Day 23 of Crumpet 31 DC - Nature

So sorry for going missing yesterday!  I can claim nothing but exhaustion.  I didn't touch my computer all day, came home from a stressful day at work, went to bed early and slept for 10 hours straight.  Here's my missing day, inspired by nature.

I had such high hopes for this mani.  I learned a lot during the execution, so I thought I would pass those lessons on to you.  I started with two coats of Zoya Yara.  I love this polish.  Application is smooth and easy.  The color is a swampy green with a gold glitter.  What one might consider an ugly color, but I happen to like it.

I had these skeleton leaves in my art stash and thought they would work like a the lace manis floating around the web.  It might have been a good idea, but poorly executed.  My first mistake was not adding a topcoat over Yara.  This would have protected the basecoat from smudging.  I started out trying to "embed" the leaves in my topcoat.  This might work for lace, which is more flexible, but not with these, very flat, somewhat inflexible leaves.  After this did not work, I tried nail glue.

I swiped the corners with the glue and added the leaves.  Unfortunately, only small sections were glued securely.  If I were to do this again, I would glue this in small sections, working from one end to the other.  This would allow the leaves to more closely follow the curve of the nail.  Next I trimmed the leaves with cuticle scissors.

Finally I covered with two coats of Sech Vite.  Although I feel like this wasn't a total fail, it also did not turn out as well as it could have.  But I learned better how to do this technique, and therefore it was worth the try.  Now go check all the other, more successful manicures.