NOTD Before & After--Zoya Gemma (lotsa pictures!)

Hello!

Today I have Zoya's Gemma for you. Gemma is as hard to describe as it is beautiful...She's an olive-green color with a light blue-lavender flash that makes it look like she's lit from inside.

Above: direct sunlight

Indirect sunlight

Inside light.

She brings up so many different associations in my mind...This is what moss would look like if it were phosphorescent...it's what a forest fairy would wear for her clothes, her nails, her hair. The flash of light blurple in it reminds me of the beautiful tree in avatar:

The evanescent-feeling combination reminds me of Zangarmarsh in World of Warcraft:

And of incandescent jellyfish:

Whenever I look down at Gemma on my nails, I'm a little bit transported to these beautiful places--it's like I'm carrying a little bit of their magic along with me.

Yes, I know it's a little crazy to wax lyrical about a nail polish, but Gemma just inspires that in me for some reason. In fact, she inspired me so much, I actually free-handed part of the design I wanted to do on my accent nails for the second day of this manicure. I wanted to play up the color flash and the ethereal quality of this polish, so I chose this design:

 (outside, indirect light)

(outside, indirect light)

(inside lamplight to show the flash of blue better)

I free-handed the grass with a nail art brush and Maybelline Go Go Green; the fact that I'm very proud of how this came out shows you how pathetically bad I am at free-handing. I stamped the dragonfly with Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Grape Going!, using Salon Express plate SE-21. I picked these both because they have shimmer and Grape-Going is a duochrome that flashes blue, the same way that Gemma does; I think this all worked together well to keep the magical, surreal feel.

I'm not completely embarrassed by it, so that's a step forward for my free-handing, even if it is only grass. One step at a time, right? :)

But that's not all!! What if I told you that you could get THREE manicures instead of two? That's right, THREE?

(sorry...too many late-night infomercials...)

Shortly after finishing the nail art, I unpacked a package with styrofoam peanuts that for some reason dulled my polish when they rubbed against them. Weird, huh? Anyway, I figured if I had to put on another layer of topcoat, I might as well try another experiment. So I put on a coat of Zoya's Opal, another of the lovelies that I bought during Zoya's sale. Here is the result:

How gorgeous is that?! The blue-green flash of the flakies perfectly complements Gemma's colors. I will definitely be pairing these two again. :)

Thanks for reading, and bye for now,

M.