5,000 page views and the purchase of our very own domain name is cause for celebration!  I’ve decided to celebrate in the best way I know how – my manicure!  The most perfect celebration manicure is a caviar manicure, of course.  Thanks to an awesome graduation present from one of my sorority sisters (Thanks, Melissa!), I got to give Ciaté’s Black Pearls Caviar Manicure set a try.

I’ve been seeing photos of the caviar manicures on Pinterest for a while now, but I never looked much into it.  I love the look, but since the company is based in the United Kingdom, I didn’t think trying it was an option.  When I got the Black Pearls Caviar set yesterday as a graduation present, my first thought was “Manicure Monday!”  I’m not even joking.

Ciaté makes the caviar look surprisingly easy.  The included step-by-step instructions come in English, Spanish, Italian, French, Danish, and Dutch.  If you’re reading this, you probably speak English, so you’re covered.  The kit comes with a base color, a bottle of coordinating caviar pearls, a funnel (to make saving the caviar pearls as easy as possible) and a tray to work in.  For my first caviar manicure, I decided to keep the caviar as an accent nail on my ring finger.  I wasn’t sure how good I’d be at the application, and I wanted to save the caviar pearls as much as possible.  After doing this, though, I can say that my next caviar manicure will be a complete caviar manicure!

As usual, start with a base coat.  My new favorite base coat is Seche Natural because it dries thin and strengthens your nails.  The next step is to do one coat of the base color (in my kit, it was called Ghetto Fabulous).  The instructions say to let your nails dry before moving on to the next step, so I did.  I don’t really know how important that is, considering I would normally just continue on immediately to do my second coat, but I wanted to follow the rules on this first try.  To do the caviar, you want to work one nail at a time, but it’s very simple.

1. Add your second coat of polish.
2. Place your hand over the included tray.
3. Pour the caviar pearls all over your nail until completely covered.
4. Gently press the pearls down into your nail.
5. Move on to the next nail!

Ciaté recommends only using topcoat on the tips of your nails, but if you’re worried about the pearls falling off, try using an extra hold hair spray (props to Melissa for the great tip!).  I used Pantene’s Medium-Thick Hair Style Hair Spray to set my caviar.  When you’re all finished, you can place the included funnel into the bottle and pour all the extra caviar back in the bottle to save.  I absolutely love that Ciaté included that.  I love saving anything that I can, so I really appreciate being able to make the kit last as long as possible.  After this manicure, I barely put a dent in the amount of caviar pearls that were included, so my next manicure will definitely be ten nails full of black caviar pearls!