Good, Bad, Better!

Hi Readers!  I'm going to tell you something that you might want to make sure you're sitting for.  Ready?? Clarins 230 ruined my mani.  Yes you heard me--Clarins 230 totally ruined my Illamasqua gradient!  I thought it would be awesome to gradient with the Illamasqua's I have--Phallic, Scarab, Baptiste and Virdian and it was! It turned out great

I gradiented Baptiste with Scarab and Phallic with Viridian and look--it turned out great!  Normally when you put Clarin's 230 over both Scarab and Baptiste it looks amazing so I thought hey I'm going try it over my my gradient.  FAIL!

YIKES this is just a hot mess!  I was pretty upset about it because before putting on the Clarins 230 this was a gorgeous gradient.  Check out these before and after pics

I really didn't want to take it off because honestly this is an expensive mani! Illamasqua's aren't cheap and neither is Clarins 230 so what to do--what to do?  In the process of trying to figure out how I was going to save this craptastic mani I got nail mail and in the package was China Glaze Passion!  Lo and behold it saved the day!  From now on I will refer to Passion as the McGuyver of polish!

Look at how gorgeous this mani is now!!!I LOVE how the Clarins 230 peeks out under the stamping!

It just blows me away that a polish I snagged for $4 in a blog sale saved this ultra expensive mani from the garbage!

I stamped Passion over my Illamasqua gradient using the leaf image from BM 210 and the peacock feathers image from BM 212.  It is so lovely now!

Here's the star of the show!!

I am definitely going to make some jewelry like this!  I'd like to try ring and matching necklace! But in the meantime I tried on a few rings I had laying around to see how they looked with it.

This one looks great with it I think!

This one's okay but not as great as the peacock.  

What do you think about this mani Readers?  Did you think it looked okay without the stamping over it?  Do you agree with me and think the Clarins 230 ruined a great gradient?

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

A Valentine's Mani--What's Love Got To Do With It?

Hi Readers--what's love got to do with my Valentine's Day mani?  Quite a bit actually!  Sunday was my birthday but no mail on Sunday's.  Here's a little something you don't know about me readers--I'm a third shift sleeper.  I don't work on Monday's so here I was laying in bed reading a wonderful hot romance at 2pm and I get a text that says GO GET YOUR MAIL!  My first thought was "well, I never!" My second thought was "I need to get my son to get the mail".  When he came back inside I was still in bed but I asked was there a package and he said "there are 3 packages"  OOPS I better get up!  I'm not going to bore you with all the packages--not that they weren't all great, but one package in particular blew me away because it was a secret birthday surprise put together by a few of my nail polish girlfriends.
Behold the the package!

Did you see that readers???? Clarins 230!  The Holy Grail of Nail Polish!  A few of my closest nail polish friends--Amy, Anissa, Charlotte, Chelsea, Chilli, Destany, Kimberly R, Line, Lori, Lyncia, Marcy, Marissa, Nicola, Rebecca, Raquel, Rhonni, Sarah and Stephanie got together behind my back and plotted to spring this wonderful surprise on me!  I'm not going to lie readers, I bawled like a baby when I saw this.  My son had to open the tied bag for me and I started shaking when I saw the shape of the gold cap.  And just so you know how hard I was crying--I was doing the sobbing thing like you do when you watch Maverick holding onto Goose's dead body in Top Gun and the medics come up to him in the water and say "Sir, you have to let him go, sir".  Yeah sobbing like that if you know what I mean.
Now this isn't the first time I'm seeing Clarins.  A few months ago the wonderful Taylor of Nailed To the T sent me a decant bottle of hers after my uncle died.  She wanted to do a little something to cheer me up.  I was SUPER stingy with my bottle from her though and vowed to only do a mani a year with it. 
No matter how much I love Clarins I just could not justify it inside of me to buy a bottle of it on ebay--thankfully my friends did it for me and I now have a brand new full bottle of it.  No more stinging for me!
Anyone who knows me knows above all else I love duochromes.  Duochromes are the best nail polishes EVAH!  And what makes Clarins so incredible is the  fiery red micro shimmer that shifts to gold to green to even teal it's AHmazing.
  
Here I am sitting in the dark trying to capture some of that shift

Here's another attempt

Here it is in the light--AHmazing shimmer!!!!!!

I couldn't stop there readers but you know I couldn't cover up this gorgeous color!  Here it is short and sweet.  The ringer finger means love, the thumb means double happiness.  Put them together for love is double happiness!

Here's a close up of the fiery shimmer!  I just love this polish SO much!

Usually I get the short end of the stick on Valentine's Day because it's so close to my birthday.  But this Valentine's Day I'm a winner winner chicken dinner!  I hope you all have some friends as wonderful as the friends I have readers!


To get this look I layered Clarins230 over OPI Black Cherry Chutney (ANOTHER birthday present from my super good friend Igor).  Then I stamped using the Chinese symbol for Double Happiness on BM203 and Love on BM225 using Sally Hansen Gold Chrome Pen.  Here are the polishes I used

I hope you all have friends as wonderful as the friends I have readers!  


Happy Valentine's Day 
XXX OOO
Laurie