Hi Everyone. Last Sunday kicked off the Go Green For Mental Illness Awareness week with a beautiful candlelight vigil. While some diseases like breast cancer awareness get an entire month while mental illness gets only 1 week. 1 week designated for a disease that affects 1 in 4 people and it does not discriminate against age, sex or nationality. You would think we could come up with something longer than a week for a disease that affects so many wouldn't you?
Mental Illness affects my life and greatly affected my life when I was growing up. I have a sister with bipolar disorder and as often is the case in young people she was not diagnosed until she was well into her adulthood. When you are young and they are young you might just try to pawn off this behavior on the terrible and rebellious teenage years. When you get older and they get older you chalk up such behavior as mood swings or you try to cite their astrology sign or having their period as all legitimate reasons as to their behavior.
Mental Illness is something that must be diagnosed by a doctor. And it should be treated by both and doctor and a counselor. If you are someone who tosses out the phrase I'm bipolar without ever being diagnosed you are doing a great dis-service to yourself and others. Mental Illness comes in many different forms from moderate to severe. It's nothing to joke about, and it certainly should never just be excused without medication.
I have chosen the gorgeous Shapeshifter by Darling Diva Polish to showcase one of my Go Green For Mental Illness Awareness mani's. When you are someone with bipolar disorder or live with someone with bipolar disorder you know all to well that you many times are two different people. Depending on your manic swings your good days are really good, but you bad days are very very very bad.
Shapeshifter is an incredibly gorgeous deep olive green that flashes to blue in its linear holographic arc
Living with untreated bipolar disorder you never know from one day to the next the person who will face you in the mirror. And just like a shapeshifter you are powerless to control the change in your moods
Bipolar Disorder can be treated with medication. It can help you function on a daily basis and help you maintain a job, a relationship and have a family.
There is help out there for those who live with a mental illness and for those who love and support someone with a mental illness. If you are looking for help for yourself or a loved one NAMI--the National Alliance for Mental Illness will assist you in getting the help you or your loved one needs. You can find more about them HERE including the one closest to you.
Darling Diva Shapeshifter is part of the Witchee Collection and can be found HERE
Thanks for stopping by. If you haven't already please take a moment to read up on mental illness and they many forms it has. Please be mindful of the everyday phrases you might use and toss out carelessly. As mental illness DOES affect 1 in 4 people you probably work with, go to church with, live by, are friends with and even love someone who is mentally ill.
Lets work hard to end the stigma associated with mental illness. It's wrong and has no merit to our lives.
Hi Everyone! I fully intended to make this yesterday's Monkey See, Monkey Do Monday and then it took too long and since I'm old I have to go to bed early so I had to stretch it out to a tutorial Tuesday! The first time I saw this mani I fell totally in love with it. I had to have this whole entire plate just based on the single mani I'd seen done with it. But something amazing happened, based on this single mani I'd seen done I feel in love with all of the artist's work and now stalk her Instagram regularly! You might know who I'm talking about when I say sveta_sanders. She is AHmazing!
I was able to snag the Konad Square 1 plate on ebay and as soon as I had it in my hot little hands I was able to redo the tutorial I had seen Sveta do
These are all full nail decals which are a pita but in the end look really amazing!
I stamped using the Konad Square 1 plate and then filled in the flowers with Zoya Solange. I covered the entire decal with Sinful Colors Pistachio. I let it dry and then peeled off of my stamper and applied the whole decal to my nail.
It really wasn't hard to do at all I just followed the super fast and easy Sveta posted on her Instagram HERE
I not really a fan of the decal method because it takes up so much time, but maybe just an accent nail here or there isn't a bad idea.
What do you think? Have you seen any of Sveta's awesome stuff? Are you a decal'er or just a stamper?
Hi Everyone!! Happy Sunday to you! It's an awesome day to be a Packer fan because you don't have to worry about Packer football today! Packers killed the Vikings on Thursday night so today is a day to sit back and relax, get some work around the house done, read a little, and just enjoy the sunny, crisp Fall day.
I recently received some polishes from Darling Diva to review. I don't often do reviews because I'm not a swatcher and because I like to do things on my own time. I have a lot of polishes and they don't always talk to me right away and tell me what I should be doing with them. When I got DDP's Witchee Collection I about peed my pants. First of all these are ALL colors right up my alley--dark, delicious Fall Colors. Second of all in my opinion no one does holos as good as DDP.
Is that too bold a statement? Today a a lot of Indie makers are doing holos. Sometimes you get to the point you've just seen too many purple holos, or too many berry holos. You start to think they all look the same and then in end you end up not buying any because you just don't need 80 million purple holos.
Holos are a trickey polish. They look amazing in the sun or in the low lamp light. But if you're like me and work for a living then you spend the majority of your day and you week indoors in a brightly lit office building and your only hope of seeing the gorgeous holo on your nails is to go into the bathroom and stare at your fingers. And since this is sort of creepy and weird you try not to be that person. I need a holo that looks amazing in the sun and low light but is also a gorgeous enough color to look great when I'm sitting at my desk. This is the exact reason why I love DDP holos so much. Sometimes she tosses in some amazing flakies or some super beautiful micro glitter. These being added means your DDP holo looks fantastic no matter what type of light you're in! I LOVE THIS!
So let's talk about the one in the collection that to me is just the stand out--The Alchemist. Why is this a stand out? I'll tell you why. When I first put it on I was sitting in the shade. Actually I was playing Farm Heroes Saga when I first put this on and it was just a nice red polish. Then I got up after not successfully beating level 320 in Farm Heroes Saga and went to my nail table to do my nail art. I sit with my fluorescent lamp and just about died when The Alchemist came to life. Seriously people I almost could not do my art that's how freaking gorgeous it is. I kept staring it, it's mesmerizing--I had to keep focusing on my art! That's a real stunner in my book!
So let's talk about this nail art shall we? The theme all this week in the Advanced Nail Stamping group was burned parchment manicure. I've seen the look before, seen it done amazingly well by Copycat Claws , and knew I wanted to try it. The deal was totally sealed for me based on the name of The Alchemist. Why not do a mani showing The Alchemist's Lost Formulas?
This is the stunning The Alchemist from The Witchee collection. It's amazing!
Seriously I am not kidding! Pictures DO NOT do this color justice!
I can't believe how amazing it is. And how about my burned parchment look?! I think it turned out great except I might have gone a bit over board on the middle finger!
It was really easy to do. I started with 2 coats of OPI My Vampire Is Buff and then I stamped using Loreal Brownie Points and MoYou Pro 04. Then I dabbed on some Zoya Louise a nice dark brown and following the same steps Copycat Claws highlight I sponged black in the center. Then you just remove with acetone and a qtip. I think matting the mani gives it that real page look.
Have you checked out The Witchee Collection from Darling Diva yet??? If not you can find them all HERE . They are ALL stunning and must haves for this Fall/Winter season!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a great day!
Hi Everyone!! Tonight is the Packers vs Vikings game and my little sister and brother in law are on their way up there! Of course it's supposed to be rain, rain, rain and more rain BUT Packer fans never care about the weather! It's always sunny at glorious Lambeau Field!
So today to support the big game I did a Packer mani featuring my new custom Packer plate and Packer polishes! Packer plate is courtesy Fig Tree via a group buy in The Adventures In Stamping Facebook group and the polish is courtesy 10.1 Polish.
This is my custom made Packer polish named 52 Shades Of Clay. It has yellow hexes, green squares and black circles. I just love it! If you're looking for a custom football polish of your own give Kelly a shout out at 10.1 Polish
This is the custom Packer plate created by Fig Tree
Picture taken before my mani hence a purple thumb LOL!
And here's my mani!!
I think it turned out great BUT it was challenging! The full word image did not want to stamp well. I had to try several times before I got it to go and even then it doesn't all fit on my nail. But I'm sure with practice I'll nail it.
Here's my thumb!
What do you think?? Is this a winning mani or what???!!!
I can't wait to watch the game in the comfort of my living room completely dry!
Go Pack!! Go!!!!!!
Hi Everyone!!! Happy glorious weekend to you! The theme this week in the advanced nail stamping group is dotticures. Let me just start off by saying this--unlike my fab friend Debbie aka The Crumpet I am not a fan of the dotticure. Oh don't get me wrong, I love looking at dotticures. I love seeing what everyone else can come up with when it comes to dotticures, as for me actually doing them--I am a huge failure.
Everyone always comes up with these great ideas and these amazing color combinations but not me. While I definitely have the "bad picker" gene I certainly do lack the "good dotter" gene.
Here's what makes the dotticure theme this week all the more horrible--I'm the one who picked the theme! OMG yes how was I this stupid?
Everyone else in the group pretty much knocked this week out of the ball park. I'll share my pretty tame dotting mani's with you and you can be the judge of whether or not my "good dotter" gene is missing.
First up a dotted gradient I did with a bunch of oranges sitting next to me. This one was born basically out of being too lazy to get up and look for other colors
It just didn't move it, so the next day I stamped over it with the Pueen Encore set
Naturally I like it much better with the stamping over it but i also think it's because the colors look great with black.
From a distance you can't even tell there are dots under the stamping
So this one was okay after I stamped on it
Next since I decided how much I liked stamping over dots I did another one with full on stamping over them in mind
I wish I knew how to make my camera take pics of blurple's but it just does happen. But how cute is this?!!!
I dotted with some fun colors and then put on Sally Hansen Pacific Blue to go along with them
Some CiCi & SiSi stamping makes it pretty great I think.
I do find I enjoy a stamped look over my dots. I'm going to play around with this look more often I think.
The week's not over yet either! I'm hoping to get a couple more dotticures done before the weekend is over.
What do you guys think? Do you like your dots straight up--or do you like stamping over them?
Hi Everyone! Happy Saturday! I'm so thankful for the weekend. Tomorrow I'm going to be meeting up with one of my best polish/makeup pals to watch the Packer game! While we both live in Wisconsin we don't exactly live a few minutes away so we decided to pick a half way point! Woot!!! I am really excited to finally meet her in person. Even better is the fact we are both playing against each other in our Fantasy Football League.
I need to try to come up with some Packer nails but in the meantime . . .
This week's challenge in the Advanced Nail Stamping group is stamping over water marbling. Just marbling alone is often a huge challenge for a lot of people and it's always, always, ALWAYS messy. Water marbling for me is a hit and miss. I never used filtered water which is what most say you have to use, instead I used distilled water. Also room temperature in Wisconsin is definitely not what room temperature in Arizona is so room temperature is a pretty vague term if you ask me. When I marble I don't heat up my water, I do use truly room temperature which is rather cold.
I find using brand new polishes work a lot better than something you've had in your drawer for a few months or years. It's hard to say which brands work and which brands don't again I really think it has to do with "fresh" polish. So far it's the only thing that's worked for me.
That being said my newest polishes are the OPI Nordic Collection so I pulled out 2 of my faves, My Dogsled Is A Hybrid and Do You Have This Color In Stock-holm and did some marbling.
This was super easy to do and the colors spread out great
I know alot of people are keen on just sporting a water marble manicure however the challenge this week was stamping over a marble so I had to stamp over it
I think it turned out great! I love how you can see the base underneath but also see the stamping over it
My thumb turned out great too!
Since I have some time to play around today I think I'm going to try the water marble decal method and see how that works out. If it does I'll be sure to report back!
I hope you all have a great weekend! Go Pack! Go!!
Hi Everyone!!! Happy Hump Day!! Today I've got something on good enough to eat! I got a few Nails Inc's in the other day and I just love them! Nails Inc polishes especially their cremes are soooooo dreamy. Since we are definitely into Fall weather here I grabbed up Fenchurch Street and Cadogon Square and did a cool swirly needle drag
These colors look great together and are just perfect for this time of year!
I love how my thumb turned out too!
I first saw this cool needle drag look over on Sveta Sanders Instagram. Have you seen Sveta's stuff? It's amazing! Check her out HERE I promise you, you will get tons of great ideas from her!
As much as I enjoy the warmer weather of Summer I'm glad we are slipping into Fall. Dark colors are so much more my thing. How about you are you neon for life and happy to see the return our the dark vampy colors?
Thanks for stopping by!!! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
