TOTD Before & After: Zoya Arizona and Orly Glam (aka, Konad-isaster Strikes!)

Oh noes, not the toes!

(I couldn't resist. I'm really sorry).

Ah, toes. Some people hate them (and I'm one of those). Some people are neutral to them. Some people love them...(sometimes maybe a little too much...>.>) Because I hate feet, even my own, I went back and forth about whether or not to photograph my pedicures and blog about them. But ultimately, wherever you come down on the feet/toes debate, it's undeniable that they contain 10 more nails that allow me to polish and decorate to my heart's content. Plus, I'm all about being inclusive! So I decided that this blog shall henceforth contain pedicures as well as manicures.

For this pedi, I started by painting my toenails with Zoya's Arizona. I quickly realized that my toes cannot have a creme polish on them without a ridge filler (normally I use frosts and shimmers), and I'm actually not convinced that even that will really do that job, either...so please forgive slightly visible ridges below, along with a recovering blister on the side of my big toe. Despite my toe flaws, the color is pretty, very subtle for an orange and very springy/summery:

I decided that a nice red creme would look good as an accent with this color, so I stamped them with Sally Hansen Insta-Dry in Cinna-snap, first using Konad m69. The pattern is too small to cover my whole big toe, so I tried putting it on at a diagonal from the outer edge. No such luck--it just looked like I messed up the angle of the stamp. I tried to save it by stamping over it with a flower from Bundle Monster BM03. Now, I like the flower stamped on my second toe. It actually looks pretty cool, and I think if I hadn't already had the mini-flower design under it, it would have looked good on the big toe, too. But, with the little flowers showing through, it just looks like a big clusterfudge. I think it would have been cute if the flower had been solid, however. And I do really like this red stamped on this orange.

What's a girl to do? When you can't fix it, cover it, especially with glitter. :) I threw some Orly Glam over it (a red that has a slight sprinkling of glitter in it) leaving the good toe showing. I'm completely in love with this look! I need to put on a second coat of the red and clean it up, but I love it. Just a little pop of color and pattern next to some pretty red:

Thomas Edison said that every failure is really a step on the path to success, and said something like 'I didn't fail to invent the lightbulb 999 times, I just found 999 ways that didn't work'. I apparently just found one way not to stamp my toes, lol. Live and learn, I guess. I learned not to stamp over a failed pattern unless I use a solid stamp that will cover my previous stamping. I learned Cinna-snap goes well with Arizona. I learned that the BM-03 flower stamp looks cute when centered on my smaller toenails. And I learned that I like using my second toe as an accent toe for pedicures. :)

Thanks very much for reading,

M.