The Digit-al Dozen Does Spring--Happy St Patrick's Day!

Hi Everyone!!!! Happy St Patrick's Day!!!!!!  I don't even feel bad about posting a St Patrick's Day mani in the middle of a Digit-al Dozen week because St Patrick's Day is ALWAYS March 17th and March is definitely Spring woot!

I'm just going to be short and sweet.  My base is the mega gorgeous Pahlish Emerald Cedars. I stamped with BM411, GoGo Only St Happy and MM04

Stamping with Mundo Avocado but my Celtic shamrock is Avocado, Lime and White gradiented on the plate

No one can pinch me at all today as I'll be wearing this AND my green lipstick!

Look at those hidden flakies in Emerald Cedars!!

OH OH PHOTO BOMB!!!!

I'm going to try to snag him and get his gold!

Happy St Patrick's Day!!! I hope you all find some gold at the end of the rainbow

An InLinkz Link-up

Celtic Duochrome

Hi Everyone Happy Hump Day!  This day did not start out well at all.  The city is on a boil advisory where I work due to a power outage and something about the psi level and blah blah blah.  Needless to say no water means NO COFFEE in the morning! OMG it was like fate worse than death around there for awhile.  Thankfully I survived and am totally prepared for tomorrow.  I will be making my Caramel Chaos at home and bring a delicious thermos of it with me to enjoy tomorrow morning LOL.

Awhile ago I got some really awesome stamping polishes to review for Girly Bits.  Being an avid stamper I was thrilled when Pam asked me if I would review her new stamping polishes.  While there are lots of indies out there making nail polish there are only a handful making stamping polishes.  

Some people wonder if they are the same as regular nail polish or are they truly different.  I would say with Mundo de Unas those are strictly stamping polishes, they are too thick to wear as a regular polish.  Some of the other indies such as Hit The Bottle and M Polish you could definitely wear as both the polish and the stamping polish.  Same here with Girly Bits while they are intended to use for stamping they are thin enough to wear as a regular polish or use as a gradient. Pam made both metallic colors and cremes.  Personally I am a creme girl but when I saw the bottle of British Racing Green she sent me I almost died.  It is a gorgeous metallic shimmer Forest Green. I just love it!

I thought for quite some time what I could wear it with and then BAM March hit and I was like YASSSS some Celtic nails are perfect for March.  Well really they are perfect for any time especially if you love those designs and images and I truly do.

I hauled out an oldie but goodie Catrice Genius In A Bottle and then stamped with the British Racing Green with my FUN 13 plate. It is pretty dang stunning if I do say so myself!

First up I'm going to post the bottle shots so you can see what I'm talking about

It's quite lovely

I had forgotten all about my Genius In A Bottle

Just a fantasic duochrome with it's golden bronze to green shift

sooooo pretty!

I think these colors were meant for each other

I had absolutely no trouble stamping with Girly Bits British Racing Green.  I used the crystal stamper I bought from Girly Bits to stamp this image and it was so easy to line up and get the center of the image lined up on the center of each nail.  The best part--if you make a mistake you can pull the image off with masking tape!  I love stamping polishes that do that!

Girly Bits has several stamping polishes available in addition to the crystal stamper, stamping plates and some awesome nail polishes as well as treatments and base and topcoats.  Exceptional products, exceptional customer service.  If you haven't yet check them out please do so HERE

It's been warm here for the past 2 days so I really should be thinking about some Spring mani's but right now I can't get off my Celtic kick!

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

Irish Plaid

Hi Everyone!  Happy Monday!  I decided to try my hand at a plaid stamped mani for the first time.  It didn't turn out as I had planned but I don't think it's too bad for my first time at bat.  The plus in this whole thing is I used NYX Hunter Green for the first time and I've owned it for 5 years LOL!

So here's my Irish Plaid mani kicking off some nice Celtic mani's leading up to St Patrick's Day

I had a pattern I was trying to follow and I didn't quite nail it so it disappointed me.

I used Marianne's n114 for my plaid and had some issues with what I felt should have been placed first so I had to wing it

I feel like the Celtic design shamrock on Messy Mansion MM04 saved the day!

I used Mundo Mustard, Black and White for my stamping--as always nice and crisp and easy to work with

No matter how much I try and no matter how much I love a squishy stamper I can't get straight lines when using it.  Luckily no one ever looks that closely at my nails to see they aren't exactly straight lines

So what do you think?  Does it look Irish enough???

Happy St Patrick's Day!!

Hi Everyone!!!  Happy St Patrick's Day!!! I hope the luck of the Irish is with all of you this year!

I have a lovely marker alcohol ink  base with same cool Dashica stamping and even topped this mani with a way cool Celtic shamrock image from Messy Mansion.  

I started this marker art with a base of Sinful Colors Pistache first and then did some green, brown and black markers over it.  I love the look of this one!  I stupidly didn't get pics of just the base though

I'm really having a lot of fun with these markers I picked up albeit the pastel and neon ones really do not work.  Once the topcoat hits them they completely disappear so I might have to invest in some alcohol inks after all!

My decal is from Messy Mansion MM04 and I believe it was my first Messy Mansion purchase!!!  More than 20 plates later I'm still loving my Messy Mansions!

This upcoming Saturday is the annual epic corned  beef dinner with the family.  I've been doing this for a few years now and we look forward to it so much.  My Aunt Lynette came down for it last year and she told my mom it was the best corned beef she's ever eaten in her whole life so guess what??? She's coming back for more LOL!  She's a permanent fixture for the corned beef dinner she told us.

I hope this post finds everyone doing well.  May the luck of the Irish be with you always!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Top O The Mornin' to you dear Readers!!! A very Happy St Patrick's Day to you all!

I did update my post yesterday to show the celtic plate design fail as well as what I considered a success but I also wanted to share with you some mani's I did and wore over the past 2 weeks getting ready for St Patrick's Day.

First up some non traditional St Patrick's Day mani's

This is a lovely blue from Wet n Wild called Blue Moon stamped in silver with Mash 63

I also did this awesome non traditional look after seeing the way Michelle from EhmKay Nails did it in her sneak peek to me last night!  She and i both are totally in love with textureds!!

My accent nail is Kiko 643, OPI Solitaire and Jinx stamped in black with MM04.  I painted the rest of my nails with Sally Hansen I-rush Luck

Moving over to the more traditional looks for St Patrick's Day I did this

I didn't love this one much--a gradient of Sally Hansen Jade Jump and I-rush Luck topped with Red Dog Designs Shamrock Shake and then some stamping with Cici 08 and BM405

This one I did love though!!  Red Dog Designs Shamrock Shake and Blarney Stone were both used for this one

Shamrock Shake is an awesome glitter topper full of tons of various different sized, shaped and colored green glitter WITH a shamrock glitter

Blarney Stone is a glorious and I mean glorious textured with gold holographic mico glitters in it.  I did the cardinal sin of top coating over a textured with this one but totally loved it!  Don't anyone tell my friend Tara!  I'm always giving her a hard time for top coating textureds!

I used the fabulous Messy Mansion MM04 for this mani as well.  I just loved how shiny this one was!

I hope you all have a great St Patrick's Day today.  And I leave you with one of my favorite Irish Blessings!

Thanks for stopping by!!! Have a great day!!!

When what you see isn't what you get

Hi Everyone!!! Happy Weekend!  I had an awesome day yesterday NOT WORKING and spending some great quality time with my family.  I cooked up 5 corned beef roasts and we took them over to my little sisters house for a fabulous corned beef, cabbage, carrots and potato dinner.  My Aunt Net came down from Menomonee Falls to spend the weekend with mom so she was there helping to part of the usually Lutze family insanity LOL!  We had a great time though--we talked about vacations we took together and all the fun times we had growing up.

My corned beef dinner was a rip roaring success as always but oh lord the mani I tried to do was so not a success!  I saw this totally awesome Celtic plate and really wanted to recreate it but fell so short!  Like I didn't even make the landing that's how short I was!

Here's the plate I tried to recreate

Pretty cool isn't it???  I love it and really wanted to try this on my nail.

Here's my fail

Just not happy at all with how it turned out!  I'm going to spend some time today trying to see if I can nail this look.

Here's they are side by side, it's just not good enough for me!

Have you ever had this happen before?  When you just really needed it to be spot on and it wasn't?  What did you do?  Did you keep trying?  Or did you just give up?

Okay I've worked on this today and while it is not an exact match to the plate I really like how this end result turned out!  What do you think??

I did a saran wrap mani using Elevation Streetside NYC, Illamasqua Unnatural and then I painted a star shape using Loreal Brownie Points.  I stamped using Cheeky XL D

I really do like this look better than my first attempt

I do think my first attempt is more like the plate though!

Here's a comparison collage, 2nd attempt on top

What do you think?  Which one do you like best--1st or 2nd mani?

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Hi Everyone!!! A very happy St Patrick's Day to you!  I had a wonderful time with my family yesterday!  The only downside was the fact my Irish Soda Bread Pudding with whiskey caramel sauce was a complete bust! OMG it was a nightmare!  I burned the caramel sauce the first go around so brought all the ingredients over to do it at Lynelle's and it burned there too, DESPITE the fact it looked like it was going to be the perfect win over there!  The bread pudding was not good though either! OI!  My only saving grace was the fact I nailed the corned beef AGAIN!  I am the queen of the corned beef!


To make up for that failed Irish Soda Bread Pudding fiasco yesterday, I had to do a mani I loved and I have what turned out to be my favorite St Patrick's Day mani to show you today!  I just love it!

I used both Lucky Charms and Hey! Jealous Lover from Red Dog Designs, over a gradient of Innocent and Last Chance by Sinful Colors

Then I stamped the shamrocks from MM04 over the gradient on the swear AND topped it off with an Irish flag on the ring!

I really love how this turned out!!!

I leave you with an Irish Blessing today . . .

May the road rise up to meet you,

may the wind always be at your back,

may the sun shin warm upon your face,

and the rain fall soft upon your fields,

and until we meet again,

may God hold you in the palm of his hand

Here's a collage of all the St Patrick's Day mani's I've worn this week!

Feast of the beast!

Hi Everyone!!! OOOOMG it's finally here!  Our corned beef feast day!  I've been cooking the corned beef roasts for a couple of hours and our house smells (according to my son) like Heaven.  I had a quick time to throw together a mani using a couple of Zoya's!  And can you believe today is the first time I'm wearing Ivanka?  OMG what was wrong with me to have it for almost 2 years and not ever wear it???

Ivanka is SO sparkly!  I paired it with Ziv for simple Celtic manicure

I used my MM04 again, man did I get a lot of use out of this plate!  I'm so happy Julia made this thing!

I got the white over Ziv idea from my super cool friend Stephanie when I first saw her post it in Adventures In Stamping. She's pretty amazing, she comes up with cool manicures AND loves the Packers!

I'm taking a little breather right now and reading--I found a series I hadn't known about until last week and I've been enjoying the books SO much.  At 3pm I'm going to get the bread pudding started and then it's dinner time at 5!!!!

I'll do my best to get some pics taken for you guys!

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

String O' Shamrocks

Morning everyone!!  My green week is still going strong and I'm wearing my franken Rigger again today.  I wanted to do something sort of simple today so I just went for something clean and easy.  I did a simple slant with Sinful Colors Exotic Green and Rigger and then stamped a string of gold shamrocks from Messy Mansion's MM04 plate

I have to say I'm having a like hate relationship with Maybelline Bold Gold for stamping.  Sometimes it picks up with the XL stamper, sometimes it doesn't

I'm definitely going to be getting a few bottles of China Glaze Passion to have on hand, because it works much better than Bold Gold imo.

I didn't know Exotic Green was a jelly and not a creme either.  I'm definitely not a fan of jellies BUT this mani does look very nice!

I was able to get a few of the new China Glaze Hologlams at Sally's yesterday.  The lovely gals there called me before they even had them unboxed because they knew I was waiting for them!

I'm going to be looking at them this weekend and seeing if they can cut the mustard with stamping.

St Patrick's Day is almost here!  I'm picking up the soda bread for my Irish Soda Bread Pudding with whiskey caramel sauce for dessert.  I'll try to remember to take some pics of the meal so I can share them with you.

I hope you all have a great Friday!