Before & After: Texture tips

Hello!!

I'm still playing catch-up with my challenges, and today I'm catching up with the Mish Mash Challenge! This week's theme was to do a tape mani, so I decided to play with texture and do a funky French look. :)

I started with a base of Top Shop Phenomena, a dark olive green with a glass fleck finish; this can coat with one coat, but I used two to be sure:

Top Shop Phenomena, artificial light

Top Shop Phenomena, full sunlight

Next I taped off the area for two stripes, and painted one with Orly Black Pixel, and one with Orly Plum Pixel (my scores at the Red Tag Clearance sale!):

What I like about this: I like the purple and the green together, with the black tip, and I love the combination of the glass-fleck base and the textured stripes. It's hard to capture the textural difference, so I took a fan-type pose picture so you could see different light angles on the polish. It's simple, but dramatic. :)

Hope your week is off to a good start, thanks for stopping by! Hugs and love,
M.

Review: Nail art with flocking powder from Born Pretty Store

Hello!!

Today I'm going to review for you some flocking powder that I got from Born Pretty Store. Most of the time when you see flocking powder on nails, it's used to completely cover one or more nails, so I decided to try to do something a little different with it, to demonstrate the versatility.

I chose the jewel-toned deep blue flocking powder that they have; it comes in a huge container that will last you quite some time:

As you can see here, they have quite a few colors to choose from. They also have kits available that include a brush and a set of tweezers; since I have those things already, I just got the powder itself.

For my manicure, I started with a base of Julep Sienna, a caramel-gold foil. On top of this, I stamped the circle pattern with Cheeky plate GA26, using Barry M Vivid Purple. I picked two of the circles per nail to fill in with Top Shop Cosmic Karma, a blue polish that is slightly lighter than the flocking powder. While the powder was still wet, I sprinkled flocking powder over them, and gently patty it down. Finally, I brushed off the excess powder with a short, wide nail art brush. Here's how it turned out:

Shaded light

Outside overcast light

I found this powder surprisingly easy to work with. I was skeptical that the powder could be used in this sort of way, with precision in smaller accent designs. My fears were completely unfounded! Application was easy--basically just dump over your wet nail polish and gently pat down. And clean-up was a breeze; I had no problem getting all of the powder off of my nails and skin in just a few seconds--it brushed right off easy-peasy.

The biggest surprise for me was that you can wash your hands no problem with this on. I'm a big hand-washer--some might even say OCD about it--and it wasn't a problem. After a day that included several hand-washes, it was only just starting to show wear around the edges of the circles.

I have to admit I'm not a huge fan of the flocking powder when it completely covers every nail, and while I do like it better as an accent nail, I really love it this way. It adds just a bit of extra dimension and fun to a manicure, and the possibilities are endless.

The single containers of flocking powder sell for $5.80 each (you can find it by clicking here), and you can get 10% off of them (and anything else you order) by using my code:

Hope you enjoyed the manicure, and that I've inspired you to try flocking powder in a different way!

Thanks for visiting,

Xoxox,
M.

(The flocking powder reviewed in this post was provided for my honest review.)

NOTD: Fireside Glowing Icicles

Hello!!

The 31 Day Challenge has put me a little behind in other things on my blog; I don't like posting more than once a day if I can avoid it because I think it annoys readers (I've heard people complain about this elsewhere), and I don't like falling behind on other things that I want to do, so I think I'll only ever do the relaxed versions of these challenges in the future.

To try to catch up in the Let It Snow challenge in a fun way, I decided to combine two of the themes into one. Last week's theme was 'Fireside Glow', and this week's theme is 'Icicles'...So I figured, how about a mani sitting next to the glow of the fire, with icicles on the windows outside? I did an abstract version of this concept.

I started with a base of Barielle Elle's Spell, which I just showed you recently, so I won't show the swatch pictures again; I couldn't resist it because it has such a warm, glowy feel to it, like when you stare into a campfire and watch the flames dance.

Next, I took a variety of metallic polishes and striped icicles coming down from the tops of my nails (and up from the bottom of the accent nail). The idea was for some of the icicles to have a glowy reflection from the fire inside:

To do this, I used Butter London Diamond Geezer, Julep Sienna, Top Shop Hyperreal, and over it randomly I put China Glaze White Cap; unfortunately in the picture, the sparkle from White Cap doesn't come through much. I'm not sure how much they look like icicles exactly, but there is definitely a clash of warm and cool, and I think it's an interesting look. Maybe sort of like lava erupting or something, lol. :)

Thanks for taking a look, and I hope you'll take a moment to look at the other participants' manis, linked below. :)

Namaste,
M.

Blogger 1.0 -

NOTD: Witch-Be-Gone

Hello!!

This is my second Witch prompt of the Halloween season, this one for the 'This Is Halloween' challenge. In my first one, I showed a troupe of witches flying through the skies and a beautiful night. Sadly, they did not all get home safely--one of them met with misfortune...so I decided to do another manicure showing her fate. Let's just say she stayed out a bit too late and got caught in the...well, here, see for yourself:

What happens when witches get caught out in the rain...So sad...

Every time I see it, I keep hoping she'll make it...but she never does...sigh...

I started out with a base coat of Barry M Vivid Purple, which I covered with a coat of Barry M Silvery Lilac to make a pretty blue-purple duochrome. I stamped the witch, the lightning bolt and the witch's hat using Pure Ice Silver Mercedes and Shany plate SH02, Bundle Monster plates BM305 and BM 209, respectively. I stamped the raindrops using LeaLaC plate A and Top Shop Cosmic Karma; I also used Cosmic Karma to freehand the puddle of water. I used Silver Mercedes to free-hand the moon, and used Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris to stamp the haunted house (BM224).

Luckily, I suspect at least one of her witch friends knows a spell that will reanimate her, so all is not lost! Hee hee hee...

Thanks for stopping by, and please check out the other be-Witch-ing manicures by the other bloggers in the challenge, linked below. :)

Xoxox,
M.

Twinpost: Itty Bitty Monstwers!!

Hello there!

This week's twinpost has Dina and I using the 'Cookie Monster' alien image (we have decided to lovingly call him that) from Cheeky plate 32. Here is what I came up with:

Itty bitty monsters all in a row...

Pay no attention to the understamp showing through the green monster...nothing to look at here...

These little guys are so cute, I wanted to play that up with a retro feel. So I started with Top Shop Cosmic Karma as my base color because it has a fun feel to it (at least I think so :) ). Then I used the retro jacks image from Cheeky 46 to stamp a background on my ring finger, and on the tips of the rest, with Sally Hansen Lustre Scarab (I didn't want it to stand out too much and take away from the cute monsters!). Then I stamped a variety of little monsters with Barry M Silver Foil, and a second copy of my target Cookie Monster monster with Sally Hansen Lickety-Split Lime.

I really love these colors together, especially the blues and the green--I'm going to have to play with those again. And it was nice to get away from the typical Halloween colors for a day, as much as I love them! :)

Thanks for taking a look, and please check out what Dina did with this image on her blog by clicking here.

Xoxox,
M.

NOTD: 'E' is for Escher

Hello!!

When I was a little girl, one of my parents' friends had a print by M.C. Escher on his wall. I remember going to his house and just staring it at--it was the one with the staircases that seem to go on forever--and try to figure it out. I could stare at it for hours and hours and hours, and I've been fascinated with Escher ever since. I've you've never seen any of his stuff, you can check it out by clicking here.

When going through my nail plates in search of inspiration for 'E' (today's letter in the Llama Nails alphabet challenge), I came upon an image with a reversible cube image that has always made me think of Escher, and I knew what I had to do. Here is my Escher manicure:

Escher-esque in the shade

Escher-esque in the sun

To make this, I started with a base of Top Shop Hidden Treasure--if you didn't already know, this is a dupe for Chanel Peridot, along with OPI Just Spotted The Lizard, so if you have access to Top Shop but not the others, you can get the same look there. Then, I stamped my images with  Barry M Vivid Purple, using Cheeky XL plate N (the cubes) and LeaLaC plate LLC-B (the dots). I finished off with a black rhinestone in  the center of the accent nail for a little extra flair.

Thank you for looking, and please check out the other 'E' manicures linked below! My favorite thing about this challenge is seeing all the different ways people interpret the letter of the week. :)

Xoxox,
M.

Haul: British Bonanza!

Hello everyone!!

In my previous post, I mentioned I was in a hurry to use some British polishes that my friend Dina of Secretary's Nail Art recently sent me. A while back Dina mentioned to me that she was going on a trip, and asked if there were any polishes I was interested in, and of course there were a ton of them! She was a champ and found almost every one of the polishes I had on my list, even though it took her a ton of visits to a ton of places. A few days ago, my beloved package of British polishes arrived, and I was like a kid in a candy shop opening them and picking which one I wanted to use first!

I couldn't resist sharing on the blog because there are so many beauties...And, now Ninja Polish is starting to carry a lot of the Barry Ms, so if you see something you like, you can probably find it there:

Overall picture of my British polish haul: Top row, Top Shop; Middle row, Barry M; Bottom row, Models Own, Max Factor, Barry M Magnetics 

Models Own Golden Green, Max Factor Fantasy Fire (x2 cause she rocks!), Barry M Magnetic Burgundy and Magnetic Dark Silver

 

Barry M: Silvery Lilac, Lilac Foil, Silver Foil, Gold Foil

Barry M: Vivid Purple, Croc Effect Black, Denim, Black Glitter, Chameleon Effect Blue

Top Shop: Hypperreal, Hidden Treasure, Phenomena, Eclipse, Cosmic Karma, and Hypnotic

I can't wait to try all of these out over the next few days/weeks. If there are any in particular you'd like to see, let me know!

Thanks for looking,

Xoxox,
M.