Ciate is full of $@#%-My belated Fish Egg Friday mani with Zoya Myrta

I found these microbeads in LA when I was visiting back in the beginning of April. It's obvious that the whole "caviar manicure" was well known enough that Dona Michele Salon Basics jumped into production on microbeads and had already manufactured, packaged and shipped them to Dollar Tree by April 8th. That's the date I purchased these at a random Dollar Tree in Los Angeles. The packaging says "made in China," so it's not like the items had just been produced in the last few days. Anywho, I think this is further proof that the whole Ciate "trademarking" of the caviar manicure is beyond ridiculous! (In case you're not in the loop on the stuff I'm talking about, here's a link to the Pretty Digits blog, and a link to Let Them Have Polish's post detailing the nail blogging community's response.)

On to the manicure, this look was created using Dona Michele brand nail microbeads and Zoya Myrta. I like Myrta but it lacks some of the gold shimmer I expected based on the bottle. Because of this, I spiced it up with a caviar style accent nail. See more pictures and find out what's wrong with this manicure, after the jump!

Zoya Myrta, natural light

I got Zoya Myrta in part because I realized that I don't own any corals. I recently visited the mall and saw for myself how "in" oranges and corals are. Myrta is from the Surf part of Zoya's summer Beach and Surf collection, and it's a orange leaning coral with gold and silver shimmer. I saw a bit more gold shimmer when I saw the bottle than is visible on the nail, but it's still got a lovely shimmer that comes alive in the sun.

Zoya Myrta, sunlight

So what's wrong? I must've pissed off the nail gods because I've broken 3 nails in the last 3 weeks. They were rather painful and for a while I was not polishing at all because all the band-aids spoiled the look, LOL. If you look closely, you'll be able to spot which of my nails is a false one. It's also the lesser seen right hand in the picture because it only has 1 broken nail as opposed to the 2 on the left. Here's a picture of what my left hand looks like.

Zoya Myrta, sunlight, on hand with 2 breaks. Ow!

It's a real shame because this was the longest I've ever gotten my nails. I tried using the teabag method to repair the damage but both of my attempts were unsuccessful.  I'm also too cheap/poor to spend any real money on the problem. I guess it's a sign that my nails had gotten a bit *too* long. If you look closely, you might notice that my index and ring finger on the left are a bit uneven. Those guys have peelies, so it's time to shorten all around, I guess.

Do you own any corals? And how do you deal with breaks and peelies?