Shades of Purple for Alzheimer's Awareness Month

Hello Lovely Readers!

Today's look is designed in recognition of National Alzheimer's Awareness Month. I am going to try and focus on at least one special cause per month, but this one specifically is another cause dear to me since I lost an aunt to this illness. In 1983, when President Reagan designated November as National Alzheimer's Awareness Month, fewer than 2 million Americans suffered from the disease. Today that number is up to nearly 5.4 million. Did you know that Alzheimer's is the sixth-leading cause of death in the US and the only cause of death in the top 10 in the US that has no prevention or cure? You can visit the Alzheimer's Association website to find out more about this disease and ways to help raise awareness.

So, lets get into this look. I don't have a picture of all the colors used lined up for you because I couldn't get good lighting for the picture, I'm sorry! All my purples kept looking blue in the bottle pictures. But I will tell you each color I used and where I used them. Also, I was really happy because I had just started my manicure when my husband checked the mail, and my stencils had arrived! Last month I won a giveaway for smART Nails stencils by the fabulous Wendy of  Wendy's Delights and I received 5 stencil designs of my choice. You can find these stencils on smART Nails website. One of the designs I chose was an awareness ribbon stencil, so I got to use that in my design! YAY!

I did the right and left hand differently, but used the stencil on both hands to tie the looks together. Let's look at the left hand first.

I started with a basecoat and a base color of 'Tempest' by Sinful Colors. I used 2 coats of the base color on the middle finger, since it was my accent nail, but for the rest of the fingers I only used 1 coat. For the water marble I used three shades of purple, all by Sinful Colors. I used 'Tempest', 'Amethyst', and 'Enchanted'. I drew my design differently on each nail because I didn't want them to all look the same this time. The awareness ribbon on the accent nail was done with the stencil I mentioned from smART Nails and the color is 'Amethyst' again.

Ready for the right hand? This is always interesting since I'm painting with my non-dominant hand, LOL.

The good news is that the stencil was equally easy to use on either hand! The base color on this hand is by Kleancolor and it is 'Pastel Purple' and it is 2 coats on each nail. My kind of 'scruffy-looking' hearts (LOL) were done in the 'Enchanted' purple from Sinful Colors. I've seen a lot of nail art tutorials that say drawing a heart with a toothpick or dotting tool is a great way for beginners to learn, but that didn't really work for me. I could manage it well enough with my right hand, but not with my left. So, what I ended up doing is just painting them with a detail brush. They aren't perfect, obviously, but I was encouraged that they at least looked like hearts and not blobs :-) The ribbon color on the accent nail was done with Kleancolor 'Purple'. When I swatched this color it was a nice shimmery purple, but against the pastel purple base it came out looking kind of pink on camera, but it was still a light purple-ish in person.

Finally, once my nails were dry, I used my new topcoat! I stopped by Sally's Beauty this weekend to pick up a few things and I got my Beauty Club card, yay! I picked up 5 new topcoats, if you can believe it! I've mentioned before that I was on the hunt for a new and better one. I may just do a whole post comparing the different topcoats. For now, I used Seche Vite Fast Dry Top Coat, which I've been hearing a lot about from other bloggers and YouTubers. I've only used it this one time, but it was such a difference from my old drugstore brand topcoat that I instantly fell in love. The application and finish were as smooth as silk, it didn't smear my colors at all, and it dried completely in less than 2 minutes!

I hope you enjoyed this manicure. Don't forget to stop by the Alzheimer's Association website and if you have any thoughts on Seche Vite or other topcoats you would like to recommend, leave them in the comments, please! Thanks for reading and have a great week!