Ready for a Spring Manicure?

Whew!! What a day! I've been off wandering with my husband and our son, enjoying the wonderful weather and trying to work out some of this fibro stiffness I've been fighting with. We've been having a lot of fun looking at various home items and dreaming about our ideal house. We do this periodically, looking at furniture or appliances. Lately, though, I've been really drooling over electronics.

I wish I knew why I was so into shiny new gadgets. HD video cameras, Nikon dSLRs, home theater systems, CD changers, flat panel TVs... I could look and look and look for hours, it seems. My husband is no better. Anytime I lose him in a shop, all I have to do is wander over to the electronics department and there he is!

It's been fun. Exhausting, but fun. Still, I think I've been overdoing. It felt good to sit down and spend an hour doing nothing but painting my nails! This time I went for something springlike because I got the most gorgeous yellow polish I think I've ever seen! I've always shied away from yellow because it's seemed to hard to wear, but Hard Candy's Splendid is actually good with my skin tone! Then, when I held it next to my Essence Lime Up! I realized they were absolutely perfect together, and I was going to need to do a fun manicure using them both.


First off, before I get to that fun green & yellow mani, let me talk about Splendid first. You know how yellow is always a pain in the butt to apply? Well, this one isn't. It's creamy and opaque and almost a one coater! I was stunned at it, seriously. What you see in the main picture to the right is two coats. Gorgeous... absolutely GORGEOUS!

I also checked to see how well it stamps over both black and white. I wasn't expecting much, because yellow is traditionally a sheer color whether it's in nail polish or artist pigments. It's just really tough to get an opaque yellow! But Hard Candy have done it, as you can see. It shows up beautifully over both black and white, and is such a cheerful color! What can I say, I'm sold!

So... back to the mani. I started with a base of Splendid, then used Essence's Lime Up! to paint 1/2 of each nail on a diagonal. My ring fingers got the base green, the rest got green tips. I was going to apply some pink flower decals over this, then realized I wanted something with a bit more punch to try and pull it all together, although this is cute enough to wear as-is.

For the record, this would also be a great base for a full-nail Konad stamp. Can't you see it- stamping with Lime Up! over the yellow background, so that there's a green print over the yellow? I think it'd be adorable...

Ah well... I decided to use my silver Art Deco striper to paint a line along the join (and disguise some of my wobbly edges), then to put silver pinstripes along the green sections. I added pink flower decals from Viva la Nail for a bit more punch and decided I was happy with things. All in all it was a simple manicure that ended up looking a bit more complex than it really was!

And for once, I decided to do something I rarely do... I'm showing BOTH HANDS! See, I really do paint both hands the same, even if my right hand rarely comes out quite as well as the left. This one was pretty easy to do, though.


So even though it's actually fall and cooler weather is coming in, I needed to try something a bit brighter and sunnier. I think this fit the bill! What do you think?

Items have been provided by the manufacturers for consideration.

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