Manicure Monday (73): Not Quite A Wife

Manicure Monday is a feature that combines my love of reading and nail polish. Each week I’ll showcase one of my current reads along with a matching book manicure.

Good morning, everyone. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I finally say Guardians of the Galaxy yesterday and I really liked it. It’s a really fun movie with tons of action, some good character development, cool special effects and witty writing. I didn’t know much about Chris Pratt going into it and have to say that he won me over in this movie. And those abs….Anyway, today’s Manicure Monday features Not Quite A Wife (The Lost Lords #6) by Mary Jo Putney. As you can probably tell from the cover, Not Quite A Wife is a romance of the historical variety. I picked this one up at ALA. While Putney is a big name in romance, I’d somehow never read any of her books. But that’s all changed and I have a manicure to prove it.

So this manicure didn’t come out really the way I had envisioned it. I originally wanted to mimic the look of the lace texture at the bodice of the dress. From far away, it kind of looks like I might have gotten it right but, upon closer inspection it’s not quite right.

I’ve learned after doing a lot of manicures that I can’t really paint flowers that well. It’s better when they are “abstract” because painting a realistic flower on my nails is beyond me. Here they look like flower-y blobs or funky animal print. I also realized that the purple base I used for the dress was off and I probably should have gone for something slightly pinker.

I used 4 shades total for this manicure. They were Zoya Hudson (metallic lavender shimmer), Essie Tour de Finance (dark pink creme), OPI Anti-Bleak (magenta creme) and Zoya Mia (mauve pink).

For my pinkie and thumb I wanted to recreate the swirls of pink and purple that are a part of the cover gown. My lines are not quite as smooth as I wanted them to be. I think my pinkie looks better than my thumb.

There you have it. I am not totally in love with it but I gave it a good effort. Have you guys read any of Putney’s books? Are there any that are must reads? Have a lovely week, all!