Mani Swap with Jessica from Be Happy and Buy Polish

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Hello Loves!  Once again, I have teamed up with the lovely Jessica from Be Happy and Buy Polish for a mani challenge.  Last time we did Quilted Twin Nails and she stomped my creative tail.  This time, it's a mani swap!  I selected one of Jessica's manicures to recreate and she selected one of mine.  Want to see them?  Originals are on the left, recreations on the right.  :)

Let's start with Jessica's recreation of my Basket of Roses mani.  In case you missed it, the full details can be seen here.  The basics are pretty simple.  The background in my version was stamped using the Messy Mansion Easter Plate (MM36).  I then freehanded the swirled roses on the tips.  They didn't turn out quite how I wanted them - the top coat smushed the colors together a bit.  Here's my original.

And here's Jessica's version.  She absolutely NAILED it.  Her roses are exactly what I was going for but missed in the original design.  Oh, and that lattice work?  She used striping tape and then freehanded the dividing lines.  Girl has skills!  Be sure to check out her post here to learn which polishes she used in her recreation.

Ready for my recreation of her mani?  Choosing one of her designs to recreate was a challenge in itself.  She has so many adorable manicures!  I finally settled on this sweet sailboat/nautical design.  Isn't it precious?

Here's my recreation.  I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.  I think Jessica used striping tape for her version, but you know I hate striping tape and I didn't have vinyls thin enough so my stripes are freehand.  They have a little bit of wonk to them, but they're close enough for me.  ;)

For my version, I used Gelish Deep Sea as the navy, IBD Cosmic Red as the red, and IBD Carte Blanche for the white (swatched here).

While I was preparing this post, I realized I haven't swatched IBD Cosmic Red for you.  This is super surprising as it was one of the first IBD Just Gel Polishes I added to my collection, and it has seen a lot of love over the years.  So, here you go.  IBD Cosmic Red is a red jelly base that is packed with red micro glitter.

I also took the time to swatch Gelish Deep Sea.  I have a lot of older Gelish colors in my collection, but I don't wear them very often.  Deep Sea is the one color that I have probably worn most of all of my Gelish.  It is, in my opinion, the perfect navy blue with a subtle red and blue shimmer.  It's just beautiful.

It's the shimmer in Deep Sea that really gets me, and it didn't show up as much as I would like in the swatch photo above.  So you know I had to take a closeup.

Finally, here's one more shot of my recreation of Jessica's mani.  I do adore this design.  Would you believe this is my first nautical manicure?  Nautical has been on my list of designs to try for a while, and that cute little sailboat made it the perfect choice for this mani swap.  :)

What do you think?  Did I recreate Jessica's mani as well as she recreated mine?  I told her when she showed me her recreation that I'm going to stop playing with her if she keeps showing me up!  lol

~Michelle

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