Summer Fun: Tropical Drinks

I'm a little late on this one. I didn't know what to do for a summer drink at first, mainly because I don't drink and I don't get the whole drinking for relaxation and socialization thing. I'll occasionally do a virgin strawberry daiquiri, but that's about it.

I do love my fancy drinks, though. It's just that I tend to go more for the kid-friendly side of the spectrum: smoothies, flavored teas and lemonades, and my favorites: Milkshakes.

Now I don't do plain old vanilla or chocolate, oh no. I like things like mint chocolate chip, or my favorite, banana-chocolate. I already did mint chocolate for this challenge though, and brown and yellow are really not my colors. So I went with my second favorite flavor: strawberry chocolate

For my base color, I used Essie "Exotic Liras," and while it was a great pink, it was a little too bright to invoke the color of a strawberry milkshake. So I put a coat of my least favorite polish over top: Cover Girl Continuous color 3 in 1 "Rose Quartz."

I've had this polish for years, and I've used it maybe once. It's a super pale pink in the bottle, with almost no color whatsoever on the nail. It's heavy on the shimmer, not so much in the opacity. This was a color that I bought back when I wasn't allowed to wear bright colors on my nails, and I hated it from the get go. Not because there's anything wrong with the formula itself, but because I couldn't stand the color on me. Even four coats isn't enough to make it opaque.

But it was just right to make "Exotic Liras" go from come-at-you bright to frosty and ice-creamy.

I don't think I've ever layered this color before, and I'm glad I did. It's given me a new appreciation for it. Even the polishes I least like in my collection have a place, if used correctly. Like "Plum Paradise" and my glitters, I think that this is a color best suited to layering, rather than trying to use it all by it's lonesome. It's a codependent sort of polish, and that needs to be addressed in order to use it to best effect.

I freehanded the swirl pattern using S•X•Y "Dreamy Cocoa" and a toothpick (really wishing I had a set of stamping plates right now!). And of course, I topped it all off with Seche Vite.