OPI Canberra't Without You is from the Australia Collection, which I believe was from Spring/Summer 2007 has been sitting in a drawer in my house since it first came out. I bought it, swatched it, marveled at it's beautiful shards of glitter in the peachy nude base then promptly forgot about it. Three years later I sat here wanting to re-create the Lace Manicure again, (check out my first attempt here), so I kept an open mind and started rifling through my drawers for the perfect nude base. By itself it's not the most exciting color, but every girl needs a polish in her stash that matches her skintone. They just come in handy! Canberra't is my perfect nude, and I used it here as a base for two nail looks that are really sexy and appropriate for Fall.

This time around, armed with a better base color and an actual Konad Special Polish in black to make the designs more crisp, I thought I'd have a better time of things. It worked a lot better, but I have to say I'm really looking forward to when my nails grow back out from my surprise nubbin attack this week to try it again. Long, lacy nails sounds hot.

I started out with a couple coats of Canberra't. You can see it's a light peachy nude and it blends really well with my skin. It also has some irregular shards of shimmer that look like glass. Fair Dinkum Pinkum from the same collection had the same finish, and it looked really beautiful against the milky pink.

Then I used Konad Special Polish in Black and plate m57 (one of my favorites!) to stamp the fishnet design on. The Konad polish has a bit of a dull finish, but it's thick so the resulting look here is a shiny base with a satiny textured fishnet. It looks really realistic to me. I did love this look and was really tempted to keep it as it was, but lace was the objective; time enough for fishnet another time...

I used plate m71 and the same black Special Polish to apply the floral lacy pattern over the fishnet. Then over everything is a coat of Seche Vite topcoat. I still think that this combination of stamping is a great alternative to applying actual lace to your nails, though I'm not a big one for texture on the nail. Also the fact that the lace will start to lift around the edges a la Minx after a day or so annoys me. I like having actual nail polish sealed with a topcoat because I know it will last. I love this design, it's so fun and really sexy, and above all it's easy to do with Konad. I recommend checking out YouTube for tutorials if you're interested in using actual lace on your nails. There are resins and things you can use to seal it better, and it's such a neat thing it's worth checking out.