Another month, another polish days event!  I look forward to these every month now.  It’s so much fun to see how everyone interprets each theme.  I found this month’s theme, Sentimental Nails, quite difficult as I’m not a particularly sentimental person.  I wracked my brain for a sentimental memory I could translate onto my nails but didn’t quite get there.  In the end, I decided to switch up the interpretation a little bit to nostalgic nails and went with a classic manicure design with roses, pinstripes and polka dots.  This manicure invokes images of a grandma’s curtains and linens to me :D

For this manicure I used Cult Nails Manipulative, American Apparel Office, OPI Pink Friday and Alpine White and China Glaze Starboard.

I’ve never tried freehand roses before so this was a huge challenge for me as freehanding is hardly my strong point.  I must have spent an hour practicing different techniques before I finally attempted this manicure.  I started out painting my base colours – American Apparel Office and Cult Nails Manipulative.  So as not to push it too far, I decided to only do roses on my ring and thumb nails.  For my other nails I added polka dots, then on the nails I was going to put on the roses I added (some particularly poor) pinstripes.  Finally I freehanded the roses by using dots of OPI Pink Friday and Alpine White and mixing them using toothpicks then adding the leaves using China Glaze Starboard and the toothpick.

I couldn’t resist a picture of both my hands for this manicure.  I alternated the base colours on my two hands and loved the overall effect.  I wish I could have found a comfy position that included my thumb nails too which matched my ring nails.  I can’t wait to see what everyone else comes up with for this one and hear their inspiration (hopefully it’s better than grandma style linen!).  Check out all the other fantastic posts for this month’s polish days below: