NOTD: Hits Mari Moon Dreamer + Olympics Opening Ceremony Challenge

Hello!

Today I have a NOTD for you that was actually a Before & After, but I'm not going to present it that way. The reason is that the base polish is Hits Mari Moon Dreamer, one of the gorgeous Brazilian polishes I got in my recent swap, and it needs a whole post of its own to do it justice (it needs that many pictures, yes, lol). So, I'll just show you the After part here, and then we'll hop in the way-back machine and do the Before. :)

The challenge in PCF today is to create a manicure with the theme 'Olympics Opening Ceremony/Flag'. I opted to focus on the opening ceremony side of it...One of my favorite moments from any opening ceremony comes from the 2010 Winter Olympics, when they unveiled the stadium torch. Although there was a malfunction and the torch didn't work right at first, it was still exceptionally beautiful, and I thought the symbolism, color, and shapes were a moving tribute to the torch:

So, I set out to do a manicure that captured that moment somehow, to the best of my ability. I decided on a stylized representation of the torch in this moment. Here's what I did:

I started with Hits Mari Moon Dreamer as my polish, since it seemed to have similar colors to the ones I love in the picture. I stamped a firework with Shany Plate SH13 using Color Club's Fashion Addict, to reflect the fireworks, and using the same polish I stamped part of a geometric pattern from Konad plate m64 to mirror the geometric intersection of the bars in the torch. Finally, to capture the glow, sparkle and color of the flames, I dabbed on Lush Lacquer's Cheetahlicious glitter on the designs, and covered up the whole thing with Seche Vite.

The best part is that for once, the sun came out when I stamped with a holo, so the glow that I was hoping would come with the holo actually did show up in the sun, making it (in my opinion) even more like the play of colors in the original:

And finally, as a preview for the swatches I'll be showing you of Dreamer, look at this beautiful duochrome color shift that happens even with all of this stamping on top of it! That's some impressive duochrome...:

So, there is my tribute to the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. I'll certainly be watching on Friday--will you?

Thanks for looking, and please check out all the other Opening Ceremony/Flag manicures done by my fellow bloggers, linked below!

M.