Classic French

My nails have been getting very long recently so I thought I'd see what a french manicure looks like on really long nails.
So many people asked me this week if they are my real nails! - I guess having pure white tips doesn't look very natural.

I am very happy with the results :-) I think it looks elegant and kind of says "look I have really nice nails" without going over the top and is definitely suitable for the office. 

The only thing is that it's getting difficult to type at work and sometimes even hold things normally but I don't want to cut them!

I did the white tips freehand, which I practised a lot during my nail tech course because it was one of the things that we were examined on. It's actually much easier when the nail is longer because with a short nail, I always end up painting the person's finger!

You can kind of see the real tips of my nails showing through the pink just below the smile line that I painted but I thought it was too far down to paint over for the look I was going for. I find that the natural smile line tends to creep further and further down the nail as they get longer which is a bit of a pain.

Which polishes did I use?

I used OPI for this manicure for two reasons
1. the good quality gives a french manicure a professional finish
2. I just love OPI and will get it out with any excuse.

Here I used two coats of Bubble Bath for the pink and then one coat of Alpine Snow for the white with base and top coat. Some people like to do the white tips first and then paint the pink over the top but I think that's just crazy. My personal preference is to have the tips as white as possible.