Friday Triad: inspired by Playful Polishes

Hi everyone!


It feels like February has only just started but it's the last Friday of the month already so it's time for another episode of the Triad manicures, where Michelle, Juanita and myself take turns in picking a manicure that all of us use as inspiration for our own nails. So it may be a copy, something that looks like the original or something you can't even imagine has anything to do with the choice of the month (like black-n-white unicorns ;) but as long as it has been inspired by it, it's good :) My manicure definitely falls into the last category this month. Want to see what happened? Read on :)

Juanita picked a lovely, summer manicure with palm leaves and leopard spots by Tionna from Playful Polishes. I loved it at first sight! But... as all my polish and all my tools are still safely tucked away in storage (let's just say my dream kitchen has turned into a nightmare and we probably won't wake up until early May... if we're lucky) painting my nails is quite a challenge as I really have to plan what I want to do, make a list of anything and everything I need and ask my husband to get it for me (I don't even dare to go there as everything is stacked on top of everything else and he knows how to get to things safely but I would probably wreak havoc). Once I have everything, I have to find a relatively quiet place to sit down, play and take pictures. So at this moment, painting my nails isn't the fun, relaxing experience it used to be. But no way I was going to let J and M down, so I did all the planning and listing and asking and ended up with a rainbow of bright, happy colors in front of me. And I didn't feel it at all... not one spark of inspiration!

Life happened, time passed, and Valentine's Day came along, with all its displays of red and pink and roses, and I decided I would try a manicure with a white base, pale and a bit darker green for the leaves and red for the leopard spots that I wanted to replace with small roses. So the rainbow went back to storage and the chosen polishes returned with that miracle of patience that I'm married to. Except this time he picked the wrong ones... he picked a gorgeous red, but instead of greens he grabbed gray polishes. I figured I could try them and if I really didn't like it, a third trip would be in order... and this is the result:

I started by painting all my nails with two coats of essence Wild White Ways and I added a generous coat of Seche Vite to smoothen everything as it didn't self-level as much as I would have liked (I probably have to thin it a bit but guess where the thinner is? ;)

After that I stamped pale gray leaves from Lesly Greenery 2 using Hema 403 Dutch Clouds. I used the same image to stamp a more accented leave using Hema 406 Spicy Grey. Both polishes aren't fully opaque in one coat if you were to paint with them but they worked great for what I had in mind. Of course I sealed the two nails (four actually, also on my right hand) with another coat of Seche Vite.

And after that... I tried to add some flowers on my right hand to see what it would look like, but I didn't like the result at all. I tried leopard print, nope, not right either. I tried giraffe, zebra, any other pattern that was on the stamping plate and didn't like any of them. And all the while I kept looking at my left hand because I just loved the simplicity of the gray leaves against the white base. So in the end I decided to keep the manicure like that (and I redid my right hand as I wanted my hands to match). And that's how this manicure WAS inspired by Juanita's pick but doesn't look anything like it :)


I can't wait to see what Michelle and Juanita did with the beautiful original. I'm expecting bright and colorful, maybe even pink from M, but who knows... maybe they stuck to grays as well (nah, don't think so ;) If you're curious as well, just click here or here and see what happens!