Starry Mint

A little bit of a palate-cleanser after all the glitter and bling...

Two coats of Sinful Colors Mint Apple, and stars stamped with a dark blue Color Club jelly polish and BM14

Cranberry Leaves

This is not a Christmas mani. This is a Thanksgiving mani! I have personal rules about respecting holidays by not OD-ing on them before the prior holiday's even happened yet.

So here we go, inspired by cranberry sauce (om nom nom)!

I started with two coats of BB Paris Scarlet (could have done with three, but didn't realize quite how much VNL I had going on til after taking the pictures, oops!) then stamped some fancy leaf accents with Pure Ice Twinkle and the BM01 plate.

Subtle Stamping

What can I say, I was feeling girly!

The base color here is Sinful Colors Soul Mate, stamped with RA-116 and Wet & Wild Deadly Dose.

Featured Polish: Finger Paints Art You Blue?

Alright, it's been a while in the works but here it is, Featured Polish #2: Finger Paints Art You Blue?

This is a shimmery denim blue with a nice and easy two-coat formula. 

Like before, I've put together several nail art looks incorporating this polish. 

First, as undies for glitter. I decided to do a two-finger accent for this one, using Revlon Hearts of Gold FX on my pinky and index (yes, a little fishing for the hearts was necessary), and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear In The Spotlight for the rest.

Next up, I wanted to give texture another shot, and thought it might be interesting to do some nail art over a textured polish, so I brought out AYB for accent-nail polka dots over Milani Texture Purple Streak. 

Apparently I was on a bit of a purple streak myself, since this was the next thing to come to mind. AYB under China Glaze Fault Line, with stamped accent flowers done with BB Paris Cupcake and RA-121.

AYB does work well for stamping, as well: 

I used an L.A. Colors nude polish for the base, one that I bought in a set with no names... it's NOT Mega Watt, I couldn't find it in a google search. :/ But it's kind of a dupe or similar to OPI Sand in my Swimsuit, a light nude with a white shimmer... let me know if you know the name of it? 

I stamped with Art You Blue? and RA-108, then added a coat of Milani Diamond Dazzle for bling. 

Polish Days: 7 Deadly Sins (Envy)

The Polish Days theme for this month is 7 Deadly Sins. I was originally planning on doing Sloth, by doing a really lazy manicure and then letting it chip for a few days... but I couldn't stand it! The bad-mani-ness was going to drive me nuts. So as a backup I did a green mani for Envy instead.

The base color is Revlon Scented Beach, which is a gorgeous color but smells kind of icky to me, like sunscreen and decomposing seaweed. Not a scent I'm fond of! 

I stamped the tips with an unknown Color Club polish, a nice forest-green with a semi-jelly finish, and BM18, and finished the look by placing some clear glitter from the local craft store. The glitter didn't show as much as I would have liked, but it was a neat idea. Oh well.

Check out what other ladies have done with the theme! 

Blue bubbles (stamping half-fail)

I think I still need stamping practice, at least if this is any indication...

I tried. But the stamp just didn't want to cooperate for more than a few nails. :/ I still kinda liked this mani though.

For the base I used China Glaze Want My Bawdy, then stamped with a blue foil polish from Color Club (name unknown, Ross has awesome Color Club sets but they almost never have names marked anywhere) and BM21.

One of the few times I've really liked bright, non-tealy blues on my nails!

Slightly Unorthodox Valentine

And some more slacker catch-up, here's the nails I did for Valentine's Day... 

I wanted something festive, but not overly sappy-looking. So I decided to go with the usual motifs, but change up the color scheme, yellow and purple instead of pinks!

I used China Glaze Ray-diant for the base, and then stamped with a (name unknown) Color Club dark purple jelly polish. The heart on my ring finger came from BM09 and the kiss on my thumb is from BM02. 

Red Flowers

More adventures in stamping, this time stamping over a chunky glitter!

The base is two coats of L.A. Colors - Goddess. This is a very sheer polish, definitely needs undies if you're opposed to VNL. Personally I don't always mind it, in this case it didn't bother me at all. 

I stamped with Wet & Wild Wild Shine - Burgundy Frost and BM03. 

I love the chunky holo goodness in Goddess, and how fabulously Burgundy Frost stamps! 

Magnetic Leopard

I haven't seen much nail art done with magnetic polishes beyond changing up the magnet pattern, or using several colors in skittles... so I've decided to push my creativity a little and see what interesting ideas I can come up with using them. 

Here I used the gold magnetic from Claire's, with the magnet it came with, and stamped over the top of it with RA107 and Color Club - Rev'd Up. 

If I were to re-create this, I'd probably pick a more heavily pigmented polish to stamp with. Other than that, I love how it turned out!

These have got to be on my top ten ultimate party nails! What do you think? 

Matte/Gloss Attempt (Epic Fail and a WTF!)

I'm not even close to a nail guru, and I'm absolutely, positively not perfect when it comes to nail art! But, I am willing to share my failures as well as my successes. Maybe someone can explain what happened here, anyway!

So, I tried stamping with a clear top coat over a satin matte polish (Revlon Ruby Ribbon). Half the stamps ended up matte-er than the polish, and the other half actually stamped shiny. Plus apparently my cat was playing with my stamper, and got little furs all over it that I didn't notice until they were stuck to my nails and I had to try to carefully pick them off... and I'm not sure why they still had linty looking white bits all over everything. :/

Can anyone explain what went wrong here? Someone more experienced in stamping than I am, perhaps? I'm so confused.

(I used stamps from BM12 and BM20 btw)

Stamped Stars and Glowy Glassflecks

More fun with stamping. I picked up this gorgeous glassfleck recently, and it's been in my GOTTA WEAR THIS SOON!!! pile along with it's slightly purpler cousin.

The base is Orly Ingenue, stamped with Color Club Catwalk Queen and BM21. The full-nail designs in this set are a little small for me, they fit my main fingers alright but they don't quite cover my thumbnail unfortunately. This one worked ok since it doesn't have a hard cutoff at the edge of the design!

Oh, glowy glassflecks. How I love you. 

Stamped Arrows (Unexpectedly Awesome)

You have NO IDEA how much willpower it took to stick to my dotting practice after getting stamping plates, and not just stamp the living daylights out of my nails! But I finally feel like my dotting skills have improved sufficiently now, and that means it's time for Adventures in Stamping!

I did this mani entirely as a plate test, not expecting to like it at all. I picked two colors I'm not super fond of, and an oddball stamp image from BM20, and then... what is this, three mehs make an awesome???

The base color is Finger Paints Art Loft-y Toffee, which I've worn on its own before, and alone it does not play well with my skintone. But maybe it just doesn't play well with my extra-pale early spring skintone? Whatever the case, I liked it better the second time around, particularly after stamping over it with Color Club Trippie Hippie, which is a lovely color but quite frankly jewel-tone blues and my skin have never gotten along very well. Except here. Something about this combination just unexpectedly WORKS for me.

Have you ever had a mani just work, beyond all the bounds of reason?

Halloween Night Sky

I realized at the last minute that if I didn't do another Halloween mani this year, I'd have to wait til next year for a proper chance to try out the rest of the themed stamps on BM13. So I got on it!

The base is Nicole by OPI Denim to Earth, topped with Pure Ice Oh Baby.

For the stamping I used BM13 and Wet & Wild Black Creme for all but the spiderweb on my thumb, which I stamped with L.A. Colors Energy Source.

Spooky spiderwebs

It's time for some Halloween nail art! And also, a perfect opportunity to play with my stamping plates! 

Yikes, I didn't realize how sheer this polish was until I got it in the sunlight to take pictures! Definitely needed a third coat or a black base. Whoops! Now I know! 

The sheer jelly-and-glitters is two coats of Wet & Wild Fergie Make Them Boys Go Loco. I'm pretty sure I've also seen the same polish in the Fantasy Makers Halloween display (considering it's all made by Wet & Wild, no surprise there). This is the red cousin of Revlon Scandalous (Facets of Fuchsia), which I love, so... it had to come home with me when I first saw it. Of course I'm only just now getting around to actually using it!

The webs are stamped with BM13 and L.A. Colors Energy Source. I'm not such a fan of Energy Source as a base white, I prefer Wet & Wild French White Creme, but it works fine for stamping.

Got any fun plans for Halloween? Parties? Trick-or-treating (taking kids or going yourself... I won't judge)?

Subtle stamping

Guess who finally got some real stamping plates! I ordered a set from Bundle Monster and one from Red Angel, and both just came today! So of course I had to bust 'em out over the glitter I was already wearing.

...I picked a stamping color that didn't show up over the base very well,  unfortunately. Still pretty, but in a very subtle way.

The base here is Sally Hansen Gem Crush - Big Money, and I stamped from BM12 with Color Club - In Bloom. 

This plate worked 100x better than the cheap-ass plate that came in my Kiss stamping kit. The Kiss stamper works fine, so I guess it wasn't a total waste of $, and it was less than some stampers alone, so... *shrug* I won't whine.

Skittles + stamping

A while ago I bought a super cheap stamping kit at walmart. It came with a plastic scraper (which didn't really work, so I used an old video store card instead) and stamper, and one plate with flower designs. I've had a hell of a time trying to make it function as it's supposed to, but I'm not sure if that's because I'm crummy at stamping or if it's because I'm using a super-cheap kit. Anyway. I finally got it to work halfway decently!

For this manicure I used BB Paris mini polishes (left to right: Midnight Mystery, Mulberry, Sage, and Aubergine) and stamped with a Color Club - In Bloom. Then I added a coat of OPI - I Juggle... Men, which doesn't really show in the pic but added a nice subtle purple-blue shimmer. Unfortunately I think I can blame that one for the fact that this was absolutely destroyed after one day of wear. OPI polishes always chip ridiculously fast on me.  :(

Funny thing is, Nicole by OPI seems to last just as long as most other polishes. But every single time I've used an OPI it's been a chippy mess in a day, no matter how much topcoat I use. That's reason #2 why I'm not a big OPI fan. Reason #1 is that they don't have particularly unique colors and I don't see much point in paying $8 for something I can get a near-identical dupe of for $1-$5 from another brand.