how important it is to share the information with more and more people.

This form of contribution was also amazing, as we could chose to come up with a manicure themed by the awarenesses colours blue and purple, and also their symbols of butterflies and the ribbon.

I knew I wanted to do a gradient, so I choose a white, a light purple and a dark purple.

All three colours are from China Glaze: White on White, Lotus Begin and Mix and Mingle. I protected my skin around my nails with liquid latex and used a make up sponge to slowly build up the layers of polishes. They did not blend that well, and the sponge picked up some of the polish from the previous layer, but the end result is pretty good. 

After a quick clean up I applied a topcoat to smooth out the lumps and bumps from the sponge.

I was not sure what colour to stamp with, so I tried EDKs Andromeda, but it was not showing as much as I wanted. Eventually I went for black, but definitely will experiment with colours more in the future.

After I finished stamping, cleaned a bit again, and started to apply topcoat to my pinky, and thought, hey, this would look amazing in matte. So I grabbed my OPI matte topcoat, what instantly smeared my design on my ring finger... Grrrr... Lesson learned! Guys, be careful if you are using OPI's matte topcoat, and maybe apply your regular topcoat before using it to avoid any smearing!

I had difficulties with the stamping, although I use the polish and the stampers regularly, so it might be the plate, or the fact, that my sliding door is open in the living room :)

I have to admit, I like it even better than I thought I will, so even if it takes time and patience, I'm just about to start another one! :)

Here is the end result:

All in all I'm very happy with it, and convinced myself to do more gradients in the future!

I hope you liked this post, and thank you for stopping by! Xxx