Mani Swap With Not Your Average Nails

Yay reader, you are all witness to an historical event today: my first mani swap! And you are also witness to another historical moment on this blog: I've added a little logo to my pictures! :D

Becca from Not Your Average Nails and I are doing our first mani swap together - and I couldn't be more excited about it! After I had commented a few times on her amazing designs and how I would love to recreate them, Becca suggested we do a mani swap together! I had a lot of her designs on my "to recreate" wishlist, so I was more than eager to say yes!

The big trouble began when I had to pick just one design to recreate. I love just about all of Becca's designs, but some just looked like they'd be way over my head (these mega cute ice creams for example) and I didn't feel confident enough that I'd be able to do them justice just yet. I settled on her Naughty Nautical design, because I loved it from the minute I saw it and because it made me go out and buy Essie's Naughty Nautical! So I have the perfect polish to recreate it :)

Becca had made a little pictorial on how to create the ropes and the rose compass - you can see it here on Tumblr. Her tutorial is so great and clear, because I just followed it and had no trouble at all to paint the compass on my thumb.

I'm amazingly proud of how everything about this design turned out! I think I nailed the compass and I'm very proud of how straight my lines are. I did everything freehand because when I tried it with striping tape it just got all messy. I also love how Essie's Naughty Nautical looks, it's such a gorgeous colour with a nice subtle shimmer in it.

And to finish my first mani swap ever, I present to you probably the best prop picture I'll ever take! I wanted to take a picture with a nautical prop, but the only thing I could find was a rubber duck so I decided to just go for it :D  I love this shot so much, the duck looks so funny!!

Now, what design of mine did Becca choose to recreate? She picked my leopard print with Claire's School Day, which you can see here! And you can see Becca's recreation of it here!

Definitely go browse her blog and be amazed by all her awesome designs!! Honestly, you must. Now. Why are you still reading this?! :p

Here's our official *Mani Swap!* collage!

What do you think of this nautical design? Becca did an amazing job creating it, but I'm really proud of how I was able to recreate it too :D I got A LOT of compliments on these nails!
Plus: how do you like my little R logo?

Big thanks to Becca for suggesting this mani swap - I would never have dared suggest it because honestly, I'm so intimidated by how awesome your designs are! I'm super glad we did this mani swap because it was really fun and very cool to see my design on Becca's nails :)

Thanks for reading!