I hope your spring is off to a wonderful start in our current crazy times...Going outside (safely and briefly!) and watching beauty transform the earth has been really cleansing for me right now. And in line with that, I've done a couple of bright, fun spring manis to share with you...
First up, a celebration of cherry blossoms, which always make me so happy:
UberChic Beauty Welcome Spring over Glam Polish Something Sensational
UberChic Beauty Welcome Spring over Glam Polish Something Sensational
UberChic Beauty Welcome Spring over Glam Polish Something Sensational
This is a versatile plate with a little bit of everything--some layering images, some complementary images, great background images, and beautiful lace screaming to be used in a French mani look.
Let's jump into some manis! For my first I wanted to do something sweet for a pretty Valentine's look that tested out one of the layering images:
UberChic Beauty Love & Marriage 05 over Glam Polish Don't Go Breaking My Heart
For my next mani, I wanted to go a bit different...I'm not a huge Valentine's Day person, I love the celebration of love, but some of the other stuff that gets put onto it can be a little much for me. So here's an alternative type of Valentine's look:
UberChic Beauty Love & Marriage 05 over Sally Hansen Get Mod
I should note: these images are not specifically designed to be layered, and don't fit perfectly. But I love the way they go together to show three colors, so I had to play with them. :)
For my last mani I went back to a more traditional Valentine's mani, featuring one of my current favorite red polishes:
UberChic Beauty Love & Marriage 05 over Zoya Tanya and Sally Hansen Get Mod
Since today is Halloween, I thought I'd show you the nails I'm doing with my Halloween costume. I actually already did this once, for a party I went to, so I have all the pics ready to go!
I went (and am handing out candy) as a voodoo priestess:
I wanted a manicure that played up the feathers and the animal skulls in the costume, and of course included a voodoo doll...
I love how it came out--the feathers add a gorgeous texture and the skulls are just creepy! I also love the little pop of red. This is when I love nail art the most--when you can create something truly original to make a cool day even cooler.
So, there have been plenty of times when I've acquired a plate because an image matched something in my wardrobe...but for the first time ever, I bought an article of clothing because it matched an image I have in my stamping plate wardrobe.
It was really only a matter of time.
Here's the image in question, from Creative Shop 151:
Yes, that's right, it's a murderous kitty with a bloody knife standing atop a pile of skulls from his (or her!) victims. Totes adorbs, am I right?!
So you can imagine what happened when I saw this shirt:
If what you imagine is me squealing and clicking 'buy' so fast I sprained my finger, you're spot on.
For reasons I won't get into, I had to do a manicure using orange on the day I used this image for the first time. So here's what I came up with:
How cute and Halloweeny is that?! The next time I do it, I'm going to choose colors that match the shirt more exactly, but I gotta say, I love, love, love how this came out. What do you think? Too creepy for you? Or just creepy enough?
Today we're going to take a look at this year's UberChic Beauty Halloween plate, Halloween 05! Here's the quick video I did discussing the plate (with sample swatches):
And here's a closer look at the images:
UberChic Beauty Halloween 05
What I love about this plate: This is a fun addition to UberChic Beauty's Halloween plate line, and stylistically it will mix and match well with the previous plates. My favorite things on this one are the layering cauldrons, the fun, goofy ghosts, the webs you can use for a french mani, and the skull that looks like he wants some candy.
Here are the sample swatches I did:
Now on to the manis! I have a bunch of them today, so I'm going to move from simple and easy to more complex:
UberChic Beauty Halloween 05 over UberChic Beauty Electric Pumpkin
For this one and the next, I used a reversed stamping technique. Often when I do reversed stamping I'll just do it on one nail, because it's so labor and time intensive!
And that skull looks like he wants something nommy to eat:
I also used the reversed stamping technique for this one. I love how this came out!
What do you think? Are there any images on this plate you just love? You can buy this plate now in UberChic Beauty's store, and anywhere else UberChic is sold. :)
Today we're gonna take a look at two recent mini-plate releases from UberChic Beauty, their Hello Fall & Pumpkin Spice plate, and their Football is Life plate.
Here's the quick video I did for the Hello Fall & Pumpkin Spice plate:
And here's the Football is Life:
Difficulty: The football is life plate is a beginners plate, while the Hello Fall & Pumpkin Spice plate is a little more of a mixed bag that leans toward intermediate. I think the Football plate does an amazing job of taking football themes and giving them a potentially feminine leaning, and I love the Pumpkin Spice plate to mix with other plates--lovely fall saying to complement any fall-themed manis you make. :)
Here are the swatches I did with the plates:
On to the manis!
UberChic Beauty Hello Fall & Pumpkin Spice over Stella Chroma Pumpkin Everything
Base Polish(es): Stella Chroma Pumpkin Everything (with hashes of Hug The Road) Stamping Plate(s): UberChic Beauty Hello Fall & Pumpkin Spice Stamping Polish(es): Beauty Big Bang Gold,
I love the manicure so hard, but it was impossible to get to photograph well! I swiped some Hug The Road (an orange jelly) over the base polish and the stampig to make it look like a patchwork pond mani. It does still look cool here, but I just wish I'd been able to get it in the picture! If you compare the mani below, which uses the same base polish, you'll get an idea of what I mean.
UberChic Beauty Hello Fall & Pumpkin Spice over Stella Chroma Pumpkin Everything
This came out a little muddier than I liked, so I consider it a fail...if I had it to do over, I'd do the shadow stamping with white rather than gold. The idea was to pull out the gold in the base polish, but that worked far better in theory than practice!
Skill level: Lots of Leaves is a beginner plate; Autumn 03 is mostly beginning with some intermediate skills needed (e.g., layering).
One strength of these plates (and all Dixie Girls plates), is they're designed to make sure if you have long or wide nails, the images will be long enough for you to use easily--the designs are scaled up in size and are generous.
Here are the swatches I did:
On to the manis! For the first I had to test out the umbrella patterns, because I love those octagons:
Dixie Plates Autumn 03 over The Lady Varnishes Urban is Legend
Dixie Plates Autumn 03 over The Lady Varnishes Urban is Legend
So what do you think? I realized after the fact I used a blue base in three out of four of the manis--I guess you can tell what color I'm feeling right now!
You can find these plates on sale now in Dixie Plates' store, or wherever Dixie Plates are stocked.
