Hey guys! For this week's Mani Monday, I have to admit that I was in a bit of struggle. I've teamed up with Jayne and Renee yet again for some Fruit themed nails and as soon as it was decided, I knew exactly what I wanted to do... but of course, knowing what you want to do doesn't entirely mean that it's going to work out. Admittedly, I'm not the hugest fan of how either of these mani's turned out - though that's more from a technical, polish standpoint than a design standpoint since I'm still learning a lot of nail art techniques. 

As soon as the theme was Fruit, I knew that I was finally going to put the Born Pretty Store BP-L076 stamping plate to work. I was tempted to try the watermelon image, but I went for the pineapples because I knew that I could be a little bit more creative with it. Also, because there are so many different sizes of pineapple in this image, I was able to use it in a couple of different ways.

The first look I tried is this reverse stamped yellow and orange pineapple look that would have been absolutely dreamy if my top coat didn't bubble like crazy. This image really doesn't even show at all how bad the bubbling was in this mani.

Anyway, to get this look I stared with China Glaze For Audrey, which is a gorgeous Tiffany box blue shade. Because I was using Yellow Stopper to grab the reverse stamped images and it does have a cool tone to it, I added it to all four nails so that they would be uniform - hence the difference in how the polish looks on my nails and in the bottle. For the pineapples, I used Bundle Monster Straight Up Black for the stamp and filled in using a dotting tool. The polishes I used are Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Glow With It and Dreamsicle as well as essence Island Hopping. Like I said, I used Yellow Stopper for my sticky base and I finished with one coat of Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat and one coat of Seche Vive - which I think do not play well together because BUBBLES GALORE. Still, I think it's overall pretty cute!

After my little perfectionist heart couldn't handle the bubbles anymore I knew I wanted to try something else and I knew that I didn't have a lot of time - enter the holo smoosh mani and a little bit more reverse stamping.

For this look, I started with a base of Color Club Cloud Nine - basically a magical pale lavender holo - on all of my nails. Once that was dry, I applied cuticle barrier and went in to smoosh Color Club Cloud Nine, Miss Bliss, and Angel Kiss. I love a holo smoosh because you get good impact even in flat light (as picutred above) and then in full light you get such stunning rainbow (as pictured below). On most of my nails, I just straight up stamped the pineapple design using Bundle Monster Straight Up Black, but on my ring finger I decided to do some more reverse stamping using Miss Bliss and Angel Kiss along with Yellow Stopper for my sticky base. I finished this mani with a generous coat of Seche Vive. As much as  like this, I feel like I liked the first look better - other than the bubble disaster.

Two things that I've definitely learned as I've been playing in the world of nail art is that 1) it doesn't always work out the way you hoped, and 2) sometimes it takes A LONG TIME to get those perfect mani's that you see online with lots of trial and error. I didn't quite have time to get it perfect on this one, but I'm not entirely mad at the mani's - and who doesn't love pineapples for the summer?

Thanks for reading!

Don't forget to check out more fruit themed nails over at Cosmetic Proof and See The World In PINK today as well!