I still have a few more days of school, but summer is officially here in New England; it’s 60% humidity right now. Someone once joked that New England has four seasons: nearly winter, winter, still winter, and construction. So true.

This is one of those designs that really does look pretty on my nails, but my camera just refused to capture it at all. I tried different types of lighting, different angles, macro, no macro, edited the heck out of them, color corrected, sharpened, unsharpened… Ugh. Trust me, this design is much cuter in person.

Between the colors, the shimmer, and the delicate contrast, my camera was having none of this design.

I started with a base of Julep’s Bess, a sky blue creme from the June 2013 box. The formula was all gloop when I tried to use it last week, so I added some thinner and left it to sit. When I tried again it was perfect, smooth and even in three thin coats. I then added stems and dots in SquareHue’s Lincoln Road, a light grey from the 2013 SoBe Collection with a dotting tool and a thin art brush. Finally, I added shimmery white dots in — what else? — China Glaze’s Dandy-lyin’ Around and gave them stems back to the seed pod for my dandelions. I threw in a few scattered petals blowing in the breeze and added a drop of China Glaze’s Fairy Dust to the petals for more shimmer, which looks ethereal in person, but is part of what made my camera give up.

There aren’t any dandelions in the backyard this year, for some reason.

In addition to my camera woes, I broke my index nail and ripped the cuticle of my ring finger, so all in all, I have crap pictures for you this week. I’m sorry!

Also, Gabranth has taken to lying on the staircase while I work on the computer, so I look up and see his furry little head peeking out at me like some kind of ceiling dog meme. It’s a little strange.

Creeper.

Hope you’re all enjoying a relaxing summer! Becca isn’t; she’s swamped at work, but she swears she’ll update soon at Fishay Fishay.

Next week: rainbow!