Saturday Night Nails

Ah, the joys of motherhood.   The thrill of a Saturday night stretching ahead of you.  The kids are in bed, all of your single friends are out partying, all of your mommy friends have their own kids in bed or desperately slogging through a science fair project.  Thankfully, my kids are young, and easily lulled by their color-changing, star-projecting nightlight.  So what's a mom to do with all this free time?

Well, if you were me, you'd look around the living room, see the painting above your mantel, and be artistically inspired.  I'm limited, of course.  No oils, no pastels or watercolors.  But boy, do I have a lot of nail polish!  So here we go... Manicure a la Notre Dame!

The Artistic Inpiration

The landscape is an oil of the back of the Notre Dame.  It's about 4 feet tall, and I got it at a yard sale a few years ago.  The vases on either side are from a different yard sale.  I love it when things work out so nicely!  Moving on, though, here's the epic manicure:

Ta-da!

Now it's a party!

The base color is Gold Leaf by Mary Kay.  It's a beautiful, sheer gold that builds into a solid shimmer with multiple coats.  It was a limited edition nail polish, and is no longer available through Mary Kay.  Your best shot would be finding it online.  It's fantastic by itself, but I decided to add a glittery color on top to make it more multidimensional.  Here's a shot of the polish:

The bottle

The color

The glitter on top is courtesy of Nailtini, in the color Millionaire.  This retails for $13, and is from their Speakeasy Collection.  I got this polish in the November Ipsy bag, and while it's taken me a little while to truly love it, I'm now a big fan of the extra dimension it adds.  The description from the website is "teal and gold tinsels awash in rose-gold microglitter", which is a very apt description.  You can find the polish online here.

The polish

The color

I also used Sally Hansen's Double Duty Strengthening Base and Top Coat.  This is definitely not my favorite product, but I've yet to find a base/top coat that will keep my nails from chipping.  I'd love a recommendation, though!  Here's one last shot of the final result, taken with a flash.

For some reason, I could not get the
camera to focus on my nails and not the frame.
My apologies!

So that's my Saturday night!  Hopefully, yours was more exciting. Bon soir!

Love, Leigh