Nail Art: Poppies

I have some nail art in honour of Remembrance Day today, which is tomorrow, November 11th. In Canada, in the month or so leading up to the day, we wear plastic poppies on pins in our jacket lapels, and even after three years living in the US, I can’t get used to the lack of plastic poppies around. I actually considered asking my Mom to grab one for me and send it to me in my Christmas package, so I’ll have one next year, but it might be weird. Of course, that’s not even considering that the temperature here in California is way too high to be wearing jackets with lapels in which to stick a poppy on a pin. I’ll have to content myself with poppies on my nails, I guess. See more pictures after the break.

I started this manicure with the palest of pale pinks, China Glaze – Friends Forever, Right? I know my camera picked it up as white, but it’s actually that pale, and is easily mistaken for white in person as well. I think China Glaze put a single drop of red in the whole batch of this polish to get it this pale. This is three coats and three days after application, with a busy half week that was keeping me from painting. It held up pretty well, but if you look very closely, you can see a little tip wear.

When I finally got an uninterrupted afternoon, I stared at TweetDeck for an unreasonably long time, and then got to work after putting my web browser on a boring and non-distracting page. I started painting in flower and bud shapes with essie – Snap Happy, a bright, slightly orange leaning red that I got on clearance a while back. I painted my nails randomly, so I wouldn’t get the obvious improvement in skill that comes from starting on one side or the other and working right across.

For the stems, I used another clearance polish that I just picked up a day or two ago at Target, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure – Ever Green from their 2014 autumn collection. I think it was absolutely the most perfect green stem colour I could have used, and certainly unique in my collection. I had a lot of other contenders sitting on my desk, but once I got this one it was all over for them.

Finally, I dabbed in the centers using my least favorite black in my collection, Maybelline Color Show – Onyx Rush. I find the formula in this one to be sheer and watery, and I was hoping that it would be okay if I dabbed it on thickly, but it was more trouble than it was worth. I might be sending this one to the thrift shop for someone else to deal with  soon. The drawer of my Helmer that I keep all my neutral polishes is getting close to overflowing, so I either need a new Helmer, or to have some sort of cull soon.

I think the flower on my thumb is favorite. Something about the way the dabbed red ended up more sheer in some spots, like light shining through flower petals, and I love it.

I finished up the manicure with a coat of Poshé Super-fast Drying Top Coat, which I normally love, but it smeared some of those flowers like woah, which made me very sad. I still need to find a really flawless top coat for putting over nail art like this. I have a pretty good touch with stamping (most of the time), but hand-painted art seems a different thing entirely when it comes to my top coats. Maybe that’s why I don’t do hand-painted very often.

How do you like my first attempt at hand-painted floral? Will you be observing a moment of silence at 11am tomorrow for the soldiers who died to give us this remarkable freedom we have? And do you have any suggestions for top coats that won’t destroy my hard work when I go to seal it in? Let me know in the comments, or on twitter or Facebook if you prefer.