Pre-Blog Mannequin Hands

Today I'm going into the archives to share some photos from early in 2010, when I was posting a lot on the MUA nail board but hadn't yet decided to start this nail blog. At the time, a lot of us were looking for our "mannequin hands" shade, which All Lacquered Up had written about. The Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure line was pretty new back then so I thought if I found my color there it would have a better chance of not getting discontinued in the near future. I bought four shades I thought might work:


Left to right: Naked Ambition, Café Au Lait, Nude Now, Choco-Latte.

I swatched them and shared this photo with the nail board; bless those ladies, no one suggested I might want practice my clean-up skills before posting more pictures.


Top to bottom: Choco-Latte, Nude Now, Café Au Lait, Naked Ambition.

I decided Café Au Lait was the closest match of those four, then tried some other options from my stash to compare:


Top to bottom: China Glaze Heaven, OPI Samoan Sand, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Café Au Lait, a Sally Hansen Beyond Perfect which was missing its shade label.

All Lacquered Up was taking submissions of readers' mannequin hands, so I sent mine in, doing the best mani I could at the time. Here's three coats of Café au Lait:



Here it is with China Glaze Matte Magic on top:



I was a bit giddy when my nails showed up on ALU. Who knows, without that little taste of blog attention, maybe I wouldn't have ended up starting my own blog.

*****

Reminder: My Apothica giftcard giveaway closes at midnight Eastern U.S. time tomorrow, July 15th. There's still time to enter if you haven't already and get a chance to win some nail polish spending money.