Whooooosh there goes Monday!  Sorry for not getting this posted earlier today — I really should know better than to schedule any personal stuff on a Monday since it’s notoriously a whack-a-mole day work-wise.  Better late than never though, right?

First, the mani.  I’ll tell ya, this one drove me a little bonkers.  I actually started it last Friday, and even got to the point of sealing it down, but wouldn’t you know I went and knocked my hand against the counter and completely wrecked most of the nails.  It’s kind of funny now how upsetting that was, but I’ve gotten over it in the days since — and frankly, round two turned out a lot better than the first one, so it was probably for the best.  Instead of challenging myself over the weekend I hunkered down over a bunch of swatch sticks from Hong Kong and started plowing through my collection — good gravy this is going to take awhile.  I’m about half way through I think, and am sure it will be worth it once I’m done; instead of playing hunt and peck to find the right polish (they’re currently stashed in three different locations in the house, it’s an organizational nightmare) I can just refer to the sticks and see what’s up.

ANYWAY, back to the mani.  I had been chatting with Mani Curiously… via Twitter a couple of weeks ago and the seed was planted to do Pin Up Girl nail art — her hubby is in the US Navy, I love me some Sailor Jerry flash art, and last week was Navy week in New Orleans: it all seemed like a slam dunk.  The base on this is three coats of OPI Did You ‘Ear About Van Gogh from the Holland Collection; could have done it with only two, but I have a harder time with these more nude/near-flesh-toned polishes of telling where I’ve got a good cover so erred on the safe side.  Once that dried I used my Frankensteined MASH brush (cut off all but two bristles) to go in and start painting the ladies in acrylic.  And convinced myself somewhere along the way that I needed to walk around with my arms tucked over my head more often, because obviously that’s a totally alluring look.  Like I said, the second stab at this went a lot better than the first and aside from a few flubs I’m pretty happy with how it turned out — it’s nice to see too that I’ve gotten a little better technical-wise since my last Sailor Jerry inspired mani, so hooray progress!

Annnnnnnd finally…. the big winner of the MASH contest is….  :: drumroll ::

 Nicole B. S.

Full names changed to protect the innocent etc. (plus I admit I kinda like the abbreviated version),
check your email so I can get your address

Thank you all so much for participating, I’m sorry that everyone couldn’t be a winner — but really, do yourself a huge favor if you’re into this stuff and drop the $10 to buy the brush kit, you won’t be disappointed (plus they’re still doing the free shipping).  And big thanks again to Team MASH for sponsoring such a great giveaway — y’all are the best!

(out the door shortly but I’ll catch up on comments and emails and whatnot later tonight, pinky swear)