Guilty Hello!

Hi Everyone! (Or anyone still out there? :))

Long time no see! Is that even appropriate to say to people I have never actually seen before? In any case, I recently realized that (last 4th of July mani not including), it has been a year since I have last actually blogged. What is even more sad is that I can count the number of manicures I have done during that year on just my two little hands. And in that count, I'm including just polished nails that didn't involve any nail art. Pathetic, right? Friends and family that used to comment on the oddity of seeing my nail unpainted now did a complete 180 and mockingly stare when spotting color.

It is not that I didn't miss creating nail art, it is just that I had a lot going on at the time. I got busy, started working night shift and just sort of shut down when it came to doing my nails. If I couldn't do it all; swatch, review, create nail art, blog and keep up with social media, I wasn't going to do anything at all. Somehow in a weird and bizarre way it made sense back then then, even though it doesn't so much now. I think I was so used to blogging about every mani that I created (whether I ended up actually wearing it or not), that in the back of my mind it seemed logical that if I didn't have time to photograph and blog about a manicure, I would put off creating it. Recently a friend gently (or rather not so gently) pointed out that I should be able to make time for myself at least once a week and create a manicure, even if it is just for myself and not something I blog about. So simple, right? Since I can't really argue with that logic, that is exactly what I hope to do...

Deciding on the perfect 'come back' manicure proved to be a daunting task, so instead I went with what was sitting out on my long untouched polish table. Pure Ice Fairytale Forest is a shade that I picked up on a whim about a month or two ago. It was a straggler polish from a collection released in the Fall of last year. I was obviously very late to the party or I would have loved to pick up a couple more from this collection (namely the teal and lilac shades), so here's hoping for a re-release of those at some point.

Fairytale Forest is a frosty grayish blue with a very subtle gold/green fleck shimmer. The shimmer is what initially attracted me to this shade and although I was fairly certain it wouldn't show up well on the nail, a part of me still secretly hoped it would. The formula on this is great, two easy coats for full coverage. This is with a top coat...

As a side note, I recently decided to try out a more rounded nail shape. I constantly keep breaking corners while at work and since my nubs really don't inspire me to paint them, I'm hoping the rounded corner will be less prone to breaks. They look even more round in reality and I'm kind of digging them at the moment. What do you think?

For the final manicure, I used two B.Loves Plates stamping plates. The designer of these plates, Anna, kindly sent them to me for review last year. I received them around the time I stopped blogging and although that was an unplanned and abrupt stop, I have had a really guilty conscience about not showing you these plates. I hope that the saying 'better late than never' will apply here since these plates are awesome and I plan to show you more manicures with them.

I stamped all of the nails with the B.01 geometry is perfect plate using Wet 'n Wild French White Creme. The pattern combined with the blue sort of makes me think of denim. I then added a few decals made with the B.02 flower power stamping plate.

The decals were created using Ruby Wing Poppy for the flowers themselves and Pure Ice Lucky Charming for the shimmery leaves. I completely forgot that Poppy is a solar active shade and turns a gorgeous burgundy in the sun until I had worn the mani for a few days. You can see my old swatches of Poppy here. I would have loved to see the flowers change color, but I wore this mani for 4 days while working night shift, so it literally never saw the sun.

Ah, there is nothing like a close up shot to remind me that I still haven't learned to color inside the lines...

I hope you enjoyed this manicure! I'd love to know what you think of it.
I look forward to sharing more manicures with you in the coming weeks...

Thanks for looking!
Anutka :)