Happy Easter!

Happy Easter Everyone!  I hope this day, which is a blessed and joyous day for me, finds all of you well. It's hard sometimes to get caught up in the commercial cuteness that we see for Christmas and Easter, and despite the fact Spring is a great time for pastels and bunnies and chickies, I wanted my mani to reflect the true way I see Easter.  I say all the time, and do firmly believe it, while I am so not worthy of the sacrifice made for me--through his death I have eternal life, I am SO thankful.

This simple mani reflects Good Friday and the days that followed.

My index is a gradient done with white, grey and a touch of black at the tip and stamping in black with SH15, my swear is the lovely A England Bridal Veil (one of my fave blacks), my rind is Bridal Veil and my stone is the gorgeous Chilled Down from Dandy Nails, finally my pinkie Daisy Does It with white stamping using BM301.  

May this day find you with peace, love, and joy in your heart.  He is Risen!  Alleluia!

No greater love

Hi Everyone!  Today's mani is a thankful reminder my Savior died so that I might live eternally.  Through him I have the chance to be reunited once again with my beautiful sister, Lisa and my wonderful father.  On this Good Friday I hope you all have peace in your heart.

I used the lovely Zoya Jo for this mani and then my accent finger is the scene on Calvary

Here's a side by side with the picture I used for my inspiration

Thanks for stopping!  I hope you all enjoy this day!

Feeling Hot! Hot! Hot!

Hi Everyone!  I was lucky enough to have my polish "wifey" snag me all the Julie G Gumdrops!  Living in Wisconsin we do not have a single Rite Aid here. Usually this is something I can live with as we do have a Walgreen's on every corner.  Every. Single. Corner.  I was so excited when she snagged these for me.  I really am loving the textured polishes alot.  I messed around with a few of them and came up with this lovely little gradient.

I used all three of the orange/red polishes in the collection

Tangerine Dream, Sugar Rush and Hot Cinnamon

They gradiented like a dream.  I had to use the "lazy" method though painting directly onto the sponge

And of course just the for the heck of it I did some stamping

I hauled out the good old DRK-C and added some chili peppers!  I love how you can stamp on the textures and your stamped image is textured too!

Are you into these textured polishes at all?  I have a few Kiko's on their way to me too AND I love the look of the new OPI Bond Girls as well as Zoya's Summer Pixie Dust collection so I'll be stocking up some textured polishes over the next couple of months.  EVEN THOUGH I SAID I'M NOT BUYING ANYMORE POLISH!!! LOL!

The weather has been slowly warming up here, hopefully this mani will help do the trick and we might have a decent weekend coming up!

Thanks for stopping by!! I hope you all have a fantastic day!

On fish two fish, red fish . . . rainbow fish!

Hi Everyone!!  I had really had time trying to figure out what mani to do for today.  Last night I was toying with a few color combinations ideas.  I knew I wanted to do a half moon mani but couldn't decide on Muse and DV8, Casino Royale and Purple Illusion or Vampire State Building and Ozotic 621.  I decided to go with Muse, For Audrey and DV8.  It turned out really great even if the DV8 isn't super holo

I love doing these gradient half moon mani's!

And while this looks pretty awesome all on it's own

You know I had to stamp a little something on here!

Yep I did a couple of rainbow fish using China Glaze It's My Turn, DV8 and 2Nite

I used the fish image from SH19 and even did the reverse image stamping so I could get some kissing fish!

I'll tell you this though, one little accent nail with Illamasqua Muse on it, is really not good enough for me.  I have been wanting this FOREVER and was lucky enough to have my friend Gina snag it for me.  Muse will definitely be in my future!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!

March snow brings what exactly?

Hi Everyone!!!  We have a chance of some snow showers today! What the eff? I mean here it is nearly the end of March and we haven't even had one single day of 40 yet! Not a one!  Today it's cold and partly sunny with some snow on the way.  What I love about this irony is the fact today's challenge in Adventures In Stamping is Spring flowers LOL!  Well what's a gal gonna do?  She's going to do the challenge mani of course!  I hauled out every single one of my Sugar Rush polishes from Sinful and added another to boot--I added Sinful Colors Innocent to the mix.  I gradiented using ALL of them!

This is what I call a lazy gradient.  Instead of mixing on a plate and then sponging into it I painted the polishes directly onto the sponge.  the result to me is less gradiented--you can see lines as if striped on.  

It's not bad it's just not what I usually do.  My index and pinkie are wearing Sinful Unicorn, Sugar n Spice and Orange Creme, my swear and thumb are wearing Sweet Tooth, Sugar Rush and Cotton Candy and my ring is wearing Sweet Nothing, Candy Coated and Innocent (Innocent is not in the Sugar Rush Collection but looks great along with them!)

Now to me this is not a very attractive manicure.  While all the colors look good together on a gradient as a skittle I'm not feeling them so much.  Good thing I had every intention to stamp over it!

I used DRK-A for the ring and DRK-C for all the others

The stamping over the gradient really pulls them together, gives them a more common theme and makes them look beautiful!

Too bad we don't weather to go along with these nails LOL!

Yesterday my post was all about how less can be more but today my post is all about how more can definitely be more

This side by side shows how much better this skittle gradient looks with stamping on it

While I love the Sinful Colors for their easy availability and great price ($1.99 a pop) I really don't like their often "crelly" finish--not really a jelly but not quite a creme.  It drives me nuts!  I hate jellies so I'd rather have a flat on creme anyday.  Still I will get a lot of use out of these this Spring and Summer--if we ever have them LOL!

Thanks for stopping by!! I hope you all have a fantastic day!

When less is more!

Hi Everyone!!!  Happy Saturday!  I have a lesson in when less is more to show to you today.  I hear alot of time from many people who great my mani's are and how every one I do is fabulous, but the truth is far from that.  I promised myself when I first started that I would show all my mani's the good the bad and the ugly.  Today is a lesson in that and how you can sometimes can back from the brink.

My MSMD mani on Monday was a green magnetic so I decided to do another magnetic and went with a blue gradient.  I love gradienting with magnets.  This is what it looked like.

Looks pretty great!

Just the way I wanted it too so then I stamped over yet using DRK-A just the way I wanted too

Oh oh!! This is not what I visioned!

I feel like the gradient is covered up too much.

Here's the before and after

Okay so how can I save this? I know I'll put some OPI DS Sapphire over it and holo it up a bit

OMG now it's worse! completely gone is my gorgeous gradient!  Let this be a lesson to any and all of you who swear holo is the be all end all--it isn't.  

I pretty much wanted to cry at the point.  I hated this mani and I HAD to go to bed.  I knew it would bother me something fierce all day the next day though if I didn't try to save it somehow.  

I hauled out my Cheeky XL D and gave it a go

Now this is MUCH better in my opinion!  Gone is my gorgeous gradient but this mani now has alot more depth

This mani is definitely one I can live with!

Here's the side by side 

The downside to this debacle is the fact I have 3 coats of a magnetic, one coat of white stamping, one coat of holographic polish one coat of black stamping and 3 yes you heard me 3 coats seche vite!!!! This mani is going to be indestructible!!!!

Here they all are together from good to bad to horrible to passable

Less can be more just remember that!

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you all have a great weekend!

Enter the dragon

Hi Everyone!  Wow another bitter cold morning here. It's the 2nd day of Spring and it's 12 degrees! Yes 12 freaking degrees! Holy Hannah that is just crazy!! I should have done something warm and sunny for today lol!  Instead I settled for a foily gradients with some stamping.  I was all over the place with brands for this one Sally Hansen Lustre Shine Lava, Nails Inc New Burlington Place and Claire's Poison apple

It's pretty blingy!

And these are all duochromes so the flash to orange as a well

Here's a shot I took in the natural light

You can see some of the orange duochrome in here

I stamped over it using DRK-C

I really love how it turned out, you can still see the gradient which sometimes doesn't happen when you stamp over one

Here it is in the natural light, I love the look of foiled finishes in the shade or natural light

My nails are getting too long though, it's time to file them down.

Here's a nice side by side of before and after

This was the first mani I did after my more than a week long of greens!  I think I chose well!

Stay warm everyone!  Thanks for stopping by!  Have a great day!

It's March time to get out the winter clothes!

OH EM GEE is it Spring yet?!!! It's the middle of March, correction past the middle of March, and we have no only snow here but subzero temperatures too!  What is going on with Mother Nature?  Did she break up with her boyfriend or what?  My friends in Arizona are spouting 90 degree temperatures and we have below zero wind chill!  This is just ridiculous!  There's only one thing I know to help this situation.  Bundle up in a good Christmas sweater!

I actually did this mani way back when in December but I never posted it for some reason!  I'm not lying about the temps here though, it is below zero and we have more snow on the way tomorrow!

I used  some images from Bundle Monster set 1, 2 and 3 for this and my beloved red OPI Wocka! Wocka!

I did an entire hand first, looked at it and didn't like it that much so I changed it lol.  Here's the before and after

I think the bottom is much cuter than the top, what do you think?

I have a ton of new polishes to be trying out and doing some designs with, omg so much I've vowed really to stop buying so much freaking polish.  So far I've turned my nose up at the OPI Fall Collection because I have some German's and of course The Bond's I haven't even worn much BUT we'll see what happens.

In the meantime I have Kiko textures coming to me, the Julie G Gumdrop collection, some Illmasqua I ordered (Muse long time on my wish list woot) a LOVELY glitter topper from my friend Jen of Sweet Tip Nails and I bought 6 of the China Glaze hologlams! OVERLOAD!  Serious overload AND Cheeky is releasing their new XL plates iin a couple weeks too! HOLY MOLY!

I'll try to look at it this way, if I get snowed in at least I'll have a bunch of polish to wear!

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope wherever you are you are staying warm!

Monkey See, Monkey Do Monday--Lacquerish!

Hi Everyone!  I'm a little late in the day with this one but better late than never LOL!  Awhile ago my friend Kerrie was searching high and low for an Essence plate to do a mani she had seen on Lacquerish.  I met Kerrie through the Adventures In Stamping Facebook group and she really knocks em dead with her mani's.  In her frantic search to try to recreate a mani she loved, I decided to check it out myself and see if it was something I could do.  And low and behold it was but with a twist.  Lacquerish posted a super cool magnetic stamped design never a year ago and that's the one Kerrie really wanted to do.

I didn't have the golds to do the mani with so I decided not to give up my green and go with a green magnetic.  It's supposed to look like a tiger but to me it looks sort of alligatorey 

I feel like the tiger stripes would look better just a little thicker

I love this green magnetic from Nabi though!  It's really lovely

Here's a side by side comparison of before and after stamping with the Nabi green

Isn't it cool??

To see the original design by Lacquerish, which is super kick ass check it out HERE

My friend Kerrie was a page on Facebook called Nailed It and can be found HERE

Please take the time to check them both out!

And as promised here's a couple of pics of the gang for St Patrick's Day dinner on Saturday

This is my family and I love them!  Even the niece's BF Dylan is awesome!

Here's just a shot of the food the best I could get it--nom nom nom!

Definitely can't wait for next year already!  

Thanks for stopping by!! I hope you all have a fantastic night!