Favorites: Blue!

Hello again!

Oh yes oh yes, it's time for the next installment of my favorite polishes I've found over the past year! I thought it was only fitting that I do blue this time, given the focus on Autism awareness this month.  There are so many blurples that I love so much, I'll do a separate post on them. I'm also not doing any glitters; I found I have a bunch of blue glitters I fell for, so I'm going to do them separately, too, otherwise this will be far too long! :)


China Glaze Deviantly Daring

China Glaze Deviantly Daring in the shade

This is from China Glaze's Bohemian collection, and is a slight green-blue duochrome. Honestly, in most lights it's just blue, but it's a gorgeous blue and when the green does show, it's like a bonus. Plus, it stamps!!


Barielle Blackened Blue

Barielle Blackened Blue; indirect light

Bad picture of a very pretty color. Dark and darker blue flecks in a blackened finish, going almost black at the edges. Sublime. :)


China Glaze Hanging In The Balance

China Glaze Hanging In The Balance; direct sunlight

A brilliant, energetic, fun blue creme from China Glaze's Cirque Du Soleil collection. This is such a versatile blue; it looks great with a lot of my wardrobe and is amazing for nail art. Yum yum yum.


China Glaze Man Hunt

China Glaze Man Hunt; direct sunlight

Oh yeah. That'll work. Deep like the lapis lazuli in an ancient Egyptian necklace. It pulls me in and I can get lost just staring into it. So rich and elegant and amazing. One of the many beauties from China Glaze's Safari Collection.


Zoya Zuza 

Zoya Zuza; direct sunlight

This is such a happy color, it makes me smile when I wear it. It's almost like a dark robin's egg blue with silver shimmery flecks in it. And the formula was so amazing I have nothing but positive associations with it.


Zoya Crystal

Zoya Crystal; in the shade

Slate blue with gold flecks. I went back and forth about including this one here, not because I don't love it, but because it's such a unique polish. It's not *quite* right to call it a blue, because the gold is such a force, but it's not a glitter or anything like that, so I stuck it here. Because it has to be recognized somewhere, it's such a beauty. :)


Sinful Colors Ciao Bella

Sinful Colors Ciao Bella; partial sunlight

Sinful Colors Ciao Bella; in the shade

I don't quote catch phrases that often, and I'm not a huge Rachel Zoe catch-phrase fan, but when I look at this polish...well...I die. I mean, like, bananas. Totally Maj.

Okay, now that I got that out of my system, ahem, seriously, this polish is transformative. Gorgeous in any light, and it makes my nails look flawless. All for $1.99, $1 if you get it on sale? How can you argue with that? I have $20 polishes that are nowhere near this maj. Oops, another one slipped out...Sorry!!


Layla Green Fever (CE07)

Layla Green Fever (CE 07)

Another one I wasn't quite sure where to put, and the (unofficial) name makes it even more confusing. It feels pretty blue to me, although it clearly has a strong green flash. I'm sticking with blue on this one...It reminds me of the ocean with that shimmer and green flash...I can hear the waves and feel the sea breeze on my face.


A-England Tristam

a-England Tristam; direct sunlight

This one flirts with the line between purple and tries to reach over it, depending on what you put it next to. A deep holo blue of that special sort a-England makes. Another richly pigmented polish that makes me think of precious jewels. :)


Polished Components Psyche

Polished Components Psyche; indirect sun

Polished Components Psyche; direct sunlight

And to end with a stunner, I give you Polished Components Psyche. This is a electric blue that feels like it's gonna zap you when you touch it. It has a sort of a satin, matte-ish finish, but isn't a full-on matte. It also has a pinky-purpley shimmer that makes it extra special. It's the sort of polish I hope for when I buy a non-glitter indie--something that has the extra components (no pun intended) that make it just a bit more special. If you need a lift in your day, a prance in your step--this polish will give it to you. :)

So there you have it! My favorites of the blues I've encountered the past year. I hope you saw something here you liked!

Thanks for reading. Big hugs!
M.

Before & After: Firedragonflies

Hello!!

You may recall that this month in my Nail Challenge Collaborative our theme is 'pastels'. So today I have for you my second pastel manicure out of the series of four. :)

Today I decided to start with China Glaze Sea Spray. I know I'm far behind the times with this one, but I just picked it up on clearance at the last Sally red-tag sale. I'm sure you've seen it a million times so I don't have to tell you it's a sort of blue-grey-dovecote color with a subtle shimmer that gives it class and doesn't photograph well, lol:

China Glaze Sea Spray

China Glaze Sea Spray

It looked a bit like a pretty spring sky to me, so I though it would be nice to put something on it that looked like it was flying against the sky. At first I thought I'd do balloons, but as I was looking through my images, I saw one that was perfect on my LeaLac LLC-A plate--an image that is a cross between little fireflies and little dragonfly-type thingies. I stamped it in silver (with Barry M Silver Foil) and filled in the wings with dots of Color Club Cosmic Fate and Fashion Addict, two holographic colors, because I thought that would give a cool, ethereal like look to the wings. It did, but boy did it make the manicure hard to photograph--between the shimmer of the polish, the shine of the silver and the holo of the holo, my camera freaked out a bit. Here are the best pictures I could manage; the silver looked a lot more flat and pretty in real life:

Also, I'm going to just go ahead and pretend that I put the dog hair on my ring finger as a political statement. To...um...um...raise awareness of the plight of...um...dogs? Yeah. That's why I did it. It wasn't an accident that I didn't see until after I took the pictures or anything. Not at all. ::shakes head::

Thanks for taking a look, and please check out the other pastel beauties linked below!

Hugs,
M.

Before & After: Ancient Greece

Hello hello hello!

I am super crazy excited because I just got awesome nail mail from Brazil--my awesome friend Janaina and I did a swap, and I got some incredible new beauties. But that's another post that I'll get up as soon as I can!

Today is the next installment of my Llama Nails Time Periods challenge, and this week we're on Ancient Greece. Since I'm still on my hologlam kick, I started with Sci-Fly By as my base. I'm not sure why, but this shade of blue makes me think of Ancient Greece, or at least some of the fabrics I want to believe inhabit that time, lol:

China Glaze Sci-Fly By

China Glaze Sci-Fly By...(holo rainbows make me happy...)

Next I thought I'd add a Greek-esque border to the tips of the nails, and then sprigs of leaves to represent laurel leaves (like they'd make the crowns out of). I used Konad White and Cheeky jumbo plate B for the trim (which I couldn't seem to get to go on evenly on all the nails for some reason...no matter what I did, one kept being all janky...sigh...), and then I stamped the wanna-be laurel leaves with Strap On Your Moonboots and Konad plate m76, overlapping with the tips:

This is one of those manicures that looked better on than in pictures, lol. But I do like how it came out for the most part. :)

Thanks for reading, and take a further trip back in time by visiting the manicure linked below!

Hugs and loves,
M.

Nail Plate Size Comparison Chart

Hello!

For ages, I've been promising to give you a post comparing the relative size of different nail plate images. I don't know why, but I keep having some mental block about it and keep forgetting to post it. So right now, while I'm thinking about it, before I can forget, I'm going to schedule it. :)

First, a wonderful, awesome, amazing fellow blogger made the job so much easier for me; she created these comparison charts and gave me permission to post them here. Please, if you like them, show her some love by visiting her blog by clicking here:

These give visual comparisons and centimeter measurements for most of the well-known nail-plate brands. You can use this in several ways:

1) Visual inspection: if you know that Konad will fit your nails, you can do a quick look to see which are the same size or larger.

2) If you know the length of your nails, you can find an image size here in centimeters that is long enough to cover.

3) If you're looking at a new brand and have the image size dimensions, you can look at this to see which it's closes to before buying.

There are three brands that I routinely review which aren't included here. One is LeaLac, and they have the biggest images in the business (that I've found so far). By my measurements, they are one inch square, which converts to 2.54 cm on each side! So you can see how much bigger that is even than Fun 1&2 shown above. The other brand is Drikk; these are 7/8th of an inch tall (2.22cm) and 6/8th of an inch wide (1.90cm). Finally, I have reviewed plates I got from Magno Nails (you can also find these other places, but I refer to them by that name since that's where I bought them), and they come in at 7/8ths tall (2.22cm) and 5/8th of an inch wide (approx. 1.60cm); so they are about the same size as the Nail Craze images, but a titch taller.

I hope this has been a help to you! Thanks for your patience waiting for so long for this while I continually forgot to post it. If there are any other brands that you have questions about let me know and I'll try to find out the information for you. :)

And thanks again to Posh Nail Art for the amazing chart!!!

Thanks for looking! Big hugs,
M.

Polish Days: Wrath

Hello!

It's that time of month again, time for Polish Days! This month's theme is The Seven Deadly Sins, and I just LOVE that as an idea for a challenge. One of these days I'm going to find an excuse to have a seven manicure challenge out of this theme (maybe for Halloween), especially because when I was trying to figure out what to do for this challenge, I had a ton of ideas swirling around in my head and the hardest time choosing between them.

I finally settled on Wrath. One of the reasons I picked this is because I have fallen in love with a polish that I think would be perfect for it...So first, a few minutes about the base polish. It's Consulting Criminal by A Study In Polish; when I first heard about this line of polish, I raced to see what they had, because it's inspired by Sherlock Holmes ('A Study In Polish' is a play on 'A Study In Scarlet') and I love anything to do with Sherlock Holmes. When my eyes hit Consulting Criminal, I fell instantly in love. Red is my favorite color, and I love it paired with black and white or silver--so you can imagine how I felt when I saw this:

A Study In Polish Consulting Criminal

 It's a squishy black jelly with red and silver hexes, and I adore it. Yes me, the one who hates jelly, and doesn't really wear black polish very often! It goes on like a dream, the glitters fall perfectly, and I can't say enough good things about it. In fact, I could have simply posted this and called it 'Lust', because I did, and do, have lust in my heart for it. So maybe in a way this post is a two-fer, lol!

But ultimately I decided to go with Wrath as my deadly sin. None of the sins are nice, of course, but to me this is a particularly nasty, dangerous one. Unlike most of the other sins, wrath allows us to think we are justified in what we are feeling and doing--if we're feeling wrath because our friend told all our secrets to everyone at work, we feel justified in that anger. And if we lash out at her and try to get back at her for what she did, that's wrath telling us that we deserve to make things 'right'. Even if we take no action, but spend days, weeks, or months angry with her about what she did, we still feel it's righteous indignation.

But I believe that we're only hurting ourselves when we get like that. I believe when we nurture wrath and block out forgiveness, it darkens our souls. And who does our wrath hurt? The person who hurt us probably isn't even thinking about us, but we're putting all our mental energy into being pissed off. We waste only our own time, raise only our own blood pressure, and hurt only  ourselves. And if we do take action against that person, we darken our souls further, give away our integrity, and turn into the very type of person we're angry at to start with. Of course, when I find myself getting angry about something, these things are easier to say than to follow! But I try hard to remember them and to act accordingly.

In my manicure, the black polish symbolizes the darkness of the soul when we're angry, and the red and silver glitters symbolize the love and light that we're allowing to get lost in that darkness. The flames are the flames of wrath that burn us up, and the chains symbolize how we only hurt ourselves when we allow our time and energy to be squandered in anger, and when we allow wrath to squash the positive elements in our nature:

Wrath

Wrath

To make this, I used Barry M Silver Foil and Bundle Monster plate BM12 to make the chains; I used Silver Foil again along with Sally Hansen Rapid Red and MASH plate 48 to make the flames.

So there you have it, my artistic take on 'Wrath'. Don't forget to check out the other sinfully good manicures linked below (see what I did there?!?!). And as always, a big, huge, monster thanks to Polly for putting this together every month. :)

Thanks for taking a look! Big hugs,
M.

Review: Drikk plate Drk-C

Hello!!

A little while ago I bought the third Drikk plate, Drk-C, and finally have a chance to show it to you! if you prefer to see the video of my review, you can find it by clicking on this link, or here:

Like the previous Drikk plates, these images are really big (btw, I will post my long-overdue size comparison of different image plates on Wednesday), so you don't have to worry about them covering your nails unless you have really long nails.

Let's take a little walk through the images...shall we? :)

I have to find some way to make that left image into a stained glass pattern...

Already used the one on the left...I'll link it below. :)

Pretty fans 

Love both of these, but the one on the right--love love love

Flags and flourishes...

I've already used the one on the left as you can see, lol--will link it below.

That left one is so fun!

The brick pattern is one of the main reasons I bought this plate.

The flounces are so amazing and the bamboo is so elegant. :)

Feathers!!

Geometric...but not...

Love these streaky suns

Yep, another one I've used already, lol...link below.

And I couldn't resist using these dragons, either...

I so want to do something awesome with those birds...

Puppies!!!

Love that flower pattern. :)

More antique flourishes and fun hibiscus flowers :)

Leaves!!

Yep...I've used those characters, lol

Really nicely detailed snake pattern and fun little elephants. :)

And here are a few tests for you, done with Konad Black special polish:

As you can see, except for the dog hair on the top image, crisp and clean and no problems! If you want to see the manicures I've done with these plates, you can find them by clicking these links:

Under The Sea manicure
Happy Chinese New Year manicure
Longing For Summer manicure
Travel manicure

Just like with the previous two Drikk plates, the quality of these images is top-notch. Extremely well etched, and easy as can be to use. I can't recommend these plates highly enough. :)

You can find the Drikk plates at Ninja Polish by clicking here. At the time of this posting, they sell for $23.50. You can also buy an extra-large stamping set there, and of course they sell a ton of gorgeous polishes (some of which you can stamp with and some not).

Thanks for looking! Big hugs. :)
M.

(I purchased this plate with my own money. I am not an affiliate of Drikk or Ninja Polish.)

Before & After: Splat!!

Hello!

It's that time again--time for my next Cheeky twin-post with Dina of Secretary's Nail Art!

This week we're on plate 46, and we agree on the cosmic-type splat image. :)

I've been loving my China Glaze hologlams, so I couldn't resist using one as a base for this; I wanted a cosmic look, so I chose Take A Trek, a slate-blue holo:

China Glaze Take A Trek indoor light

Next I stamped the image with Sally Hansen Blue-Away, and then isolated the biggest splat by painting over it with Color Club Endless Summer over it:

Very whimsical and very cosmicy/out-of-this-world-ish. I think that's what this set of plates does best--whimsey. There are a ton of cute, fun looks here for whenever you're in that sort of mood, and I keep coming back to that place when I do these twin-posts. :) Don't forget to check out what Dina did by clicking here...:)

Thanks so much for looking! I hope you had a wonderful weekend, and are heading into a great week. Big hugs,

M.