
#ManiMonday 13/07/2020
Happy #manimonday everyone! It was back to the races again this weekend, with one of my babies having her first race, which she won. So, let’s get into this week’s yellow horse houndstooth design!

Products used:
Stamping plate: Born Pretty “BP – L013” and Clear Jelly Stamper “CJS-LC40 Horsin’ Around”
Stamping polish: Born Pretty “BP-WN03 Throne” and Hit The Bottle “Hello Buttercup”
Base: Sally Hansen “Double Duty Base & Top Coat” and Essie “Blanc”
Top coat: Sally Hansen “Double Duty Base & Top Coat”
This week, even though I had a horse racing, I decided to mix it up a bit when it came to what I’d put on my nails. Not only did it have a horsey feature, which I like to do, but it also matched my outfit really well!
The image selection was surprisingly easy thanks to Mum’s input. I opted for a houndstooth image to match my pants. One of my stamping plates does have a larger houndstooth image, but because of my nail size and the size of the pattern on the pants, I decided to use the smaller image. I then wanted to bring in a horse feature nail with a pop of the silk colours. This is really the only full-size horse that will fit on my nail (which is why I use it a lot) so that one it was!

As you all know by now, when it comes to my horses racing, the colour scheme is pretty straight forward. Let’s just say, if you love red or yellow horse nails you’ve come to the right blog! As I wore red last time to the races, I decided to wear yellow this time, which influenced the colour of the horse image. This actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise! I have another horse racing on Wednesday, but his silks are yellow and orange, so these nails mean I won’t have to redo them before then. My pants are black and white houndstooth, so that decided the colours for me. As black stamps better onto white than vice versa, I opted for a white base. This allowed the horse to show up really well too. Then to tie my feature nail in with my other nails, I opted for a black horse outline.
With colours and images picked quickly, I thought my support worker and I would be in for a quick design. However, I was wrong! I haven’t used this houndstooth image before and the plate is unexpectedly quite deep. At first, the edges weren’t that sharp and then it would only pick up the outline on some of the teeth. After playing around with it we finally got the hang of it. Then it was onto the horse, which just took forever to pick up! At first, for some weird reason, random spots of the horse wouldn’t pick up, like his back or tail. Then the legs and head caused us the most trouble. In the end, I tried, and I picked it up perfectly the first time, but it must have been a fluke because I couldn’t get any more after that. My support worker did notice that the Hit the Bottle polish was a bit thicker compared to my Born Pretty black (which picked up the horse perfectly). As I have another bottle on the way and this one is running out, we added a few drops of the Hit the Bottle clear top coat to thin it out. After playing around a bit more, we then asked Mum to try and she got it perfect first go. Whether it was because we thinned it out or she just has the touch, we’ll never know.
Once again, the black stamping smudged when we stamped the top coat on. I’m not really sure why it’s started doing this just recently but I’m going to put it down to it just not drying as quickly in the cooler weather because that’s the only thing that’s changed. After letting it dry for ten or so more minutes, we didn’t have any dramas.
Overall, I’m loving this design. It’s different from what I normally do for the races and it matches my outfit perfectly. I’m calling it my “work on Friday, races on Saturday” design because you really could get away with wearing it to work as the houndstooth makes it look really classy! I think this design would also look cool in a light grey houndstooth with whatever colour horse you wanted.
Bye for now!
