Four Leaf Clover

Today's manicure is based off of a tutorial from Zoya's blog: Four Leaf Clover Tutorial.  I used their tutorial as the basis for my design, but I tweaked one little thing.  Zoya Ivanka is much too sheer to use on its own.  After three coats I still had visible nail lines so I took everything off and started over - this time with a base to make Ivanka pop.

For my base I used two coats of Orly Lucky Duck, a basic green cream from Orly's Fall 2011 Birds of a Feather Collection.   Next I used two coats of Zoya Ivanka on top of Lucky Duck - it was a little streaky after one coat even over Lucky Duck.  For my accent nail I used two coats of Zoya Ziv although it was completely opaque after one.

To create the clover design I used a small dotting tool to make hearts using Lucky Duck over Ziv.  I did try going straight to Ivanka with no base green, but it took so many coats of Ivanka to be opaque that I wound up smearing the clover leaves when I added top coat.  It was a little frustrating.  On my third try I was able to get the non-smeared design you see here.  Whoo!