Penny Talk gets Cheeky

Hey Everyone! I had planned to blog this on Friday but I got the wild idea to head to the beach after work and hang out for awhile so we did that instead. It was quite lovely and I will have pictures of that for you tomorrow. I love the beach in the evening when the sun is not beating down on me. The kids enjoyed it and other than totally throwing off my evening and keeping me from both blogging and working out it was a fun time. I usually can't stand the sun but I am itching to go to the beach during the actual day time so I can get in the ocean. It is rare that it happens but sometimes I actually do want to go face the sun.

I recently purchased the XL Cheeky Plate A from Amazon. I was really excited to get the plate and the price was right so I went for it. I am going to try and do more stamping. I got the plate originally and one of the images was completely messed up and another one had a little blemish on it. I contacted Amazon to get a replacement which they did send out with free "overnight" shipping. I don't like the way Amazon does things but I wanted the plate. I had to actually reorder and pay for another plate and then send this one back instead of having a replacement sent without charging me for a second order. I was on a tight budget and wasn't thrilled about having to pay for a second order so I could get my damaged plate replaced but I really wanted my plate. I received the plate over the weekend so that was when I contacted Amazon and I recvd my replacement plate Tuesday. There is one image on this plate that also has a slight blemish but I wasn't about to go through returning it again. I will just deal with it, the images are huge so hopefully I won't ever need that section of the image.

This is the plate. I love the images and was especially excited to get the puzzle piece image. The size of these images is HUGE! I ordered the XL stamper after I used this plate. I am super happy with the large images because they will fit ALL of my nails with no problem.

I decided to use Penny Talk which is a new Essie polish from their Mirror Metallic collection. When I swatched one of the polishes from that line I immediately thought they would be great for stamping and they are! It would have been better to use this particular color over a different base but honestly I already had my nails done and was too excited to wait.

I did have an issue getting the image all the way to my cuticles and you can see a grand canyon's worth of space between my stamping and my cuticle. I am not sure what the deal with that is but it is surely operator error.

I liked this weird little square pattern a lot. I did have some smearing with the stamping and the top coat but that was also operator error. I need more practice with stamping. I ordered a bunch of plates so I have plenty of images to practice with.

Penny Talk was a great stamping polish and I expect the others from the collection to work just as good. I used some couponing skills to get the whole collection for a very reasonable price so I will have stamping with the rest of them coming soon.

I finally finished the baby blanket I made for my friend's baby shower. Unfortunately I finished it the day after she left town to head home so I can't give it to her in person. She will love it though. I love it! I am proud of myself, it is my first blanket.

You can also blame this blanket for lack of posting when I was working on it. lol. I was so busy trying to get it done before she went home I spent most evenings working on this blanket instead of doing my nails and posting.

That's all for now :)