Hi Everyone!!! Happy hump day! I loved my orange gradient SO much I just couldn't part with it so I did a beautiful extend a mani! Not really a oh hey let's wear a lot of these gorgeous oranges you have but it is what it is LOL! I really do love my orange gradient so much I just could bear to get rid of it so soon and you all know that's pretty rare for me. I decided to stamp over it and add some free hand roses to it. YES I did free hand!
I stamped using one of my favorite images ever from DRK B and then I just did the needle swirl method with an orange and red for my roses
I'm not thrilled with my leaves but I don't free hand much so this is pretty good for someone who would rather stamp LOL!
Man this is a lovely gradient still!!!
The theme this week in my advanced nail stamping group is straight lines--stamping straight line is sometimes not easy at all ESPECIALLY if you have very curved nails like I do. I'm going to attempt something tonight using orange, black and silver--so Halloween colors but not in a Halloween design. I hope it turns out as I'm visioning it in my head.
Thanks for stopping by!! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Everyone! Today I have a little happy accident to share with you all! I had wanted to do an orange to red gradient with some polishes I haven't done much and at first gradient them with a sponge was very hard as all three were jelly type finishes. I finally figure out how to get them on my nail and I think the look is striking! I had to make due with the best "light" I had
Here's a shot I took of this gorgeous gradient under the stove top. This is Elevation Aconcagua and Jade Uau and Vermelho Surreal
Here's a shot with flash
What's so awesome about it is the fact it almost doesn't look like a gradient!
I tried to sponge method this as I normally do and I was getting nothing but the holo pigment on my nails with no color left behind. I had to think outside the box. To get it to work I did 1 layer of Aconcagua then I painted the red Vermelho Surreal on the tips, where the two met together I did some short brush strokes with Uau then I went over the entire nail again with a very thin coat of Aconcagua--brilliant!
Here's some shots I took outside
It's really quite stunning
What I liked best about it and I honestly think it's the jelly type finish in all of them is even indoors this looked lovely as you could really see the color of the polish and not a flat silvery look you so often get with holos indoors.
I love this one a lot! I don't know if I'm going to be able to take this baby off!
Stay tuned tomorrow to see whether or not I do LOL!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fabulous day!
Hi Everyone!! Happy Monday! A funny thing happened on the way to me putting polishes away in my melmer. The first thing I did instead of putting away the 6 or 7 polishes I had out was go through my purple drawer to find what I just really wasn't wearing anymore so I could weed them out. I pulled out about 8 I know I'm never going to wear so I'm definitely going to share these with someone who will. Then I noticed I have quite a few really pretty oranges that I just don't wear so I decided to wear orange everyday this week! Wow! This is going to be SO hard for me because I don't have any orange clothes! OMG I am going to clash every single day this week. CAN I DO IT?! I don't know but you'll be along with me for the ride so we both shall see.
The Sunday challenge for the AIS facebook group was tigers yesterday. Hey tigers are sort of orange so how perfect is that? After seeing pics of all the way cool true tiger designs I decided I wanted to step outside the box and do something a little different. I started with a base of Zoya Myrta and Cult Nails Captivated and then enlisted my pink CiCi & SiSi for some stamping
I like this one! I think it turned out pretty cool
My friend Ana told me it was very Cincinnati Bengals looking! I might have to utilize this look again for football season!
What do you think when you see it? Does it say tiger to you or definitely not at all?
How about your orange stash? How is it looking? Do you have any real beauties in there that only get love during Halloween? If so you should haul them out and wear some right now!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fabulous day!
Hi Everyone!! Woot it's the weekend!!! I don't have much going on today at all. I'm doing some cleaning, going through my melmer drawers and weeding out what doesn't get used. I'm trying to think of some good things to make for dinner every day this week before heading to the grocery store and I'm coming up lacking. I'm also thinking of challenging myself to do a week of orange nail polish. I have a lot of really pretty oranges that quite honestly do not get much wear time!
Today I'm showing off another one of the penguin mani's I did for my ANS group. I had this idea in my head and had to work with the images I have of penguins, which I found out due to this challenge, I don't really have enough of LOL. I started with a base of white topped with Red Dog Designs Pop Art Mickey, only I made sure to leave out any of the Mickey glitters, and then I stamped my little penguin parade.
I love Pop Art Mickey because it's like a party on your nails
Here are my little penguins on their parade
I thought about redoing this mani because I didn't like the look of the colored in bellies on the penguins but honestly this mani took me FOREVER so nope it stayed as is
Another cute one from me but it's sort of hard not to do cute when penguins are involved!
Thanks for stopping by!!! I hope you all have a fantastic weekend!!!
Hi Everyone!!!! Happy Friday!!! So glad the weekend is upon us! I don't have plans to do much at all either. Sunday I'm going to a wine tasting at my friend Angelika's and I haven't seen her for awhile so I'm really looking forward to that.
I also got in the entire Icing collection from 10.1 Polish and I can't wait to do some mani's with it! I've seen some great stuff done by Beaching Nails so I just needed these polishes in my life!
This whole week the theme in my advanced nail stamping group on Facebook was penguins. OMG penguins! It's really hard to think of some mani's to do with penguins not in a traditional winter setting, which is what I wanted to do because it's summer here LOL!
This is the first one I came up with. Just some cute stamping with BM418 and some CiCi & SiSi
I decal'd the penguins and I think my lil guy on the left looks like he wound end up with a broken nose LOL!
So far for the week I've done 3 penguin mani's. Challenge ends on Sunday so I'm not sure if I'll do one more or not but I am happy to say none of them have any snow in them!!
Thanks for stopping by!! I hope you all have a great weekend!
Hi Everyone! Happy Hump Day! This past weekend I got together with all my polish besties and we did nails all day long! It was a blast as always. We have the best time when we do this and always have some great food and lots of laughs in addition to trying out some fun nail designs.
There were two casualties of the day though! I had a nail break so I had to file down and Dani spilled Orly Miss Conduct on her favorite jeans! UG! I think she did a great job salvaging those jeans though!
My first design of the day was some Dashica stamping over Zoya Cosmo. I really do like stamping over the magical pixie dusts
It's really hard to get a good pic of the magical pixie dusts because they are SO sparkly!
This next one turned out to be my favorite of the day--some double stamping with CiCi & SiSi and MoYou Sailor and then a cute little decal to go on top of it!
I did a bit of double stamping as the theme in my Advanced Nail Stamping group was double stamping. This next one is a sunset gradient with sme Dashica and Cheeky Wild At Heart stamping
I can't belive I'm going to say this but sometimes I think gradients look better on shorter nails than my long ones
Next up I did some stamping with one of my new Marianne plates and added a cute little turtle
And this is when things went south and the corner of my middle finger broke off! UG I had a little patch on it but when you are using so much remover all you can do is pray for the best LOL!
First design featuring my shortie nails is this cool tribal I did with a FUN plate and Cheeky Viva La Mexico
This is also when the sun started to get low so we had to switch to indoor lighting. Yep we were together for 10 hours!!!
Here's my cute cat mani and for the life of me I cannot remember what plate I used to stamp the cats with! The cute skelly fish is from CiCi & SiSi though
I used the lovely Nails Inc Warwick Way for this mani and I really love the color!
I also tried my hand at a pond mani for the first time and I just did not like it! I don't know why. I think my images are too big and I'd be better off doing some smaller images. I'm not a fan of jellies at all so I don't know that I'll ever do another pond mani, but I'd like to think I will
What do you think? Do you think we are crazy to get together and do a mani and then take it off only to do more? We love getting together and if we can't find the time to do an all day nail-a-thon then we get together for dinner.
I feel so blessed to have found 3 wonderful friends through Facebook of all places that live close to me!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Everyone Happy Friday!! Today is the last day of the great Digit-al Dozen Countries & Cultures week and I'm showcasing Superficially Colorful's Serene with Elevation's Yet's Oceanside Vacation. I super love both of these polishes and you all know how much I love to stamp over glitters!! I just felt like these two together had a Mediterranean feel and perfect for this week's challenge.
I love how you can see the glitters through this tile like design
Even more so how the color changes to a darker blue when it's cold!
super beautiful look made easy!
Another great week by the Digit-al Dozen gang! Seriously being so diverse we all come up with totally unique and beautiful designs. I feel so honored to be part of such a great group of gals!
Hi Everyone! Sorry for sure a late post today but my mani totally did not turn out :( Once again Kleancolor metallics ruined a great design! UG! Curse you Kleancolor! After this I'm getting smart and just flat out tossing these babies out!
So I attempted to do some cool Native American tribal nails last night with one of my new Marianne plates and it looked great until the topcoat hit it! UG!
I promised I'd share fails alongside the successes though so here's my Digit-al Dozen Does Countries & Cultures mani for day 4
I really want to try this again with some better polishes. Maybe I will this weekend and we can compare which ones are better!
I'm sure my friends have come up with something much better so let's head over and take a look!
Hi Everyone! Happy Wednesday! So when this week was looming in front of me I was actually thinking of not doing it! It just seemed too hard to come up with some fabulous designs and ideas. My friend Sheila from Pointless Cafe was really encouraging and helpful so I knew I had to do something as a little shout out to her. Something you may not know about her--that woman LOVES coffee! Love, Love, LOVES it! She and I are on the total opposite spectrums of our coffee drinking too. For me the paler the better, the sweeter the better and yep the colder the better for me! She loves her black with no additives--UG. I put this mani together to celebrate the best of both worlds--light with tons of cream and sugar and black, black, black!
This one's for you Sheila!
I found the coffee stamping in the pink CiCi & SiSi set and had to doctor up BM01 to get my Columbia accent nails
Ahhhh blessed, blessed coffee how we all adore you!
Let's check out what everyone else did for today--this week we are rocking it and kicking butt once again in the group!
Hi Everyone. Today is a sad day for me. Today marks the day my sister finally succumbed to her breast cancer after battling it for 8 long years. This is the 5th anniversary of her death. It's hard to believe 5 years have gone by. 5 long years without my sister and my best friend. People try to tell you stupid things when someone you love dies like time heals all wounds, but it doesn't. Time can heal a physical wound but no amount of time can ever fill the gaping hole left in your heart.
I wasn't sure how I would feel about Digit-al Dozen today. I wasn't sure I would even feel like participating in this week. So I played it by ear. I didn't commit to anything and I cried alot. My sister didn't like us to cry over her, she tried to shield us from the pain, she tried to comfort us even in the very end. But you do cry and we will continue to cry. She also would have been hacked off at me for not participating today or this whole week. So I need to pick my sad self up--stiff upper lip it--and git 'er done.
Lisa loved to wear pink camo! I made fun of her for it all the time. "Lisa" I would say, "there are no pink trees! there is no pink grass" but she wore it anyway. Camouflage is actually a long standing joke in my family. When I was in high school I was on a camo pants kick before it was even "in"! I wore camo pants all the time and my dad would tease me and say "I can't see you from the waist down". I bought my dad tons of camo things thermos' for work, lunch bags, a little camo travel clock for him to take hunting--you name it, if it had camo on it I bought it for him.
When it finally got "in" like 20 years after I made it cool, Lisa started to wear it. She actually had this little half camo jacket! We used to tease her and call it a "jack" because it wasn't a full jacket. She had a lot of those little "jacks" LOL. She was actually very stylish.
She was beautiful, and funny. She was kind and loved with her whole heart. She was one of the best parts of my life for 44 years. Living without her is hard--there are times you just need your best friend. You just want to pick up the phone and say "hey guess what happened today" but you can't. The hardest thing about living after someone you love dies is actually living.
I remember everything about her. Am glad to have shared 44 wonderful years with her but I do long for the day we can one day be together again.
Today in honor and memory of my beautiful sister, Lisa Gage, I'm wearing some pink camo right along with my regular camo
Here's a picture of me with my beautiful sister's when we were on vacation in Florida-I'm in the middle, Lynelle my little sister is on the left and Lisa in her camo and "jack" is on the right
Many thanks to my sweet Digit-al Dozen family for letting me do whatever I wanted to do today
Hi Everyone!! Happy Monday! This week is a Digit-al Dozen week and man was this one hard! You know we have these themes picked out way in advance and you look at it and go okay no problem, then it's upon you and go what the french am I doing??? I had to dig deep for this theme and I sure hope everyone thinks I did my wonderful Digit-al Dozen group proud!
First up is Ancient Egypt. Why ancient instead of modern times--simple I have Messy Mansion plate I bought ages ago and I said I was going to start using images and plates I haven't ever used--so thank you Digit-al Dozen for getting my rear in gear with this one!
I stamped today with MM32 over a gradient of OPI Live, Love, Carnaval. Zoya Robyn and White. I did the decal method for Cleopatra AND no bubbles for the first time! Woot!
I don't know why it took me so long to try out this plate--this came out fabulous!
I think this week is going to be a good one for Digit-al Dozen, with themes like this you never know what everyone is going to come up with. Let's head over and see what everyone else did for today!
Hi Everyone!! Happy Saturday! Today I have an exciting post to share. I was recently contacted by Sara of Nyall about creating or "frankening" my own polishes. Nayll is a company that will make up whatever you create and send it to you! You get to pick you base, clear or colored--you can create a glitter or a shimmer and each one you make you get to name! WOW how cool is this for someone who'd like to have a personal polish but isn't a polish maker?!
It's SUPER easy! I went to the site, followed their easy instructions and I made 4 polishes. Yes UBU I made this!! The hard part is waiting for your goodies to get to you. The whole time you're thinking, wow I hope I don't suck at creating polishes. I did one shimmer that I just didn't know would work. I wanted to do one to show everything Nayll has to offer but I was worried it might be lame. It turned out gorgeous! GORGEOUS!
So this is going to pic heavy because heck yeah I stamped over all my lovelies too!
First up the lovely Sea Mist. I added aqua and sea blue holo squares with some aqua micro glitter and black stars. My black stars don't show up great over the black base I chose but I'm sure over a lighter base they will be visible.
I stamped over it because stamping over glitter is one of my favorite things to do!
Messy Mansion MM29 definitely one favorite images to use for stamping over glitter
So next up is a super personal one to me--you can't live in Wisconsin and not be a Packer fan! Seriously, you CAN'T if you do then yes you need to move--LOL!
OMG ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL??!!!!!!
I'm still feeling the love for my heart throb Jason Momoa and lucky for me through Nayll I could make up a Jason inspired polish!!! I wanted something with a Hawaiian feel so there is ALOT of glitter in here. Dark purple squares, pink micro glitter and then lots of matte shapes--aqua stars, yellow dots, lavendar dots, pink squares--it's all in here!
I got so excited to use this one I didn't get shots of it without my stamping first LOL! But can you see the name???!!! I called this one MOAR Momoa! because come on---we all need some more Jason Momoa in our lives!
This one is a beauty isn't it? I used another fave image to stamp over glitter MM20 as well as BM318 with my OPI Sheer Tints. I wish my tints didn't bubble so dang much!
Here's a pic with Jason! Oooh!!! Ahhhh!!!
So here's the one I didn't think would work. I wanted to make a shimmer but didn't know if my plum base with fuchsia shimmer would look good. I mean they are similar in color. Would you even see some fuchsia shimmer in a plum base. When I got this baby I was blown away! I was even more elated to be able to name this Voyeur after my favorite book by Lacey Alexander!
It's actually just so lovely! I'm really please with how this one turned out--so simple yet SO beautiful!
I miss these long nails though! I had to cut them down after this mani :(
I did stamp over this one too but I didn't really like my stamping
So now the last one up is one already created by Nayll. It's called Desert Lakes and is just gorgeous! It's part of the Summer Waters collection. I layered it over a pale icy blue and beauty was born
Desert Lakes has a lot of lovely glitters in an awesome color combo going on
pale blue, aqua, pink and bronze! So yummeh!
And look at the little white stars!!
I stamped over it using my Cheeky XL Wild At Heart plate
Another beauty!
Sara also sent me her Smooth It Out glitter topcoat to try. I used it with all the glitter creations I did and then topped it with my Seche Vite.
I am a fan of this company! I think it's awesome to be able to make your one of a kind creations! While I was sent these polishes for review I am heading back to purchase a few bottles of my Packer Backer creation to give to friends for the football season--maybe even some for a Bears frenemy!!!
So where can you find Nyall? You can find them online at Nyall.com you can find them on Facebook! What are you waiting for?!!! Get over there and create your own!!!!
