Sparkly fall

Hi everyone,


it's September so that means summer is almost over and fall is eagerly waiting for its turn. This morning I smelled that special scent in the air that says fall's almost here and I decided to make my nails look like the glorious sunny autumn day that I remember from a trip to Canada, with trees dressed in all sorts of gorgeous reds and oranges and golds and twittering birds hidden in those leaves (instead of the drabby yellowy-greens and browns and screeching seagulls that are outside my window at the moment ;) And this is the final manicure:

As I tried several combinations of plain and decorated nails until I settled for 'traditional' accent nails I'm going to introduce the polishes I used first so you can try and imagine what every combo looked like (or you can skip the entire thought/creation process and scroll down to the end of the post to see where the polishes came from in case you would like to get your hands on one of them ;)

Zoya Claire, Masura 904-213 Evening Before the Fireplace, Color Club Cherubic

Left to right:
- Zoya Claire, a pretty red brown creme polish that is almost opaque in one coat.
- Masura 904-213 Evening Before the Fireplace (EBtF), a dark golden orange magnetic polish that shows more gold on the line the magnet creates and is not just metallic but has a lot of sparkles too.
- Color Club Cherubic, a pale tan/nude polish with a very strong linear holo effect that is great for stamping, like all polishes in the Halo Hues collection.

I started out by painting my ring finger with a rather thick coat of EBtF and immediately held a magnet over it to try and bring out that cats eye effect that magnetic polishes are supposed to show. I wasn't going for a very strong line, I just wanted to add a little bit of interest to the base. It worked just how I hoped it would as the base subtly changes from bright to dark when I wiggle my fingers. When that had dried I stamped a stripey image from UberChic 12-02 using Cherubic on top and double stamped the same image using Claire. A coat of Seche Vite to smoothen and seal and the accent nail was done... or so I thought ;)

I painted my thumb, index and pinky with two thin coats of Claire and my middle finger with two coats of Cherubic, felt Cherubic was too light on its own, did my index with EBtF, still didn't like the outcome, removed all but my thumb and ring finger, tried Cherubic for my pinky, EBtF on my middle finger and Claire on my index, decided not to do any nail with Cherubic so replaced that with Claire, didn't like the plain EBtF so removed that and decided to do my middle finger the same as my ring finger... and finally liked the result so more Seche Vite on the freshly painted nails and done!


I didn't have a clear idea when I started doing my nails, I just knew I wanted to use fall colors... so instead of figuring out in my head what should go on what nail, I did it in live-action. Not recommended when you have tiny bottles of polish (or very expensive polish) or an impatient husband (who has to comment on each variation of course) but since I had neither problem it was a fun change from my normal routine. I don't think my cuticles enjoyed the overdose of remover I applied to them so I pampered them afterwards with loads and loads of Burt's Bees (which smells a bit less of lemons than Lemony Flutter so I use BB during the day and LF at night when I'm asleep, and the tin is easier to carry with me than a tub, that too). Despite (or maybe thanks to) all the changing and acetone and more changing I love how my nails look. The colors are just what I had in mind and I love the way the colors seem to shift depending on how the light hits my nails. Yup, I consider this the winning result of some time well spent :)

How do you plan your next manicure? Do you write things down? Draw designs on paper? Or do you just grab a couple of colors and see what happens next?



Zoya Claire and Color Club Cherubic were bought from Pretty Polish.
Masura 904-213 Evening Before the Fire was bought from Nailland Hungary.