Franken Friday--Crystal BALLZ

Hi Readers!  Welcome to another installment of Franken Friday.  I made this little franken awhile ago.  Several months ago I came up with a dead on dupe for China Glaze's Grape Crush and I thought geez if I can dupe Grape Crush shouldn't I be able to dupe Crystal Ball?  Well yes I was able to do it and really you can do it too!  I found a tiny red Sally Girl polish at Sally Beauty Supply a month or two ago and I felt like it was really close in color to Crystal Ball.  My wonderful friend Rhonni sends me nail swatches all the time of polishes she has I want to try to dupe.  Sure enough this little Sally Girl is a match for Crystal Ball.  All I did was add a tiny scoop or two of fine holographic glitter and BAM Crystal BALLZ was born.  The name Crystal BALLZ is courtesy of Sarah over at Chalkboard Nails.
Here it is readers what do you think?

Here's a full mani with it on

And of course I have to do some flash shots!

close up!

Then just to amp it up a bit I stamped using China Glaze Emotion and Red Angel plate RA102

What do you think readers?  Are you in love with this lovely sparkly red?  If you are remember what I said--you can make this as easily as I did!  All you need is the little Sally Girl red number 812039 (which my sources tell me is named Phat) and some ultra fine silver holographic glitter like the WetnWild Fantasy Makers glitter.


Are you a frankener readers?  If yes, what are some things you've made?  If no, why not!  It's fun and it's a lot easier than you might think.


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

Throw Back Thursday--Abstract

Hi Readers!  I've got another Throwback Thursday mani for you today.  I'm getting a kick out of these mani's from the past because I remember how much fun I had doing them AND I'm glad my nails have grown out a bit since then!
Here's an abstract design I did after seeing a few blogs with this trend of multicolored blobs with stamping over them.  I love how this one looks and remember I got alot of compliments on this mani when I wore it.  And here it is!

Here it is with flash

Close up!!!

To the best of my recollection the colors I used were OPI Atomic Orange, Suzy Says Feng Shui, Jade Is The New Black and Vodka and Caviar.  The yellow I believe is Hard Candy Splendid.  As you can see I just made dots of each color in different spots on my nail.  I stamped using Kleancolor Black image plate M65.


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

Stained Glass Elegance

Hi Readers!  Sometimes we find beauty in the darkest of times.  I was at a funeral on Monday night for my friend Sue's, mom.  Sue was my next door neighbor growing up.  Her mom lived a long life, she passed away at 84 and had lived the past 6 years without her husband so while I feel sad I find so much comfort knowing she and her husband are together again.
Sitting in the throng of those coming to pay their respects and give condolences I looked around the church and spied so many beautiful stained glass designs.  I wanted to recreate some of what I'd seen so I came home and did a search on stained glass and then stained glass mani's but nothing was really jumping out at me.  Then I remembered seeing Enamel Girl's holiday mani's and she had one that reminded me of stained glass.  She has such fantastic ideas and she can throw you for a loop readers because sometimes she's using foils and not stamping and sometimes SHE STAMPS ON FOIL!  Yes that's right stamps on foil!  The mani I wanted to recreate for my stained glass look is here.  


I did one coat of WetnWild Black Creme.  For the metallics I used 3 Funky Fingers Zeppelin, Monster Ballad, and Platinum Record--icy blue, hot pink and gold.  I just blobbed them randomly over SH22 using the petal image

Here it is with flash

Close up right hand!!!!

AMAZEBALLS!


I loved doing this mani and I really liked this Shany plate image too.  I plan on using it again with some different color combinations.  I really like the stained glass idea and definitely will be working on some more stained glass nails again in the future.


So from a sad day I was able to go home and find something beautiful to recreate that made me happy.  How about you readers how you ever found inspiration where you least expected it?  

Under The Sea

Hi Readers!  I'm not sure if I mentioned this before or not but I belong to a facebook group called Adventures in Stamping and on Sundays we have a challenge mani.  This Sunday's challenge was Under The Sea.  Since I had to finish up my Animalistic Week I wasn't able to feature this mani on Sunday so here it is on Tuesday lol!

Here it is with flash

one more time!

This mani was really a labor of love!  A lot of polishes were used to stamp with as well as several plates.  To start out though I used a seafoam green franken i made which I named The Bikini Diaries.  I try to name all my frankens after my favorite books.  Here is a pic of it before any stamping was done.

Isn't it lovely?  Naturally I think so as I made it lol!  After I did a two coats of The Bikini Diaries I put some Sinful Colors Nail Junkie on the tips, I tried not to go straight across but give it some depth.  I pulled out my Kleancolor Metallics to stamp with, I used Metallic Aqua, Metallic Blue, Metallic Red, Metallic Fuchsia, and Metallic Yellow.  I also used SH Whirl Wind White for my skelly fish.  My favorite image on any plate is the super cute skeleton fish (which I lovingly call skelly) on BM04.  To do this mani I stamped the plant image from BM05 onto a few nails in different colors.  I also used the swirly plant and dot image from BM04.  I also used the skeleton found on BM211--when he's under the sea he looks like a cute octopus or jelly fish and not a scary skeleton lol!  I blobbed different color of the metallic polishes on the school of fish image on Fauxnad M27.  I really love how it looks, sort of cute but sort of detailed and fancy.


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

I cried a thousand tears!

Dear Green Bay Packers where the H were you today????? SERIOUSLY!  Hi Readers as you can see my heart is broken over the devastating loss to the Giants yesterday!! I mean Eli Manning and The Giants are you kidding me???!  UG!
I started off with a great mani in my opinion, a nice forest green and a metallic yellow but I guess me doing my part with an incredible mani wasn't enough for them.
Here it is readers you be the judge!

Here it is with flash

Close up!

To get this look I painted my nails with Revlon Emerald City which is a matte but is such a rich green when you put a topcoat on it!  I stamped with Shany plate SH22 using Kleancolor Metallic Yellow and man it's a simple yet pretty mani.


Even though the Packers lost the game yesterday they had a fantastic season! Records were broken this year.  Donald Driver (my favorite Packer) became the all time receiver for the Packers when he surpassed James Lofton's career yards of 9,656.  Also this year Aaron Rogers became the first quarterback in NFL history to have 400 yards passing, 4 passing touchdowns and 2 rushing touchdowns in one game which was against the Broncos on October 2nd. All that talk of Brett Favre died down rather quickly when the very humble Aaron Rogers stepped in to lead the team.  All in all it was a fantastic season and I look forward to next year!


How about you readers?  Are you football fans?  Who's your team?  Did you play fantasy football this year?  I did and I had a blast and can't wait til next year!!


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

Animalistic Week--Cheetah or Leopard or Leopard or Cheetah!

Hi Readers!  Well some bad news--almost fate worse than death to a new blogger--my camera broke!  Yep looks like the shutter is stuck.  I've got a birthday coming up so i'm asking for a new one, in the meantime I'm going to do the best I can with my photo program.  The flash pics don't look too bad but holy cow the outdoor/non flash pics are blindingly white AND cruddy!  I hope you'll all bear with me for a few weeks.


Ok so here's the news on War Horse which I saw with my mom yesterday--fantastic BUT a bawlfest!  I was crying 10 minutes into the movie lol!  It was a wonderful story though and the cinematography was incredible.  If you love sweeping epics and movies that tug at your heart strings I highly recommend it.


And now for our Animalistic Week--is it cheetah or leopard, leopard or cheetah??? IT'S BOTH!
True story readers someone had me convinced the cheetah and leopard were really the same animal we just call them different names.  I really was believing this for about a week UNTIL I thought to myself I really think he means the cougar and mountain lion are the same.  So naturally I looked it up and YEP cougar and mountain lion are the same animal BUT the cheetah and the leopard are not!


So first up lets do the mani's.  This is mani--cheetah

This is as fixed as I can get it! Sorry!!!
Here it is with flash, flash seems to work better

Next up lets look at mani--leopard!

And here it is with flash

They both look really similar!  BUT just like the real cheetah and leopard their spots are different.  A cheetah doesn't have any opening in it's spots and they are a solid color.  The leopard has multi colors in it's spots which are really called rosettes!
To do both of these mani's I used an underwear of Zoya Pasha followed by 3 coats of Sinful Color's All About U (which is a FANTASTIC gold glass fleck polish) For the cheetah I simply stamped with Kleancolor Black using BM211.  For the leopard I went a bit further after stamping with Kleancolor Black using Konad M57 I took some OPI Brisbane Bronze and filled it the open spots.
Let's look at a side by side of this manis

Now lets look and a side by side pic of a cheetah and a leopard animal!

How'd I do???


Here are our cheetah and leopard facts: Cheetahs are the fastest in the big cat group and can run up to 70 miles per hour, which is faster than any other animal. Cheetahs have what's known as "tear" tracks that run down the corners of each eye and around the nose and mouth this actually serves as anti-glare during daytime hunting.  The cheetah has non retractable claws.  Cheetahs cannot roar like a lion or tiger but they do purr.  Next up Leopard--the leopard is pound for pound the strongest climber of all the big cats.  The rosettes or spots of the East African leopard are round while in South African leopards they are square.  The leopard can both roar and purr.  It marks it territory by leaving claw marks in trees.  The leopard has many prey to choose from; antelope, monkeys, baboons, warthogs, rodents and hares but only one predator--man.
Here are a couple of cheetah pictures I found

You can really see the "tear" markings there.
Here is a cheetah running full out! Look at the stretch he has!!

Here's a leopard!! King of his kingdom!

If you look closely at the leopard you can see the different colors in his spots and also that it is not closed.


Just for fun here's a picture of leopard nail polish ring I've made for a few people!

Well readers this concludes our Animalistic Week!  I know I had a lot of fun doing these manis and looking up the fun facts.  I hope you enjoyed them too!  I'd have to say my favorite mani of the whole week was Tiger though--how about you?


Again I'd like to say I'm sorry about the quality of these pictures!  I hope you'll bear with me for awhile until I can get a new camera!

Animalistic Week--Zebra!

Hi Readers!!!  Welcome to the weekend!  Anyone have anything exciting going on this weekend?  My mom and I are going to see War Horse today and it's the Packers vs The Giants on Sunday.  I'm not an Eli Manning fan AT ALL so I will cry a zillion tears if we cannot crush him to the ground on Sunday.  On the plus side I'll be at my little sister's enjoying the game and time with family is always a good time!


Okay so lets see what's today is in Animalistic Week . . . it's Zebra!  Here are our zebra facts for the day: just like the tiger a zebra's stripes are unique and no two zebras have the same stripe pattern.  Zebras are not solitary animals and live in herds. Zebras are loyal to their family and if a zebra is wounded by a lion or tiger the other zebras in the family will come to it's aid by circling it and trying to drive off the predator.  Zebras live up to 25 years and are about as tall as a 6 foot man.


Now onto the mani.  Instead of just a straight forward black and white zebra I wanted to change it up a bit and went for a gradient look.  I did a base color of another cast off polish from the same gal casting off the Misslyn Black Petrol (WHICH I FOUND OUT IS NOW DISCONTINUED AND THEREFORE RARE AND HTF!) Woot!! One man's treasure truly is another man's trash! Okay ANYWAY I did a base color of Hema 42--no name on this polish.  It's like a creamy silvery white to me though.  Then I sponged on LA Colors Color Craze Live on a slant about 3/4 up on the nail.  Live is a really pretty silver metallic and hey you can't go wrong spending a buck on this polish!  Next up I sponged OPI Lucerntainly Look Marvelous about 1/4 up on the nail then finished it by stamping with Kleancolor Black using BM223.

Here it is with flash

I love this shot I took holding on to Lucerntainly Look Marvelous

I really wound up loving this mani.  I like that  it's not as stark as a black and white mani.
Here are the polishes I used to do it

So how'd I do?? Let's look at a side by side comparison

I got my zebra pic from my friend Marcy!  I didn't notice until today he was definitely rated X instead of G lol!!!  Some things are better left to the imagination trust me on this readers!!
Just for kicks here's a funny zebra pic!

Well that's it for Animalistic Week--zebra!  I'll have to report back tomorrow on how hard I bawled my head off during War Horse!