April Showers Bring May Flowers

Ok, so yes, it is technically still March.  But this Tuesday does mark the official beginning of Spring and also, this post is serving as my entry into Enamel Girl's Nail Art Stamping Contest, which ends this Wednesday.  The theme of the contest is "Anything Spring" and when I think of Spring, I think of cooling afternoon rain showers and fresh flowers starting to pop up all over.

I decided to use Sinful Colors Cinderella as my base.  I just received it in the mail Friday.  I couldn't find it anywhere around me so I ended up buying it, along with Sinful Colors Green Ocean, from Traci's blog sale over at The Trace Face Philes.  Cinderella is very, very sheer though, so I decided to layer it over Revlon Blue Lagoon.  I originally bought Blue Lagoon to possibly layer Revlon Whimsical over, but it turned out to look almost exactly like the same shade of blue as Sinful Colors Cinderella.  The big difference is that Blue Lagoon has a silver shimmer and Cinderella has that awesome pinkish-copper shimmer that is making everyone go nuts over, myself included.

Revlon Blue Lagoon is a bit on the sheer side as well, but no where near as sheer as Cinderella.  It builds up very nicely after just two coats, whereas Cinderella would take 4 coats at least to be just as opaque.  So my base ended up being two coats of Revlon Blue Lagoon topped with one coat of Sinful Colors Cinderella.

Then I broke out my Konad Special Polish in white and a bunch of pastel Konad Special Polishes for the designs.

Using Konad Special Polish in white, I stamped the clouds design from Konad plate m79 onto my index and middle fingers and my pinkies.

Then on my thumbs and ring fingers, I stamped a flower pattern from Bundle Monster BM-224.

To get flowers of different colors, I placed drops from Konad Special Polishes in pastel violet, yellow, pastel green and pastel pink onto different parts of the flower pattern, then scraped and stamped on the flowers.

Taking my dotting tools, I then used the same Konad colors to dot the centers of all the flowers with a color different than the petals.  I waited for that to set up and then put a coat of Seche Vite top coat on the flowers and let that dry.  This way I didn't have to worry about bumping and messing up any of the flowers while I was trying to add raindrops with China Glaze Blue Year's Eve to my other nails.  To make the raindrops, I used the smallest dotting tool available and once I placed the dot of Blue Year's Eve on my nail, instead just lifting the dotting tool straight up, I gave the dotting tool a small, quick flick upward to stretch the dot into the raindrop shape.  Once the raindrops dried, I added a coat of Seche Vite to those nails to finish everything off.

This is my first time entering a nail art contest online.  There have been other contests that I've thought about entering but ended up procrastinating and just never tried.  So I was very happy with myself that I followed through on this one and making this design was a lot of fun!