Products used:

• China Glaze First Mate
• China Glaze Electric Beat
• China Glaze Holly-Day
• Sally Hansen Wet Cement
• Black paint
• Seche Vite

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If you haven't noticed, I'm in a bit of a floral period right now. I think it's this nonexistant winter that isn't providing the quaint excitement of snowy afternoons full of hot chocolate and a good book, or maybe a snowball fight, nor is it warm enough to be expecting buds to pop up and leaves to begin to appear. it's all the crappy things about Winter without any of the good things. So I'm boycotting Winter, and I'm living in denial. It's Spring for me right now. I did this manicure for two reasons; 1) I saw this manicure by BlogNailedIt and was inspired, and I still have one living, albeit beleaguered, flower out in front of the house right now that just won't give up, and it's a pansy. I've got a couple pics from last Spring of a pot o' pansies after the jump from directly after potting them last Spring. They got rather huge over the summer, and all have died but one really determined little guy in the middle. le sigh.

For this design I used China Glaze Sweet Hook as the base, then I used China Glaze Gothic Lolita, Holly-Day and Sally Hansen Lavender Cloud for the flower and the random dotting.

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China Glaze's new Electro Pop collection is really inspiring. The colors are bright, beautiful and just beg to be used together. I paired up four of them, along with another China Glaze favorite to make this abstract springy floral design.

Electric Beat, a dusky periwinkle, was used as the base, then I used Sweet Hook and Dance Baby to make the flowers. With Gaga for Green and Electric Pineapple from the Island Escape collection for the leaves. Then I used a black striping polish to do really unstructured outlines to just suggest the form of the flowers and leaves. Without the black it literally just looks like blobs of color, and the black just made it pop.

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It's snowing here right now. Yeah. I love snow, in theory, especially on a weekend, but for some reason I'm not jumping for joy as per usual. Maybe it's just that I'm busy, or maybe that the sparkling and magical juvenile glee at the prospect of a snow day is somewhat less appealing when one is the parent and no longer the child. But if I'm being completely frank, I'll tell you I think it's because I broke a damn nail. Yes, just one. But you know that deep down all of you can identify with my horror, my dejected and grudging acceptance of a broken nail; a lost friend. I momentarily considered applying a tip, overlaying it with a thin, harmless little layer of acrylic, but after getting out my powders and liquids, and brushes and all the other trappings of my nemesis, I chickened out and packed up and hid all the acrylic accoutrement back in the far reaches of my closet so I wouldn't be tempted. Instead, I embraced the break this time. My index finger nail had popped off at the free edge, leaving me little choice but to yell "TIMBER!" and take the rest of the girls down. It was actually liberating, and as pudgy and stumpy as my fingers look now, I am enjoying that liberation.

I can type, text and apply eyeshadow primer without a care right now. YAY! I can also apply layers and layers of gaudy, and obnoxious color combinations and designs with reckless abandon, because let's face it, nubbins always look so adorable with an intricate design. So here is a random abstract floral number using shades like China Glaze Electric Beat, Flip Flop Fantasy, Gaga for Green, and Dance Baby and OPI Did It On 'Em all on a base of white.

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This is what happens when you're bored and you've spent the day planting a bunch of Spring flowers. It's my first real completely freehand floral pattern. With a little leopard thrown in because it's me. A friend of mine said it reminded her of the fabric you'd find on furniture in a Florida room, which makes me happy since it's what I was going for. I wasn't super happy with the actual flowers or the placement. They weren't supposed to be identical but somehow they're not random enough for me and also they're not crisp enough to be perfect, nor blurry enough to call abstract. It just felt sloppy, but I did love the colors together. I used a bunch of Migi nail art pens over China Glaze Agent Lavender.

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