Spring Is In The Air (barely)

Just a quick blurb today.  I have been absent because of a lack of motivation.  Work is draining the life out of me.  Hopefully, with the turn in weather, I will have more energy to keep up with this hobby.  I do love it and the irony is that I feel like it relieves stress for me.  Baby steps...

It has been so long since I have done this, that I completely forgot to put down a base coat!  I love the Tulip Season color!  It goes on rather streaky and took 3 coats but the end is wonderful!  I used MDU Fiji and Black to stamp from Pueen 71.

I hope to be back sooner rather than later!  Thanks for stopping by.  :)

Marsala Wallpaper

You know me!  I like to do combo mani's and this time I did a wallpaper design (more like a border) along with a Marsala-like color combo.  I have to say, I wasn't impressed with the 2015 Pantone selection until I saw KB Shimmer's take on it with Men Are From Mars-ala.  That color is amazing!  I used it as inspiration for this:

As my collection grows, I feel more and more guilt so I went to my stash to find something I hadn't used yet.  Here is what I used for this mani - I kept it very simple!

For once, I didn't use a white polish as an undie for this manicure.  I used my usual base coat and followed it up with 2 coats of Tan Lines and 3 coats of Quit Meatal-ing as my base polishes.  After that was mostly dry, I added a coat of Seche Vite to harded the layers and prepare for the taping process.

I worked on each nail individually to get crisp lines when the tape was removed.  Once the tape was down on the nail, I did 2 coats of the reverse polish and then quickly removed the tape strips.  This is my first "wallpaper" look this month.  I think it looks more like a border pattern.  Once the polish was dry, I finished it off with a final layer of Seche Vite.  This one was pretty rugged...I wore it for over 2 weeks!

2014 Holiday Nails

Time to wrap up 2014 with my holiday nails.  I just wanted something simple but it didn't end up that way.

It was a great Christmas this year.  Mostly because I was actually in the spirit of it.  I haven't really participated in the festivities for several years but this year I wanted to.  I just wanted to be charitable to others.  I even adopted some seniors from a tree at work.

I used a white undie to get the colors brighter.  Saucy went on like a dream.  It has to be one of my most favorite reds in my collection!  I only shop vintage was tougher.  It was hard to get good coverage and I managed to get it in 3 thick coats.  But the color!  It just makes up for it in the end.  Once my colors were done, I added a layer of Seche Vite in preparation for stamping.

All of these images are from plate BM-H03.  My MDU's stamped really well but, man, that wreath was a challenge!  It's one image and you have to be careful with the MDU's as they will muddy up really easily when using more than one color on the stamp.  That took some practice, but I got it.  The red on the gold color is DIVINE!!!

Happy Holidays and welcome 2015!

Dots and Christmas Trees

Dots, dots and more dots!  Dotticures are awesome!  They look so simple to do and maybe they are for other people. I tend to over think things like strategically placing each dot and what size to make each dot and what color to choose for each dot and making sure that they are nicely spaced and that I change up the colors and sizes of the dots on each nail.  Yeah, I have issues...  It's Christmas season and I love my tree this year so I put one on my nails to make me smile when I am not sitting in my living room admiring the awesome tree my husband picked out (on his own).

OK, so my tree turned into something a little misshapen, but it is still my tree.  :)

Once again, I used a white undie over my base coat to make Minted really pop.  This polish is rather thin and it took 3 coats to get full coverage.  I put a layer of Seche Vite on top of that to harden up the polish to prepare for all of those dots!

I used a little bit of Sinful Colors Snow me White for dots too.  I used a gold star embellishment to top my tree.  I have so many of those things and I should use them more often!  The red was a perfect Christmas red!

Above is a photo of my other hand, which I normally don't photograph because it is hard to push the shutter button on my camera with my left hand and there is no place to attach a remote shutter button.  Anyway, this is also usually my practice hand.  It is rare that the practice hand looks better than the photo hand...but, this tree is much more shapely.  :)

Winter Camo and Dots

I, like many women, have a husband obsessed with camo.  I swear he has a radar for it or something!  We could be in Home Goods and he will find the one thing with camo on it!  Anyway, it was his turn to pick my polish and he wanted camo.  So, he chose some Russian "winter" camo pattern for me to emulate.

This is my masterpiece (not!):

Here is the pattern I was supposed to copy.  Let's just say that my first camo attempt was not as expected...

I'm not entirely sure how I didn't grasp the horizontal line concept here and got so far off track.  As it was a "dots" challenge month, I had to incorporate some and they turned out to be my favorite part of the mani.

Here is what I used for this look:

I started with a white undie over my base coat to help the holo pop.  It's too bad I haven't learned how to properly capture holo polish with my camera and a light box.  Something to work toward in 2015.  This is a photo I took with my phone when there was a glimpse of sunshine while at work.

Take A Trek was slightly disappointing in application as it was streaky on the first coat.  I was thicker with it on the second coat and it evened out fairly well.  The shimmer is beautiful on it!  So much so, that I decided to put it on my toes.  Too bad my toes aren't seeing any kind of sunshine or publicity these days (winter).  LOL!  I tried my camo technique with the other colors and used them for dotting as well.  I topped everything off with a coat of Seche Vite.

Tropical Fall Colors

Is there a "Fall" in the tropics?  Isn't that just monsoon season or hurricane season?  Well, today's manicure is actually inspired by a shirt the Meteorologist was wearing on my local news station the other day.  It turned out a little differently...

The leaf pattern I chose is a little more tropical than the typical falling leaves across my part of the nation.  Oh well, it is still pretty.  LOL!

After my usual base coat, I painted 2 coats of the Coco-a-go-go on all of my nails.  This is an amazing polish and probably doesn't really need 2 coats but I went really thin on the layers.  I put a coat of Seche Vite on to harden the polish then stamped with BM19 when dry.

I used all three MDU polishes and put portions of the stamp across all of my nails and changed positions to keep it varied.

You can kind of see the red stamping in there but I chose this red  because it was deeper and more "fall-ish" than the Reddish from MDU and that was important to me.  So, even though it didn't show up as much as I wanted it to, I think it is still an important piece of the story.

Once the stamps were dry, I finished it all off with a final coat of Seche Vite.  Now that winter is coming down on me with a vengeance, I had to enjoy the warmth of these colors.

Drops Of Blue

I am super behind in this post, but I am doing it anyway.  The prompt for the Pick-N-Mix a couple of weeks ago was 3 shades of blue.

This one was pretty simple...

I started with my usual base coat then added 2 layers of Sinful Colors Snow Me White.  I then put a layer of SecheVite on top to harden the white so I could stamp.  I did a kind of gradient stamp with the MDU colors using MoYou London Princess 09 water droplets.  Unfortunately the Pastel Blue kind of washed out in the photos, but it looked great in person.  :)

Halloween 2014

For my Halloween mani this year, I went with spiders.  I actually have a bit of a phobia of spiders, but I had seen a lot of really cute designs on Pinterest which inspired me.

I want to start off with just how excited I am that my spider web stamp worked...I've had it for 2 years and this is the first time I have been able to get it to stamp!  Thanks to my Mundo de Unas stamping polish!

I applied my typical base coat followed by 2 coats of Ulta Devious.  I then sponge applied the Orly Intergalactic Space which provided great glitter coverage without adding too much of the black jelly base it is suspended in.  I also sponge applied a small amount of the Barielle Purple Hearts.  This was a great partner to the Orly glitter!

After a LOT of practice and cleaning off my BM13 spiderweb image, it finally stamped perfectly!  I used the MDU Silver for the webs and spider. I sponged a little bit more Purple Hearts on top of the webs for a little more dimension.

I added some gems on top of each nail as well.  I had to have red for the spider!  The webs all have a purple stone in the center.

Once the gems were firmly affixed, I topped everything off with a thick coat of Seche Vite.  I am super pleased with how these turned out!  I think they are a "cute" spooky look.  :)

I'm submitting this in to Crumpet's Nail Tarts 52 week pick-n-mix challenge as there are 3 dark polishes in this.  Take a look at the other lovely works below!

Stripes #4: Fall Foliage

It's the middle of October and the leaves are all turning here.  It has been so rainy and we have been so busy that we haven't had much time to really enjoy the season change.  It is my favorite time of year and things are just so beautiful!  I'm combining 3 challenges into my mani this week: Stripes in The Nail Challenge Collaborative; Gray + Color in Crumpets Pick-N-Mix Challenge; and my #HePicksMyPolish entry.

I love my husband.  He is so thoughtful that he pulled out 4 polishes for me to use...2 different sets of 2 polishes.  He wanted me to have options.  Well, I just used all 4 instead.  I knew that I was going to use my MDU Dark Gray for stamping no matter what he picked - it was just a matter of choosing the right stamp.

He is obsessed with my texture polishes!  I had to figure out a way to use all of these colors and incorporate stripes.  I haven't done any fall manicures yet, and that was his inspiration, so I went with it.  I settled on a Nimbus mani and I am super glad I did!  I started with Hanging In The Balance and played with the level of opacity before moving on to Toe-Tally Textured.  This one was a bit harder because of how textured the polish is.

I put down Sun-Sational next.  It didn't take too much to get a nice yellow hue.  Next, I added some Destiny to the mix.  This is kind of a jelly so, it took a bit more to get the red color in there.  It still wasn't popping enough, so I added a little bit of Sinful Colors Snow Me White to layer a little white in to put the red on top of it.  That worked out perfectly!

The colors all blended together reminds me of fall foliage and crunchy leaves.  I love it!  I added a layer of my trusty Seche Vite to prepare for stamping.  I used GA15 for the stamping image.  I was a little bummed that my image wasn't straight on one nail...I was shaking because I was so hungry!  I actually had to take a break to eat during this one...LOL!

Stripes #3: Witch's Tights

With a little Halloween inspiration, I created another stripes mani.  I also added a little matte finish to my accent nail.  More on that experience later...

Here is what I used for this mani:

This reminded me of those tights witch's wear in figurines or those Halloween decorations you can buy all over the place.  For this look, I used my typical base coat and one layer of Sinful Colors Snow Me White.  I used 2 coats of Meg for the green nails and 2 coats of Creative Fantasy for the purple ones.  I then added 2 coats of I Love You to the purple nails for a glitter effect as the Creative Fantasy dries with a kind of "rubber" look.

For my accent nail, I added 2 coats of Watch It Glitter.  I then added a layer of Seche Vite (on all of my nails except the accent nail) to seal it all in and begin the striping tape detail.  These stripes came with a lot of trial and error but I finally settled on two layers of striping tape to get the desired width between stripes.

I cut about 75 pieces of tape for this mani - I always test my designs on my right hand since I can't photograph that hand as easily, it helps me to finalize a design without having to start over.  LOL!  I worked on one nail at a time for this look.  Once the tape was positioned onto the nail, I painted 2 coats of Ebony Hates Chris on top.  Then, I carefully pulled the tape off the nail while the polish was still fairly wet.

After the polish was dry, I added a final layer of Seche Vite to the nails except for my accent nail.  I tried several things with the matte finish on my right hand first...I will admit that I love the look of matte nails on other people...just not so much on myself.  This makes me so sad.  I tried making the black stripes matte at first.  I just didn't like it.  I tried making the whole nail matte, and I didn't like it.  I don't know if it is my matte polish or just me.  It seems like the polish is too waxy or something.  Anyway, I have seen so many people put the matte finish over the glitter with astounding results so I tried it.  I LOVED that!  So, I just have the matte finish on my accent nail.  Not that you can really tell from the photos though.  I realized that it just takes longer to set than normal and not dent or smudge when touched.  Now that I have that learning, I will have to try more of it.

That was a bit long-winded, but thanks for reading through it.  :)