monday manicure

one of my christmas stocking gifts was a pack of o.p.i. mini polishes - their top 10 or 12 polishes in a collection. i hadn't planned on my nails turning out this way, but i love the colors and the idea is cute, just needs tweaking. i started with a base polish of one of those o.p.i. minis in pink "strawberry margarita" which is a great pink all by itself (i probably should have stopped there and just gone solid pink.) then i wanted to try out the bow design on one of my konad plates (which is a fun little nail screen printing sort of thing.) i used another o.p.i. mini polish for that deep purple/blue color called "russian navy" and it worked beautifully with the konad plate printing the bows (i need practice on my positioning with the konad tool.) i was going to then add polka dots in a darker pink, but when i started that the pinks were too close in color and you couldn't see the dots so i used the "russian navy" again to add polka dots to all my nails. i do still think the nails are cute but with white dots or something would have been better or the blue bow with white accents. they're already peeling though so we'll see about next time. i did not use nail polish remover on my nails right before i applied the base coat - i'm finding that the polish remover keeps your nails from chipping a little better than without that step.