Sparkly and Bright!

These deliciously bright and sparkly nails are what prompted the base and striping pattern of my Turkey Day nails. I started with a basecoat, 2 coats of a Finger Paints silver, 2 coats of a Flormar scattered silver holo and SV topcoat. The red accent nail was created using China Glaze Ruby Pumps and striping tape. Unfortunately my pictures do this mani horrible justice, but this will absolutely be recreated for a holiday mani later. I LOVED how sparkly these were! 

 
Before I took them off to do my turkey, I decided to play around with stamping over the silver holo. My Essence animal print pattern is my go to for testing because it works consistently. I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Brisk Blue and Sinful Colors black for stamping polishes.

 

 

Do you own any Flormar polishes?

Happy Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for many things. One of those is the 81 followers who find my blog worthy of their time. Thank you, thank you! I am also thankful for my healthy family, my darling and fantastic husband, the friends who have never left my side, and our comfortable life. We are truly blessed.

Even though I'm living in Germany, I wanted to do some Thanksgiving nails. A couple of years ago, I was inspired by the turkey drawings we used to do as kids where you trace your hand for the turkey body. I liked the idea and got lots of compliments on it, but I think his white face looks really weird now. Ha, ha!

This year, I wanted to make a cute, cartoonish turkey on a single nail. The second photo without flash is actually WAY more color accurate for the orange and yellow polishes. This mani was completed entirely with polish. I used striping tape, dotting tools, and a striper brush to create these.

Since no one will see these nails besides myself and my dear readers, I didn't want to spend much time on my non-dominant hand only to remove it tomorrow. The striped nails and the gold scattered holo base were inspired by my mani from yesterday, which you will see in a later post.

What are you most thankful for, even if you aren't celebrating American Thanksgiving today? :)

Gosh Holographic Hero Topcoat Test

As I've mentioned before, I will never claim to be a good swatcher, but I thought this post might be helpful for some other holo users. I am a part of a fantastic birthday group (I will list their blogs at the end of this post, in case you aren't already a follower of these awesome women) and one of these lovelies sent me the new Gosh Holographic Hero in my birthday package. I was so excited that I used it to stamp with first. It looked okay, but with how pretty this polish is in the bottle, I needed MORE! I would have painted my body with it if I could! 

Anyway, I've heard how badly topcoat dulls the holo of Gosh Holo, but it also chips quickly (as claimed by the lid of the polish bottle itself). I change my polish almost daily, so I figured why not do an experiment. On my left hand, I did 1 base coat, 2 coats of holo, 1 coat of SV, and another coat of holo. 

On my right hand, I did 1 base coat, 3 coats of holo. It's been 2 days and my hand with the topcoat is still perfect with the exception of the small nick on my thumb, which you can see below.

 
My right hand is pretty rough. You can see the extremely awful tip wear below. If you look closely, you can see the big chips missing on my index and middle fingers.

  

And this is the end of my public service announcement. I hope this can help anyone else out who may be trying to decide the best way to wear and/or protect their holo mani and still keep that holoness we all know and love. :)

Emma at Manicurity

Bee at BeePolished

Stephanie at Polished Paige

Sam at Legiolinde

Stella at My Wet Nails

Debbie at The Crumpet

Kerrie at Pish Posh and Polish

Elizabeth at Nail Polish is My Crack

OPI Girly Stamping Fun

 Whilst sitting in front of my Helmer yesterday, deciding what to do next, I started pulling out all of my OPI polishes. I really LOVE the formula on every polish I have by them right now (which, as you can see, is 6, plus the 1 I forgot to add in this mani). I broke them into two groups of 3 and painted the bases. The next day I went to town stamping them. If you want to know the name of any of the colors, let me know, but most of them are from the Holland collection.

 

 For this hand I tried to stick with kinda girly prints. If you look at my middle finger with the roses here, this is actually the 2nd stamp I did on this nail. I used the same color on my thumb and ring finger to stamp my middle finger. Unfortunately, you couldn't even see it! I ended up using the pink polish from my other hand to stamp the roses. It's still a really close match, but it was good enough for me.

Also, stretching the XL stamper really does work to cover my wide thumb nail. My thumbs and ring fingers both use the same image, but they fit perfectly with the stretching technique. Yippee!

Have You Ever Seen a Smurf Penis? Here's 10!

This past Sunday my family-in-law decided to have a photo viewing party so everyone could see the pictures taken at our wedding two months ago. I am always so impressed, amazed, and proud that my husband's family gets along so well. His mom and dad separated when he was only a few years old, but both of their extended families truly love and support one another. It's incredible. 

For the occassion, I decided to do a mani using the polish I wore on our wedding day. It's a custom made polish from Karine named "Smurf Penis." A lovely sort of dusty medium blue linear holo. I wanted to do something a bit more exciting, so I added some stamping. The light stamping shade is the light blue from the Color Club metallic collection. The darker blue is Blues Bros. Volume II and the black is from Sinful Colors.

 

Are you tired of seeing stamping from me yet? Ha, ha. :)

Fun with China Glaze

You'll see a post in a couple days where I used all of the OPIs I own to do a mani. I wanted to do the same general thing for today, but with my China Glazes. It didn't quite turn out as I had hoped.

To start, here's what I was working with:

Then I started playing around with polishes, but only one of the polishes in this photo are actually China Glaze. On my thumb here, you'll see the green glitter Snowman polish and an unnamed purple Color Club glitter. These are my absolutely most favorite type of glitter polishes. I don't much care for the glitter toppers, but I have quite a few (as you see on 3 of my other fingers). If you know the name of any other glitter polish like these two, PRETTY PLEASE let me know. They have clear bases, which is what I love about them.

On my ring finger here, I was trying out my newly acquired Gosh Holo (original) over my matte topcoats to see how it would behave. My middle finger is a layering fail. For sure.

Now for the real reason for this post. If you haven't heard, today is World Diabetes Day. One of my grandmothers has been living with diabetes for as long as I have been around. When she comes to visit, her favorite splurge is the chocolate cake from Frisch's Big Boy. I am such a chocoholic with a sweet tooth that I can't imagine having to pay such close attention to the sweets I eat. I did this blue mani in support of her.

These before shots are 1 coat of Catrice Blues Brother Vol. II with 2 coats of China Glaze Blue Sparrow. Normally Blue Sparrow is a bright neon blue, but because of my layering choice, they are quite dark. I truly fell in love when I was done.

Then I ruined them. I thought it'd be cool to stamp over my half moon stickers. It was better in my head than it turned out in reality.

I started off doing China Glaze For Audrey with a fauxnad plate, but I didn't like the blues together.

Then I moved to China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy and Wicked Style. Several nail artists have been doing technique of stamping after using multiple colors on the plate at one time. I didn't like this even more than the blue nails. Oh well. At least I had the insight to take before pictures.

Do you enjoy seeing the "play around" pictures that I posted at the beginning of this post, or do you wish I'd just shut up and get to the good stuff already? I really want to know. :)

It May Not Be Easy Being Green, But It Sure Is Pretty!

After using China Glaze Gaga for Green as the base of my green leopard finger, I wanted to use it for a full mani. Of course I decided to stamp over it since I'm on a bit of a stamping kick. I used a really old lime green and a bright metallic Flomar green for the stamping colors. I'm really enjoying my XL stamper now that I've sort of got the hang of it. I am able to use so many other polishes that never worked with my Essence stamper. 

I hope you'll forgive me for the lightning and focus in these photos. It's been gray and rainy nonstop for the last 1.5 weeks. Not to mention that our apartment has really pathetic lighting. It's been impossible to find proper lighting for nail photos. Enough talking, time for the green!

Leopard Brights

I painted my toes the other day with China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy and fell in love. I received it in a swap months ago, but never got around to using it. After seeing it on my toes, I knew I had to put it on my fingers. I painted my nails and went to bed without doing any art. The next day my highly anticipated Gosh Holographic arrived in the mail and I was super excited to use it to do some nail art. Unfortunately Gosh Holo is a bia and doesn't play nicely without an aqua fix base, which I don't yet have. I'll show you a picture of the failure at the end of this post.

So my second attempt I decided to try out freehand leopard print. Everyone says how easy it is, so I gave it a whirl. I really liked how the all pink versions of leopard print turned out, so I decided to mix it up with the rest of the nails.

  
 

With Flash 

With Flash

And here you see the damage Gosh Holo caused with the aid of striping tape. Please note that the base was completely dry before I even went to bed the night before. That holo means serious business!

What aqua fix base coat do you use?

Polishes for Sale!

Hi lovely readers!

I spent some time poking through my stash and realized that I had some polishes that may be dupes of each other. I took a day to do some swatching and weeded out the polishes that I didn't need anymore. As you read in my last post, I am itching for some new stamping plates. I'm hoping that if I can make some space by selling these polishes, I'd be able to grab some new plates. :)

Shipping will be from Germany unless you are willing to wait until I go to the US for Christmas. I cannot ship anything for less than $4.50 from Germany (they do shipping by weight categories, up to 500 grams is $4.50). I can fit probably 8-10 polishes in a package for that price.

If you're interested, please leave a comment below.

From left to right:

• Jesse's Girl - Girl's Night Out (swatched on 1 nail) --- $2.50
• Color Club - Factory Girl (one mani) --- $2.50
• Essence Special Effect Topper - Glorious Aquarius (brand new)--- $2
• Sinful Colors - San Francisco (fill line where the curve of the bottle meets the neck)--- $1
• L'Oreal Bijou Crystals - B. Rebelious (about 65% full)--- $1

From left to right:

• China Glaze - Grape Juice (purple glass fleck, used on 1 hand) --- $3.50
• Catrice - Purplelized (purple glass fleck, used on 1 hand) --- $2.50
• Essence Snow White LE - Dopey (light purple with fine silver glitter, used for 1 mani) --- $2.50

From left to right:

Mattese Elite - Goomah (pink with purple shimmer, swatched on 1 finger) --- $2.50
Funky Fingers - Port Royal (neon magenta, swatched on 1 finger) --- $2.50
Catrice - Aretha's R-E-S-P-I-N-K (bright Miss Piggy pink creme, fill line to the middle of the "e") --- $2.50
Studio M - Orange Hot (bright neon orange, swatched 1x) --- $1.50
Color Club - Wham! Pow! (darker neon orange, swatched on 1 finger) --- $2.50

Purple and Green Giraffes and Cheetahs

I've taken a billion photos of this mani, trying to capture the actual color of these spots. Unfortunately, my sad Canon PowerShot A590IS just couldn't rise to the occasion. If you are tired of seeing only animal print stamping on my blog, I am sorry. Out of the 15 or so plates that I have, only 1 works consistently well. I'm hoping to acquire some new plates for Christmas, but maybe I'll break down and convince the hubby I need some before then. he, he. :) 

The base color is Color Club Wild Orchid (which I have had for over a decade!) and stamped using my XL stamper with the dark purple Orly from my last post.

I really wish you could see these colors as they really are IRL. I finished them and decided I was in love, but now it's time for them to go! haha.

Globe and Nail's Reciprocal Gradient Recreation

I came to the Reciprocal Gradient design by Globe and Nail through my good friend Debbie Crumpet's recreation for her final pink mani for October.

Here is the original from Globe and Nail in blue:

http://globeandnail.blogspot.de/2012/10/reciprocal-gradient-tutorial.html

And here is Debbie's recreation:

http://www.the-crumpet.com/2012/10/go-pink-wednesday-reciprocal-gradient.html

I wanted to use my go-to purple creme (OPI Planks A Lot), so I just picked a complementary purple creme by Orly. If you want to recreate this mani for yourself, check out Globe and Nail's tutorial with the link above. Basically, you create a gradient for your base, tape off lines, and create the same gradient, but with the colors reversed. 

 

Have you seen this look before? I really like it. :) I think next time I will try different colors instead of the same color in different shades or maybe even a 3 color gradient, though the middle color may get lost.