Before & After: Columbian Freckles

(The products in this post were purchased by me.)

Hey there!

First up, these pictures were accidentally published in an incomplete post about a week of you, so apologies for the repeat to those who saw it! Not too many people saw it before I yanked it down, but still. :)

Back a couple of months ago, I went to check out Sephora's clearance rack when tipped off about a reader about their amazing deals. I was able to score my very first Illamascua polish, Freckle, for the bargain price of $8. :) Here is the beautiful Freckle, a light brown creme with small and uber-small black glitters:

Illamascua Freckle, 2 coats, artificial light

I don't normally buy too many high-end polishes, and only do when they are on sale; I tend to be skeptical that they are worth the money. I have to admit this polish has a wonderful formula and was incredible to work with; I'm not sure I'd pay the regular price for it, but I certainly felt the quality was impressive.

This reminds me of two things--ice cream with Oreos ground up in it, and coffee, and I couldn't resist doing a coffee manicure on it (maybe an Oreo mani in the future, but coffee is my first love!).

I put a very light coat of Lynbdesigns Millie, a beautiful gold flakie, to give it some sparkle--I mean, I barely put any on, just a hint. :) I stamped using China Glaze Mahogany Magic and Cheeky Jumbo Plate 7 to stamp the coffee-bean background. For the coffee pot, I used the same plate with Barry M Silver Foil, and then filled in the coffee pot with the silver polish. I then stamped a second time on top of it, to get an outlined image:

In fact, this was the finished manicure I did in my post on stamping basics, so if you want to see how I matched up the images, you can check that out here or here. :)

This is why I love those Cheeky Jumbo plates. Not all of the images are my style, but there are enough great images like this that are easy to put together to make a fun, thematic manicure. :)

Thanks for stopping by! Hug and unending mugs of coffee...
M. :)