the feline's claws

Hello Girls and Boys,

For July, which marks the last month (okay, couple of weeks) of my 25th year, I've decided to challenge myself by joining the Oh Mon Dieu 2 Nail Art Challenge which I stumbled across on Craftynail's blog!

This is a 31 Day challenge! I have no idea if I'll be able to do all, because you know, life and stuff (and some themes are making me seriously crack my head) but here's a list of all the themes:

So lets just start with my first mani for this contest, today's theme is Mint. Both, mint and coral are two of my favourite colours for the Summer, so I already had ideas of which polishes I'd use. Surprisingly, because I own a ton of each shade!

For mint I picked my latest mint shade, which is 146 - That's What I Mint! by Essence. It's the most adorable pastel mint! For my ring finger I chose P2 040 - Be Cool from their Lost in Glitter line, it's a teal jelly base with teal, gold and pink glitter. These colours were inspiration for the accent shades I picked to paint the waterfall.

Here's all the polishes used in this mani:

Polishes from left to right...

• Essence - 146 That's What I Mint
• H&M - Capri Breeze
• P2 - 007 Love agent
• Rimmel London - 260 Funtime Fuchsia
• Manhattan - 006 Palm Leaf
• P2 Lost in Glitter - 040 Be Cool!

This is the first time I ever tried to do a waterfall mani. When it comes to lines, I am a striping tape kinda gal and love me some clean, straight lines. Painting nails freehand with a brush? The horror!!

So I carefully started off once my two coats of That's What I Mint were completely dry, I worked one colour after another. I painted 3 stripes of the first colour on each nail, leaving even spaces between them, then slowly filled them out with the other colours and repeated where necessary.

Personally, I love the colour combination but the whole thing is a little over the top for me. I'd prefer this as an accent nail or maybe two. My right hand definitely turned out worse than the left (I'm right-handed), so I'll spare you that and sign off with: Freehand painted lines aren't as bad as I thought and they certainly have their own charme.