Green on Green + Nude Stars

I've got a couple of manis to show today and first up is this sort of festive green on green one.  Two coats or maybe three of Barry M Spring Green with Color Club Perfectly Mol-Ten as the stamping colour.  I used SHANY plate SH20 for the pattern.  This pattern is wide enough for my thumb, but it's kind of on the short side.  Perfect coverage for shorter nails, longer nails would need to be double stamped.

Next up a nude colour with some sparkly stars.

Nails are still short so I thought I would change the shape for a more elongated and feminine look.  Three coats of joe Latte as the base.  For the stars I used a flimsy piece of plastic (scotch tape works too) and painted on a layer of Color Club Gingerbread (polish on left).  Waited for that to dry and then painted half of it with Color Club Take the Stage.  After everything was dried I peeled off the dry polish and used a star paper punch to punch out the stars.  Put some top coat on the area that I wanted the star and then placed the star on top.  Finished it off with two coats of top coat.

Here's a slightly better look at the stars.

I think I've done something similar to this before, but I can't remember when.  It's probably somewhere

Santa + Reindeers Stamped

I used images from SHANY plates, the flying reindeer from SH13 and the Santa face from SH03.  I'm not sure if it's suppose to be Santa's face or just a bearded old man's face.  I thought it was going to turn out smaller, but it filled up most of my shorter pinky nail.

Two coats Etude House LUCIDarling 04 Indigo Blue, stamped with Konad white and added a little bit of Color Club Beyond the Mistletoe to add some sparkle.

Awesome AA Polish Deal

Hey just a quick post to share with you guys a teambuy coupon. You can get 5 American Apparel polishes for 15$.  You can buy a coupon to use in store or online.  Limited to one for yourself and two as gifts.  The coupons are good till March 12, 2012.  There's 4 more days left to purchase the coupon and this may be limited to within Canada only.

Red Angel + SHANY Stamping Plates

A friend helped me buy these plates and sent them to me from the U.S.

First read about Red Angel plates from Canadian Nail Fanatic and the SHANY plates I read about from omgnoodles.   I haven't really stamped with the plates all that much yet.  I broke two nails trying to remove the battery cover from a cordless phone.  So I have shortie nails and haven't really been painting my nails much.  Waiting for them to grow a bit longer 'cause I they are too short for my liking.

There are 21 plates in the Red Angel set, 12 plates with full nail designs, 2 with french tips and 7 plates with individual images.  The plates are the same size as Konad and BundleMonster plates, but they have no backing to them.  Not really a problem I just use some contact paper/drawer liner to cover the backs.  The plates stamp perfectly fine.  The full nail designs aren't wide enough for my thumb, but I take that as a norm.  Some or maybe most of the individual images are quite large so if you've got short nails it may fill up all or most your nail.  A few images might be slightly similar to those of Konad and BundleMonster.  Also I mislabeled the numbering of the plates, they should read like RA 120.

There are 25 plates in the SHANY set, 5 full nail designs, 1 french tip and 19 plates with individual images.  These plates are OK.  Some of the designs here are also slightly similar to Konad or BundleMonster.  The plates are slightly smaller than other plates and also have no backing.  The blue film that covers the top of the plate is very difficult to peel off.  But once you've lifted a large enough section off the edges you can pull it off in one large piece.  A few plates also have random scratches/dents on them, but they don't affect the images, the scratches are often in between them.  Everything stamps just fine, except for the french tips, but I think that's more user error on my part.  The full nail designs vary in size, some cover my entire thumb while others don't.  Weird, but that's how it is.

And a bit of a comparison between Konad, BundleMonster, Red Angel and SHANY plates.  They all seem to have a similar full nail circle pattern so you can compare the images and stamp sizes.

Looking at RA 105 it's not really circles, but looks close enough.  If I ever wanted to do various circular patterns on my nails all at once I've got options to make them all different.

And finally a nail look using one of the plates.  The last mani before the breakage.

Not quite centred, but still like.  Two coats American Apparel Poppy stamped with Konad special polish in blue and Red Angel plate RA 105.

An Owl

I was working on a different owl design, but it wasn't working out so I did a simple owl in a tree.  The owl was suppose to be smaller, but the acrylic paint kept spreading into the branches so it gradually got bigger.

Three coats of Cosline 303 and black acrylic paint.

Fairly short post today, but the next post will be bigger.  I recently purchased some new nail plates from Shany and Red Angel, they arrived yesterday so I'll show some images from those plates.

Minty Faux Marbling + More Nail Max

Didn't really like this when I first did it, but it grew on me.  I sponged on Wet N Wild Craze Undercover Graffiti and Sally Hansen Xtreme-wear Mint Sorbet.  The Undercover Graffiti got lost in the sponging, but you can still sort of see it.  Then I did a layer of KleanColor Holo Green.  Once that was dry, which took a while, I stamped on the draggy marbling design from large plate b or Konad m78 with Konad special polish in white and then again with Mint Sorbet.  The Mint Sorbet overlaps the white polish a bit so the white bits aren't super bright and you can see the mint stamp more.

-----

Three more designs from the December issue of Nail Max.

My favourite is the last one.  I think the characters are just too cute, but my versions are definitely less cute looking than the ones in the magazine.

Sparkly Fame and Fortune + Nail Max X-mas

Here's Color Club Fame and Fortune layered over two coats of a holo franken that I did ages ago.  The franken is sort of sheer so the Color Club really deepens the pink.  The large flecks of glitter plus the small holo glitter looks great in real life, but sort of dull in picture.  My camera can't capture sparkliness.  Had this on my nails for a few days.  When I first saw Fame and Fortune I thought I wouldn't get much use out of it, but I am loving this combo and will probably like it layered over other polishes too.

-----

Was browsing through the December issue of Nail Max and decided to try out a few of their Christmas designs.  I wasn't ready to take off glitter yet so I did them on nail wheel.

Here are a couple that I did.  Christmas-y, but not CHRISTMAS-Y.  And super easy.  Except for the words.  I think Konad has a nail stamp image for the words 'Merry Christmas', but I'm not sure which plate at the moment.  I don't have it so I can't use it.  I used a silver polish for the words, but I think I might need to pick up some metallic acrylic paint that I saw at the Dollarama.  It would be easier to use when writing out words.  I did a few more so I show them in another post.

It Snowed!

It snowed today!  Light and fluffy snow.  But it didn't stay on the ground and melted all away in the afternoon.  Much better than the rain that we had yesterday.

 

Did this a couple of days ago, seems kind of wintry.  One coat  of Color Club Cold Metal, which was sort of unnecessary since the two coats of Color Club Jingle Jangle covered it up.  Stamped using Konad special polish in white using large plate B with an image that can be found on Konad plate M51.  Jingle Jangle is super sparkly but not noticeable in my pictures.  I really love the blue and purple glitters and I love the name Jingle Jangle too.  It's a bit like nonsense words that you might sing to yourself or something.

I bought Jingle Jangle in Color Club set along with another set from Winners last week.

Beyond the Mistletoe - Sultry Color for a Glittering Holiday and Backstage Pass - Glitter Shades to Rock the Stage.

And here's some others that I bought last week too.

A box of H&M mini polishes, three Gosh polishes - Black Passion, Blue Monday and Gasoline and some polishes from the aerie store - Pink Frost, Champagne Shimmer and Brownie Points.  Bought everything except for the Gosh polishes with a gift card and they were all on sale due to Black Friday sales happening on the Thursday before.  The Gosh polishes were also bought on sale last week but on a separate occasion when I had to stop by Shoppers Drug Mart to pick up something for my mom.

I am pretty sure I am set for a no buy in December, but I can't say I'll absolutely stick to it.  I'm already done my Christmas shopping and whenever I go grocery shopping I always stop by the Winners first.  And always to the polishes first too.  A habit I must break.  Early new year's resolution.

More Double Yolks + Hex Polka Dots

Quick post befor heading out.

From the same carton of eggs there were more twin eggs.

Pretty awesome and jumbo eggs are freaky.

-----

Two coats of Gosh Black Passion and the teeny tiny hex and rhinestones were used.  Black Passion looks alright with the hex, but I think it would have been better with Etude House Extreme Black or Eyeko Cosmic, a black with multicolour shimmer/glitter in it.

Double Yolk

I thought this was pretty cool since I've never cracked an egg and saw two yolks come out.

Normally I don't take pictures of food cooking, but two yolks in one egg means picture time.

Comparison pic with a normal one yolk egg.

Pale looking breakfast sausage in the upper corner.

Half Moons and Reindeer

Recently lots of nail blogs were doing half moons, mostly from the 31 day nail art challenge.  Never did them on my own nails so I thought I would give it a go.

I started out with two coats of Barielle Swizzle Stix then I used some paper reinforcements to tape off the base of the nail and did one coat of Grape Escape.  The sides were kind of wonky so instead of doing the easier and less time consuming thing of just taking a nail art brush and filling in the wonks I used the mini hexagons to cover the wonks.  The tips were a bit messed up due to trying out Duri Dry and Shine Speedy Top Coat.

Didn't really like this on my nails.  Colours used, the hexagons, the moon-ness, I dunno, wasn't really a fan.

-----

Lots of Christmas decorations and gift wrap have been put out on displays in stores now and most are soooo pretty.  I love pretty wrapping paper, but am refraining myself from buying any since I've still got wrapping paper that I bought like 10 years ago that I still haven't used.  And I bought quite a few rolls last year.  And I'm more into buying wrapping paper that I can use for all occasions now. And I like wrapping paper that's nice and thick and hard to tear.  The ones from ten years ago are superb quality, I love them and I haven't found any that has come close to the quality of those papers in years.  So I've been saving them.  Saving them for what I don't really know.  Bit of a hoarders thing going on.

One that I particularly liked that I saw at Winners, but did not buy, was a silver foil with purple reindeer pattern.  I don't have a purple that's dark enough for my liking to stamp with so I switched it up with red reindeers over a gold background.

Base was two coats American Apparel Gold Flash, stamped with Konad special polish in red and I used plate BM-214 for the reindeer image.  The gold is very bright in real life and maybe a tad too yellow for my skintone.  This is alright, but I think I'm gonna try frankening a dark purple stamping polish.  And I'm unsure about the stamped positions of the reindeer.  I kinda wish the image was smaller.  Or I guess I could paint on the reindeer instead.

More New Polishes

My local Winners started stocking a lot more polishes.  There's now a couple of bins of polishes along with some nail displays of the China Glaze Let It Snow collection, Color Club crackle polishes, Duri Wine Tasting Party collection and Sally Hansen Fast-Dri polishes.  There's also a bunch of polish sets available from a bunch of different brands.  I saw a couple of sets of Barielle polishes available and since I've never tried them I decided to pick one up. 

The set I purchased included Grape Escape, Swizzle Stix, Do Unto Others, Blossom (looks more pink in real life) and Buddha-Ful.  And there was a another set that looked like it had some sheer nudes so I skipped them.  Here's a nail wheel swatch of the colours.

I think the flakiness of Buddha-Ful is hard to see in the swatches, but I have a mani for you see.

This was two coats of Buddha-Ful with Konad special polish in white stamped on with an image from Large Plate B.  The polish is pretty packed with flakes, but because the milky pink colour is so sheer I did two coats instead of one.  And because it's so sheer and I didn't really want VNLs I did the stamping.  Kind of crappy since I'm not so great with stamping nail tips. 

Here's what Buddha-Ful looks like layered over a couple of other Barielle polishes.

You can see the orange/green flakies better in this photo.

Nail Venus Inspired + AA Metallics Stamped

Saw a design from the current issue of Nail Venus that I really liked and just had to do it.

Here is the pic of the nails from the magazine.  The copy I downloaded was cut off there so I don't know what the thumb nail would have looked like.  And this is what I did:

Super love!  Love the colour combination, love the look and love that it was super easy to do.

Thumb and ring - Two coats of American Apparel Dance, then I used Color Club New Bohemian to do the first chevron freehand.  I didn't have chevron nail guides and didn't cut up tape so I just eyeballed it.  The chevrons didn't have to be perfectly straight either since the gold stripe was going to cover up weird lines.  After New Bohemian I used American Apparel Make Up and lastly American Apparel Gold Flash for the gold lining.

Index - Three coats of American Apparel Dance, still has a bit of VNL, but I can live with it.

Middle - Two coats of Color Club New Bohemian.

Pinky - Two coats of American Apparel Make Up.

I didn't have any gold or silver studs to put on my nails so I finally found a good use for my larger hexagon glitters.  The gold hexagons looked best placed at the base of the nails so I did that for the index, middle and pinky fingers.

I will probably do this again in different colours.  I just love it.

-----

Bunny Nails wanted so see an example of the American Apparel Metallic polishes stamped so here's a pic of them stamped on Rimmel Lasting Finish Pro Black Satin.

At some angles it seems like the gold and silver polishes kind of look alike.  They all stamp very well, no gaps in thick lines.  Will stamp with them on my own nails soon.

Polka Dot Pumps w/Flowers + AA Haul

I didn't take very many pictures of this, so the pics aren't very good.  After 15mins of taking pictures and they all just end up looking the same, I stop and say, good enough.

Two coats of China Glaze Ruby Pumps, used the polka dots on large plate B along with Konad Special Polish in White.  I added some floral water decals. The decals have little dots too and didn't realize it until after I had put them on my nail.  So that's where the white dots that sort of arch come from.

-----

On Saturday I went shopping and used my second American Apparel Teambuy coupon to buy some more polishes.  Though I think I should have saved it for later.  I was talking to the girls behind the register and they said that some glitter polishes were going to be arriving in stores soon.  They didn't know when exactly, but they said that the polishes looked pretty based on the pictures they had on their computer.  I  didn't see the pictures though as they couldn't swing the computer monitor around for me to see.  Oh well.  On to what I did buy.

Mostly neutrals and the metallic polishes.  Names are already in the picture but here goes:
Top - Make Up and Dance (this is actually quite sheer, wasn't expecting that and also a bit more pink in real life)
Middle - 7th and Alameda and Echo Park, I wasn't going to pick up Echo Park thinking it was close to Factory Grey, but completely different, they didn't have any Factory Grey on the display.
Bottom - Silver Jazz, Gold Flash and Bronze Dash, these were the polishes I wanted to pick up, very good stamping polishes, looks fantastic over black or other dark colours.

And here's a nail wheel swatch of the polishes, two coats each though really the metallic polishes were good with one.

Same Rub On Transfers

Used the same rub on transfer from the last set of nails I did, but this time I added some blotches of colours before putting on the transfer.

Base colour was three coats of NYX Girls Pistachio, the pink was a franken and the white was Kleancolor White.

I like this one quite a bit more than the previous one.  And yea, these transfers do seem like they could have been done freehand.

Super Quick

Quick post before heading out.  Found another decent rub on transfer sheet from the Dollarama.

So here's a mani that I did.

Two coats of Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac, forgot to take a picture of it.  I liked this quite a bit and didn't really use much of the transfer so lots more usage from it.

Lace Plate A34

Recently bought a new stamping plate with lace designs.

It's a very difficult plate to work with and the images are also quite short so I filed down my nails so that I wouldn't have to double stamp on all my nails.

Here's the first decent looking set that I did.

Doesn't look too bad.  Spent a long time trying to stamp it so that the image wasn't completely blurry.  Colour scheme reminds me of the Sally Hansen lace nail strips.  One coat of American Apparel Summer Peach (my photo makes it look beige, but it is more pink toned).  Kleancolor Black as the stamping polish.

Here's a second one I did with the same plate.

I think the results were better this time round. I was using a hot glue gun before taking pictures and the glue kind of ruined the tips a bit.  One coat of American Apparel L'Esprit and Kleancolor Concrete Gray as the stamping polish.

Little Monster Ghosties

Saw a t-shirt at Bluenotes that had a bunch of different monsters on it and thought I'd draw them on my nails.

The shirt can be found here.  I don't wanna go through screen capturing and cropping the pic of the shirt to put it up here.

This is my left hand.  On the thumb it should be a wereghost, but ended up kind of looking like a bear.  Then we have an ugly ghost, a zombie ghost, a bat ghost and a frankenghost.

On my right hand we have a witchy ghost on my thumb.  From left to right we have uggo spideyghost, alien ghost, one eyed monster ghost, and vampire ghost.

Everything looks a bit like a mess and I didn't like it at first, but they slowly grew on me.  My favourite little ghost is the zombie one.

Two coats of Kleancolor Neon Orange, one coat of Kleancolor Holo Orange and acrylic paints for the monsters. 

New Polishes + Tiny Hex Glitters

I saw these at my local Winners, decided to pick them up since they were inexpensive.  There was another set with green, orange, purple and white polishes.  The bottles with the black bows are matte polishes while the blue is a creme and the deep red is shimmery.  They don't have individual names or numbers and they're supposed to be one coaters, but two coats is best.

And recently some nail art supplies that I bought off ebay arrived in the mail.  I bought these tiny hexagon glitters along with some larger nail gems and some gold/silver ball chains.  Wasn't really sure what I was gonna do with them, but decided upon an argyle design to use the glitters.

My hands are drrrryyyy.  Indoor heating makes my skin dry and itchy.  Anyway, I used the blue polish from above along with some acrylic paint for the diamond shapes and then used the hex glitters.  So happy that the colour from the glitter doesn't bleed.  I had previously bought a different set at the beginning of the year, but they lost their colour as soon as I put on a top coat.

Blue/Grey French + Crawling with Spiders

Something simple in between some Halloween manicures.

This was three coats of joe Cement and then I used some tape and one coat of American Apparel The Valley.  I really love this colour combination and especially love this blue.  I used this same colour as the background of the octopus and boat design.

-----

This was two coats of WetNWild Sleepwalker, should have done three, but I thought two was sufficient.  Then I used Color Club Antiquated to stamp spiders from BM13.  Didn't really like this, but it's alright.

Halloween Vignettes

Inspired from a design I saw from the October issue of Nail Up.

I did my left hand freehand with black/white acrylic paint, base colour was two coats of American Apparel Sunset Blvd.

For my right hand I used BundleMonster stamping plates BM13 from the older set and BM-224 from the newer set.  I also used acrylic paint for the frame.

For both nails I also added a little bit of sparkle with LA Colors Art Deco Silver Glitter.