Tropical cocktail manicure with Ciate Ivory Queen

For this week's GOT Polish Challenge, the theme was Something Tropical. I did not want coconuts, palm trees, beaches, fruits or flowers, the sun or anything yellow or orange. Picky, aren't I? I called for ideas on my blog's Facebook page and Dolon of Pout Pretty and Paulina Pawlowska-Stec suggested tropical drinks such as margheritas, and I loved the idea. Who does not enjoy sipping a cool cocktail in the height of summer?
The only problem with this was my shaky freehand skills, which I suspected would make glasses and crocodiles equally indistinguishable. But nothing ventured, nothing gained; I won't master freehand nail art by just sticking to stamping, striping, FIMO and other techniques. And here is my tropical drinks-themed manicure.
I used Ciate Ivory Queen as the base colour for this manicure. I have been using quite a bit of Ciate recently - the formula is that brilliant - but I promise to lay off for now. Ivory Queen is part of the complexion collection and is an absolute neutral, paler than my medium skintone. There is a golden sheen which gives the neutral beige a very pretty edge. The formula, typical of Ciate, was fine to apply. This is with two coats, and I wore this mani without tipwear or chips for four whole days before tiring of it and wiping the lot off. The photograph above is in natural light while the one below is in artificial light, with flash.

As for the art, I drew differently-shaped glasses - and straws - with my Konad nail art pen in black, and filled them up with different colours at random. The orange is O.P.I. Chopsticking To My Story; the yellow is Bourjois Jaune Trendy; and the green is O.P.I. Green-wich Village, all topped with Bourjois Fixant-Brilliant. As is usually the case with my freehand manicures, the glasses, straws and lemons have quite a few flaws - I need a lot more practice with freehand nail art.
This mani was done last week; I was so proud at not having nubs anymore. Meanwhile, my Gramps is moving house to be closer to my parents so his health care needs ease up - some of you may remember the horrible thing he was diagnosed with last year (do I have readers who stick around that long?) - and I'm helping them move, so I expect to end up with nubs again shortly.
I asked people what they thought of the mani. Some said there was pina colada in the wrong glass while others said the pinky was a "yellow martini" (!) and yet others thought the index finger held a lager - it was left to my Dad to have the final word: he said the "green drink was a liqueur"! What are your thoughts? Do share in the comments below.
This is my entry to the GOT Polish challenge. Do check out the other manicures.

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