Power Dressing - how it all started!!!

So, with a post title like that, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this blog was all about big shoulder pads, the kind many business women from the eighties were pretty partial to!!!! 

In fact, the Power Dressing that I am referring to is a gorgeous blue polish by Ciate.

This is 3 coats of polish, which gives the mani a really deep colour. It is super glossy and is shown here without a top coat.

In addition to this being such a gorgeous polish, the reason for it featuring on my blog is that it was the colour that set my nail art bug in motion.

My friend Claire Kerr, whose nailart website and blog can be found at www.kerruticles.com, posted this pic on Facebook in January and I loved it. I made a comment about the colour on her timeline and in her incredibly efficient way, she responded with the colour, make and a link to the Ciate website.

And so my addiction began!!! 

Before I knew it, I'd ordered the Mini Mani Manor (a nail polish advent calendar - which was reduced because it was January!!!) and a Nail Lab complete with polishes, glitter, sequins and nail art tools!!! Fortunately it's my birthday in January, so my birthday list very quickly became loaded with various nail art must haves!!!

Claire was a great help in the first couple of months - I tried to limit my questions to 2 or 3 a day, but I sometimes bombarded her with more!!!! She encouraged me to set up a blog and join various different challenges, which is how I came to be involved the A-Z challenge. 

This week is "X is for eXtra special" and I've struggled with how to interpret this for the last couple of weeks. It was only yesterday that it came to me - I decided to recreate Claire's mani that started my nail art addiction.

The mani is created using star decals in Rimmel "Blueberry Whizz" and China Glaze "I'd Melt for You" (these aren't the colours Claire used, but they were the closest I had in my stash!!) The stars are prepared in advance by painting polish onto cellophane, allowing it to dry and using a craft punch to create the stars. Next comes the tricky part where you have to separate the polish from the cellophane. The stars are then ready to be placed over the Power Dressing mani and set in place with a top coat of Glisten and Glow HK Girl.

My nails aren't as long and lovely as Claire's ( I could only fit 2 not 3 stars on mine!!!), I don't have a light box (yet!!!) and this pic is taken on my I phone, but I hope you can see some resemblance between the two manis!!!

X is for eXtra special which is how I view this polish from Ciate - Power Dressing - how it all started!!!

Xoxo