Hi Readers! Today's mani is featuring another one of my recent loves . . . foils! My friend Sarah, from Chalkboard Nails is forever making fun of me whenever I say I love something. I said I love Crackle, then I said I loved Magnetic's and then I said I loved Foils lol! She had to remind me of this just the other day. I mentioned wanting to marry magnetic polish and she said "oh oh someone better break it to crackle!" I decided then I'll just be in a menage with crackle and magnetics. I ran into trouble when I mentioned loving foils so basically I'm now cheating on my menage with foils lol!
ANYWAY today's foil isn't really like a foil lol! No holographic look to this one, no shine or shimmer, just a really nice design. It's called Niagara Cascade. It's an awesome jade and mint looking marble type foil. Apparently it's supposed to resemble the falls though lol! And blessings of all blessings regarding this mani. I FINALLY GOT THE SHAMROCK IMAGE ON MY BM03 PLATE TO WORK!
I got a lot of compliments on the super simple mani. That's what's so awesome about foils--they make it look like you worked hard when in fact you didn't!
Here's a nice close up. I'm SO happy I finally got the shamrock image to work!
Speaking of the shamrock here's a bit of information regarding the shamrock in Irish lore. It's said St Patrick plucked a shamrock to teach the Druids the meaning of The Trinity--Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The shamrock is said to have mystical powers and it's petals will stand upright to warn of an impending storm. It is Ireland's most famous symbol and is commonly associated with good luck. Historian's have found in Celtic history it was often used as a charm to ward off evil.
When I was a young girl I would spend hours in a patch of clover trying to find a four leaved one lol! How about you reader's??? Have you ever found a four leaf clover??
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
There's a leprechaun!!!!! Hi Readers! Dorothy and Oz don't have the exclusive on rainbows. The leprechaun lore is there's a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow. Did you ever try to chase one when you were a kid and try to find that pot of gold? My sister, Lisa, and I sure did! We never did find one, darn it! This is another pretty easy but cute mani for St Patrick's Day. I used OPI Jade Is The New Black again (my All time favorite green creme I think) and the holy grail of flakies imo--Sinful Colors Green Ocean. The shining glory is the cute little pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow!
I love how Sinful Colors Green Oceans look over a dark color. I especially love seeing the flashes of green to teal to blue.
Flakies are like duochromes and they seem to be best viewed in shade--go figure! Here's a close up--isn't my pot o' gold cute????
I haven't seen a rainbow in quite some time. Maybe next time I'll see if I can chase after that leprechaun! A pot of gold would buy me ALOT of nail polish!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! Being an American I have a lot of pride in our flag and I'm sure it's no different for people from all over. I think we're pretty lucky having red, white and blue BUT there are some other colors that seem to work really well together--the Irish Flag being one of them. The Irish Flag colors are Green, White, and Orange. Green represents the Catholic people, orange represents the Protestant people and white represents peace. The flag was actually created by a French woman who understood and sympathized with the plight of the Irish people (hmmmm ANOTHER woman flag maker!) She presented it to Thomas Francis Meagher as a gift in 1848 but it was not until 1916 it was raised at the post office in Dublin. My mani today features the Irish flag!
I felt like it would be a bit much to have every nail painted like the flag so just a nice accent nail along with some lucky four leaf clovers over green on the others.
This is just a nice, simple look to celebrate St Patrick's Day I think.
This is a pretty straight forward mani. For the flag I did 2 coats of OPI Alpine Snow, the green is OPI Jade Is The New Black and the orange is OPI Atomic Orange. I tried my best to do the scotch tape mani for the straight lines but honestly I do not do a good job with those tape mani's! I ended up just going over the straight edges. I used Jade Is The New Black for the non flag nails them stamped the clover image from a Shany plate in gold. TA DA it's just that easy!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! It's March!!! Yay! I don't know about you readers but I'm German, Scottish and Irish!!!! The triple threat--woot! I love March because it means I can wear ALOT of green. I have a ZILLION green polishes too I swear. This mani is just a nice reverse glitter gradient. I've been seeming them pop up all over on blogs and Pinterest and wanted to try my hand at one. At first I was not hugely successful. I tried just painting the glitter polish on and that just wasn't working so I decided to sponge it and success!
Here's the reverse gradient effect
I'm trying to take more pics of my right hand but that wonky pointer finger drives me nuts lol!
Here's nice close up
I found by sponging I was able to get a better glitter coverage.
This mani is SUPER easy! I did 3 coats of Sally Hansen Hard As Nail Punk Rock. At the cuticle I sponged on LA Girl Rock Star in Live On Stage and then Icing Happy Go Lucky over that just at the cuticle and about midway up on the nail.
Here's a pic of the polishes I used
Icing Happy Go Lucky is a lovely holo hex and emerald green hex glitter! PERFECT for St Patrick's Day!.
I hope you like green readers because I've got a lot to use until St Patrick's Day lol!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! Oh poor lemming Here Today Aragorn Tomorrow BUT I've been wanting her forever or I guess i should say him since Aragorn is totally a manly man! I don't really know why I've never had him before now. I wanted him but just didn't ever get around to getting him. Here's where Igor comes into play. She knows I love the dark colors--I mean come on we share a love of Vampire State Building. So I was so happy when she got this for me and sent it to me! In case you forgot Igor is really Destany from Confessions of a Sarcastic Mom.
Here's a nice shot of the deep dark Aragorn on his own
Just a gorgeous lovely darker than dark green! I love it! But you know me I can't have just plain nails! Plain is almost as bad as naked! I stamped using RA 102 and China Glaze Cherish--so lovely!
Here's a close up, you can still see the lovely dark green beneath the stamping I just love that!
I love using China Glaze metallics to stamp with--they work great!
Here's a picture of the two polishes I used. 2 polishes to make a really simple yet pretty mani!
What do you think readers, are you fan of these super dark colors like I am, or are you a pastel person?
Here's a lovely parting gift for you readers!! The REAL Aragorn!
OMG! Why can't guys like this be real??????!!!!!!!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! Today I have some exciting frankens to show you! I made my first ever from pigment franken the other day! One of the last times I was at Sally Beauty Supply I picked up a really pretty greeny bluey eyeshadow. I crushed it up into a fine dust and then added it to a SUPER old NYC way too sheer polish I had. I NEVER throw away polishes because you never know when you could use them! It was a bit too light for me so I added just a few drops of Essie Midnight Cami and then a dash or two of Nfu-Oh 61 to give it some extra sparkle and BAM my Naked Edge was born. Some of you might know I love to name my frankens after my favorite books. Naked Edge is part of the I Team Series written by Pamela Clare--LOVE her stuff!
Here's collage I put together of Naked Edge
Admittedly it's gorgeous on it's own BUT I recently got a wonderful franken from my friend Caroline called Ariel's Tail. It's a lovely diamond shaped glitters or green and blue with some stars in it as well. It looks AHmazing over black so I decided to do some black tips topped with Ariel's Tail and voila!
I love, love, LOVE this!!!
Look how pretty Ariel's Tail is with my Naked Edge!!!
It's so pretty I had to make a ring out of it!!
What do you think of my first pigmented franken? I love it (yep breaking my arm patting myself on the back lol). And you just can't go wrong with two gorgeous frankens making on one mani! So simple yet so pretty!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
Hi Readers! My Wonder Twin, Crystal, and I felt the need for another mani. She recently starte d stamping and of course is massively in love with it!! I told her to pick the image and the color and BAM did she ever pick a hard one! SERIOUSLY readers. We both recently got OPI Ink Suede from our friend Heather--she's like a sniper when it comes to getting some OPI suedes lol! When Crystal suggested Ink suede I was totally down with it. Then she suggested the zipper image from the 2nd Bundle Monster set and I was down with it until I actually tried to do the mani!! Holy cow it was not easy to get the flat metallic silver onto a matte polish.
I had a great idea in mind when I think of zipper I think of unzipped more than zipped. When I think of unzipped zippers well let's just say it's not PG thoughts. Some of my favorite books include unzipped zippers and handcuffs--just sayin' . . .
Here's my idea brought to fruition
I cannot tell you how hard it was to A get the zipper image to transfer onto my nails for some reason and B to line up the dang zipper straight.
Here's a close up of the handcuffs and little key--for my first time ever free hand handcuffs I didn't do to bad
Here's the pic of my Wonder Twin Crystal's mani with mine--I love how her's turned out!
And of course the best picture of all--our Wonder Twins Pic!!
Crystal and I both used OPI Ink Suede and stamped with silver using zipper image on BM202. How do you feel about matte's readers? Do you have any of the OPI Suedes?
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a fantastic day!
