Purple pansies

I saw another flower tutorial that I wanted to try - pansies!  I made pansy-shaped cookies one year for Mothers' Day.  Surely that was harder than learning to paint them on my nails.

I started with a base coat and two coats of Essie Cocktail Bling.  I like this color - a dusty lilac.  I'm very into lilac this year, can't seem to get enough.  Essie's formula is pretty good, though I like most China Glaze and OPI better.  The first coat always goes on streaky for me, but usually evens out on the second coat, though you can see that my thumb is still a tad uneven.

Next, I took my largest dotting tool and Revlon Grape, and made two dots together.  In retrospect, I wish I had spread the dots a little more to make each pansy bigger, so that I could put more detail on the flower.

After the purple, then make a 4 smaller dots in white in a cross pattern, slightly overlapping the purple dots.  Kinda looks like clouds, except these clouds have a purple lining.

I forgot to take a pix of adding the purple lines in the center of the flower.  Basically, I took a pointy dotting tool and scratched in the white with the purple to make a starburst in the center of the flower.  Then, I used China Glaze Papaya Punch for the center of the flower.  Probably a little too orange..kapow!

Here's where I veered from the tutorial a little.  I used Sinful Colors San Fransisco to add leaves and a lowlight to the flower center, the purple to add detail to the leaves, and a little white for highlights.

Right hand:

Maybe one big pansy would be more recognizable?  I do like making these flowers, though.  April showers bring nail flowers?

Update:  Hold the phone!  Essie's Matte About You has transformed this look, and I'm in love.  It made the colors softer, more muted, but at the same time, making the details sharper and clearer.  I started out trying it on my thumb, but then had to mattify all 10 nails.  Love!

The mattified thumb is on the left, and the regular one is on the right.  Look how the details just pop.  I'm probably a little too excited about this discovery, what can I say.  It's the little things.