NAIL MAIL!!! ...and the mani that's been waiting for it. :-)

Happy weekend, everyone!!  Ahhh do I ever love Friday nights!!  Even though I'm sitting at home doing nothing (other than reading blogs and looking at polish swatches on Google Images), I love the feeling of having two whole work-free days stretching out before me like the pages of an open book. :-)

Today was a pretty important occasion (in the life of a new blogger) as you can probably tell from the title of this post. I received my very first ever nail mail from a blogger friend. :-D
Essie from iHeartPrettyPolish sent me the wonderful, undeserved gift of her bottle of Essie Sand Tropez - a polish I've been ogling every time I go into Wal-Mart or Kmart as I keep seeing manicures that use a nude base, which I did not have up until this point.  Included in the bubble mailer envelope was a BEAUTIFUL, unexpected surprise: Julep Trina.  I have no idea how she could've known this, as I'm just starting to discover I have a thing for vampy, shimmery, glittery purples, and especially duochromes!! :-D  So imagine my surprise when I pulled that beauty out of the bag!  I already have a mani idea (inspired by my shower curtain, of all things!) that I will do as soon as the mani I'm showing you today wears to the point of being unacceptable.  As I said in my original post, part of my goal is to provide info about the wear time you may expect from a polish.  So here are the day 1 photos:

Super fun dot/gradient mani! Looking at this now though, I'm horrified at the polish I somehow left on my cuticles.  I swear I touched up before I took these pics, so I don't know how I missed it. :-/ Embarrassing!

Got a 'lil carried away on the pinkie! Whoops.

This is my favorite one. :-) So happy with how it turned out!

I decided I had to take a pic with my Lia Sophia rings since they match the color scheme so perfectly!

Other thumb. Also very nice.

The one - the ONLY: ESSIE SAND TROPEZ!!

And I had to get a good bottle shot of this one too. I'd been wanting a purty orange glass fleck ever since I saw China Glaze Riveting.  So I was very happy to stumble upon W 'n W's 9-0-2-1-Orange! Only $1.69, babyyy!

I just realized I posted manis inspired by other bloggers (and ironically, the same blogger two posts in a row!  Oh well.  See Chalkboard Nails' version here if you'd like. :-)  I sure wish I had long nail beds like hers!!
http://www.chalkboardnails.com/2012/06/gradient-dot-manicure.html


What I used:

L-R: Revlon Base, Essie Sand Tropez, Revlon Royal, Kleancolor Orange Metallic, Wet 'N Wild 9-0-2-1-Orange, and SV

I did one coat of the quick dry base, which I am fairly certain I will be replacing with a different brand as this one is getting so gloopy and stringy every time I take the brush out of the bottle.  I mean, I realize base coat is in part supposed to help the polish stick to your nails, but this formula is just kinda "ick."  So I'd like to see what else is out there.  

Ok, so base coat (I get off-topic quickly!) - then two coats of Sand Tropez which I soooo badly wanted to get good pics of before the nail art, but I had some bubbling issues (could've been from over agitation as I hopped up and down when I got the package, and/or the fact that I was so eager to get this beaut on my nails that I didn't allow proper drying time between coats).  Pretty smooth application though a tad streaky, it evens itself out very well!  Mmm, love it!

Also due to this eagerness, I forgot I'd intended to do an accent nail of just solid 9-0-2-1-Orange, so I ended up painting two coats of that over one coat of Sand Tropez on my ring fingers.  Oh well, it was probably good undies for it, as the orange has a jelly base. :-)

I then proceeded to scrounge up "dotting tools" . . .a.k.a. the clicker end of a retractable pen, and the lead tip of a pencil. ;-)  Rock what ya got, right?  I used Revlon Royal first, and then the Kleancolor, just trying to make the dots random and different sizes.  You can see the baby dots in Royal on my pinkie. 

Then of course I finished everything off with a medium coat of Seche Vite.  THERE YOU HAVE IT, FOLKS!  

I couldn't stop staring at my nails today.  Finally doing this mani made me happy...and it happens to remind me of one of my favorite movies, Finding Nemo.  The orange and the blue: Marlin/Nemo, and Dory. :-D  And of course, the fact that the dots look like bubbles:

Thank you for reading, and if you made it to the end of this LOOOONG post, you deserve a gold star!!!