flamingo fail

Unfortunately this has been one of those times where I have been in a serious nail design funk. I just haven't been feeling that inspired lately, so when I came across a really fun Lily Pulitzer flamingo print I thought this could make for a cute summer mani. Sadly it didn't quite go as planned. I'm posting it anyway because maybe someone will like it or someone will have a good idea for how I could have fixed it... 

I started with all white nails courtesy of one coat of butter LONDON'd Horse Power Nail Fertilizer, one coat of Nail Foundation Flawless Basecoat, and two coats of Cotton Buds.

 Next on my thumb and ring finger I decided to try and replicate the pretty aqua color of the pattern. Surprisingly, none of my polishes were quite right so I mixed a color using butter LONDON's Slapper (the closest shade I had, but a little too teal), Poole (a light blue) and a dash of Wellies (a bright yellow green to brighten up the color). It ended up being pretty close, though the lighting doesn't do it justice. I painted two coats of my custom color over the thumb and ring finger and let dry. Next I began the tricky part of painting the flamingos. I have seen numerous flamingo nail designs over the years, but they all end up looking the same. I loved how these Lily Pulitzer flamingos were so fluffy and had so many shades of pink in them. 

I started by painting the main body of the flamingo using a light pink shade, Teddy Girl. Next using the darkest pink color I had selected for my pallet, I painted the outline of the feathers with Macbeth. Next I added all the other feathers alternating with a light coral (Kerfluffle), a darker coral (Trout Pout), a soft pink (Fruit Machine) and Macbeth and Teddy Girl. After I finished with the body, I painted the beak and eyes using Union Jack Black. I finished the look off with a coat of my favorite SV Topcoat. 

The less favored left hand

In my opinion the right hand looked better even though my non dominant hand painted it

I ended up liking the flamingos on my right hand better oddly enough but I think the ones on my left hand though not as nicely executed look more like the Lily Pulitzer ones. After I finished the time consuming process of painting the flamingos I realized it looked rather unfinished with the plain white nails. I didn't want to add any additional designs to the other nails fearing it would make it too busy looking. However it looked like it was incomplete just leaving it white. I started painting it over in the aqua shade I made, but then the flamingos just blended in, so I scratched that and tried painting them over in one of the pink accent shades. 

Ewwww. See what I mean... not quite right. 

Once again I was unsatisfied. I ended up repainting them white, going to bed and taking it all off the next day...flamingos and all. Sometimes when you aren't feeling that inspired it's best not to force it. 

What do you think about this flamingo failure? Do you have any ideas for how to fix it?