Friday Triad: inspired by Paulina's Passions

Hi everyone!


It's the last Friday of the month (even though it feels like February has just started ;) so that means it's time for the Friday Triad to show what we did to with the inspiration one of us picked. This month it was Michelle's turn and she chose a gorgeous manicure by Paulina from Paulina's Passions. I loved the manicure the moment I saw it and I could see a million ways to do this myself... and then I snapped my middle nail and turned my left hand into nubbies... After talking to Michelle and Juanita I decided to go ahead and put my right hand in the spot light, but I guess she's still a bit shy so the pose isn't quite what I wanted it to be. Unfortunately it's way past my bed time (again) so no more retries... May I present my version of Paulina's manicure:

As you can see I left most of the manicure intact. I mean, it's perfect as it is! And if it were summer over here, I would even have used the same coral polish but since it's freezing cold I wanted something more winter-y and I definitely wanted to use a creme polish so I picked a pretty berry purple color, Catrice 53 Inner Purple of Trust, and sat down to paint. Inner Purple is a lovely color but oh, what a horrible brush those older Catrice polishes have. It's wonky and crooked and hairs stick out... and I'm not even going to mention the patchy formula of the polish! But I had my heart set on that color so I stuck with it for all three coats (and an extra one on my thumb) to reach full opacity ;)

Next I painted two coats of OPI Alpine Snow on my middle and ring finger and after some waiting I stamped the slightly wobbly lines from MoYou Trend Hunter 12 using Hit the Bottle As Black As Night... and grabbed the acetone to remove it as the lines weren't evenly black. I tried again and again with approximately the same results until I accidentally scraped in a different direction and voila, evenly black lines (and it only took me four or five tries ;)

Finally I picked up the floral image from the same plate on my stamper, filled the lines with Inner Purple, painted a thin coat of Alpine Snow on my middle finger and stamped the colored image when my nail was just about dry to the touch. After very carefully rolling the stamper off my nail I even more carefully floated a coat of Seche Vite on my nails to seal everything... and it didn't smudge or move the thin lines that weren't quite attached to the white base!!


As usual the line up of polishes that contributed to my nails:

Catrice 53 Inner Purple of Trust, OPI Alpine Snow, Hit the Bottle As Black As Night

It was only when I was editing the pictures that I noticed I once again stamped the image the wrong side up, or maybe these are hanging flowers ;) I have to admit seeing the picture of my nails still sort of disturbs me. But that's just the hand and the pose as I absolutely love this manicure and I'm definitely going to revisit this design in the summer, with a neon, or a holo, or a neon holo! I hope even with my Cinderella hand and awkward posing I still did Paulina's wonderful manicure some justice, what do you think?


If you're as curious as I am to see what Michelle and Juanita did this time, just click their names!