Pistache Clovers

Hey Everyone!! I am going to have to make this quick so I can get it posted before I leave work. I don't know why I always wait until the last minute but I do. It has also been a pretty trying day so there is that.

Today I have a nice green mani for you using some Sinful Colors polishes I picked up on their last sale. I love Sinful Colors and can't help but try and collect them all.

I started with two coats of Pistache which is a really pretty green. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of Pistache alone. I don't know why but I didn't even think about it until after I had already topped it with one of the Opalescent toppers. 

I put one coat of Bring it Sheer over Pistache which gave it a gorgeous shimmer.

It is hard to see the full effect of the shimmer but it is way prettier in person than in my pictures.

I used my recent acquisition Dream Girl plate 02 for the clover design.  

The plate stamped really well and I was quite impressed with the quality. I love cheap thrills and this one was a pretty great price through a group buy.

I used China Glaze Out Like a Light for the stamping.

I love how the softer gray looks with this base color. 

This is the first of several St. Patrick's Day manis that I have been doing. I pretty much am doing as many as I can before the 17th so you are in store for lots of green.

That's all for now :)

GoGo Only St. Merry

Hey Everyone!!! I don't have my St. Patrick's manis ready to post yet so I thought I would go ahead and do a little post on one of the newer plates to come out. I bought this plate with my own money and thought I would do a little review to help those who haven't seen much information on this plate yet.

In January a new company called Gogoonly appeared on Amazon with one single plate called St. Merry. The price point was $12.99 + shipping so I couldn't resist giving it a try. I ordered it fairly early and it came fast because I had a trial going with Amazon Prime. They shipped it in an envelope and though it was bubble wrapped it was pretty flimsy and could have easily got bent. The packaging could have been a lot better.

When I took it out it was in this really pretty sleeve that had a different design on each side.

You can see the corner got bent a little during shipping. The plate was fine but I can see where the packaging  for shipping could cause an issue. This was fulfilled by Amazon so the shipping packaging has nothing to do with the brand.

The back has Gogoonly written on the backing. The backing I believe is a sheet of plastic that goes to the edge of the plate. There is no plastic edge like you see with MoYou or Infinity plates. The backing is covered with a film. I didn't take the film off of the back because I figured it will keep it clean longer.

The front of the plate is also covered with a film which is very easy to remove. The plate is a really nice size and has a ton of images. The plate itself is about 6x9 inches. There are 50 full nail designs and 10 smaller individual designs along the bottom. 

The full nail images are about 1.5x2.3 cm. I put my nails up to the images so you can see them next to real nails. My nails are small and were pretty short at the time I took these pictures.

The smaller images range in size but the biggest one was about 1x0.9 cm

I stamped each image to test how well the plate worked. I used LA Colors Gel Like polish in Tempt. The plate stamped really really nicely. You can see I have one image circled. I had to stamp that image twice because it didn't come out perfect the first time. I had no issues on the second stamp so it was probably just user error.

The images are really clear and have some great details that stamp really nicely.

The images of the ladies stamp so perfectly and clear. I love how well this plate stamps.

These are the tools I used for the swatching. I used LA Colors to stamp with. I like to test plates with cheaper polishes to see how well they will do with any old polish. This plate stamped perfectly. I used my stamper head that I got from ebay in my Fab Ur Nails cap for the large images and the squishy white dual sided stamper for the small images. 

Over all I would absolutely recommend this plate, especially for the price. The designs are very nice and detailed and they stamp perfectly even with a cheaper polish. I have used this plate already for a couple of manis as well as to test out the stamping polishes I was making. It is a great deal and  Gogoonly has added another plate, St. Happy, to their lineup. I hope they come out with more plates because I am loving both of them. 

That's all for now :)

NYC Skyline and Funky Fingers Olaf

Hey Everyone!! Today started out like a Monday but has since quieted down a bit so that is good. Mr. Neil has a little infection in his mouth. His breath was beyond normal stinky so he had a trip to the doctor. Good thing the little guy likes medicine and has no issues slurping it down because he will be taking them for the next several days. I can't believe he is going to be 3 in April. He is so small that at 5lbs he still looks very much like a kitten. Apparently the new girls in the office have even heard of Bruce. I guess C said something about Bruce when he told them that Neil got a bath to go to his visit and the girls responded with how they have heard about him. Bruce the infamous cat! 

Today I have a nice blue mani that I did back in January. It still applies considering half the country is cold or snow covered. I wish it was a little cooler here so feel free to send some of that cool air down my way.

I started with 3 coats of NYC Skyline Blue. 

Skyline blue was pretty thin and definitely needed the 3 coats to look even.

I used one coat of Funky Fingers Olaf over top.

This picture is a little washed out but it has a great view of the snowflake glitter. I had to fish those bad boys out but at least I remembered they were in the polish this time. 

I used LA Colors Gel Like polish in Tempt to stamp. The polish stamps amazing. I can't rave about those Gel Like polishes enough. I love cheap thrills.

I used Gogoonly plate St. Merry for the flower like design. It looked sort of like a snowflake so I just went with it. I really wanted to test the plate out since it had just arrived.

I will have a better review on the Gogoonly plate in another post but I can say that it is a great plate and the price is really good too.

I believe I used my Creative Stamper for this mani and it was one of the first times I used it. There was a slight learning curve for me with that stamper so the images didn't come out as crisp and nice and I had expected. I was quite unimpressed over the hype of the Creative Stamper while doing this mani. I have since figured out the best way to use the stamper and it is back in my good graces. 

I love these two blues together. 

That's all for now :)

LA Colors Vampy Valentine

Hey Everyone!!! Today gets two posts since I am finishing up the Valentine's Day Manis. This one will be short and sweet.

This is the first, I should have probably posted it first, mani I did with the MoYou Festive 20 plate that I won from Karolyn of Nails of Aquarius. I was so excited to win this plate. It pretty much made my day, week and probably month! 

I started with a base of LA Colors Vampy. I absolutely love this polish.

The color is gorgeous and shiny and I didn't even have a top coat on the base for these pictures. 

The little bits and stuff around my nails are because I have been testing using hair glue around my nails to help with cleanup and I haven't quite mastered it yet. 

I need to find the rest of these Gel Like polishes because the ones I have tried are great. 

I used a random white polish for the stamping on this one as well as my Creative Stamper. There is a bit of a learning curve to the stamper and this was I believe the first time I used it so the stamping isn't perfect. 

I also messed up a bit on my middle finger so I tried to cover that up with another coat of Vampy and restamp. Unfortunately you can see a hint of the original stamping. Oops.

I love hearts so this mani was one of my favorites.

I love the cute falling hearts. Now that I have the hang of the stamper I need to try this image again and make it a little more crisp.

I still can't believe I won this plate. Karolyn is awesome and you should definitely check out her blog and facebook page!! She is super sweet and handled my extreme excitement quite well. I literally squealed when I realized I won. 

That's all for now :)

Sinful Colors Skylark Valentine

Hey Everyone!!! Is it Friday yet? Work has been so slow. Our theory is that it is due to all the snow and wonders of winter keeping people from working. Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't last long. The quiet makes me want to nap.

Today I am finally finishing up the Valentine's Day manis. I did this mani as well as the next one with MoYou Festive Plate #20 that I won from a giveaway. I don't win things very often so I was super stoked to have won this plate. Even more so because I love hearts and I had my eye on this one when it was released. The awesome Karolyn from Nails of Aquarius, which is who held the giveaway, made sure the prizes were received in time to do Valentine's nails and I was able to do two manis with the plate before Valentine's Day. So exciting. You should definitely check her blog out or check her out on Facebook here.

Since I was really over red by this point I decided to go with a little bit of a different twist. I used Sinful Colors Skylark for the base. This polish pretty much freaked my camera out. 

It was really hard to get an accurate picture of the base alone. It is more accurate in the pictures with the stamping but I wanted to try and show what the base color was anyway.

I used Festive 20 and LA Colors Vampy to stamp the rose pattern on my index and pinky nails and the balloons on my middle finger. I stamped over the middle finger with a white but wasn't really thrilled with it so I only did it on my left hand. 

I made a stamper decal and colored in the little envelops and hearts for my accent nail. If I had more time I would have made the whole mani that cute envelope image. Since I didn't think I was going to get too many manis in before Valentine's Day I used a few images for this mani. Luckily I don't think it came out too busy.

I had a little issue with my decals because I didn't quite let them dry enough then of course my top coat smeared them. I thought it was still cute though.

I have no idea why I only took one picture of the hand without the Happy Valentine's Day stamped on it but apparently I did. 

That's all for now :)

Sinful Colors Mesmerize and Love Sprinkles

Hey Everyone! What a week, what a week. I am glad it is Friday. I have yet another Valentine's Day mani for you. This one, at least, isn't over the top pink and red. I think I have two more but I might just post those two together. I still have to edit those pictures which will hopefully happen tomorrow. 

One of the horrible issues in life of a blogger is when we have the sudden outbreak of bad cuticles. I must apologize in advance for the cuticles. I don't have any clue why but they all decided to revolt at the same time. I have three very angry cuticles but the show must go on. They aren't too gory but I am still self conscious about them.

This year the craze was all about Sinful Colors and their glitter polishes for Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day. I was able to track them down after some hunting which made me very happy. There is nothing like hunting for a polish and finally being able to get your hands on it.

I forgot to take a picture of the base alone. I used three coats of Sinful Colors Mesmerize for the base color. It is a very pretty dark purple/ blue color and the formula is great. Sometimes it looked very deep purple and sometimes it looked like a dark blue. I loved the color and could have gone with two coats. I am guessing it will stamp nicely too.

I used one coat of  Sinful Colors Love Sprinkles over top of Mesmerize. I used the glob and drag method to get the glitter spread out in a more evenly.

I didn't realize until a couple nails in that I didn't get any hearts out of the bottle when I was applying the glitter. I had to do a little bit of fishing but they weren't too hard to get out at all. I love this glitter polish because it is a mix of both light pink and white glitter. You can tell better in person than it shows up in the pictures. It is quite a fun, cute polish.

That's all for now :)

Lots of Hearts

Hey Everyone!! I spent the weekend away from the computer so we are behind on the Valentine's Day manis. I guess this means we will be seeing a few more days of red and hearts and barfy valentines day stuff. Luckily I don't think I have too many more manis to post before we can move on to other things. 

I think the theme of my Valentine's manis this year is recycling holiday polishes and making them work for Valentine's Day. Today I have another Sally Girl polish from the holidays. This one was supposed to be scented however not once did I get a whiff of any scent other than your normal polish smell. The non scent didn't bother me in the least though. 

I used Sally Girl Peppermint for the base. All the junk on my fingers and cuticles is the remnants of hair glue which I tried to use to help with cleanup. My first experience with the hair glue was a bit of a fail as you can tell by the amount left on my skin after my mani.

I used three coats of Peppermint to get a nice opaque base. 

I decided to do some stamping but couldn't decide what color to use to stamp so I did black and red. At this point I was pretty much over the red and pinks of Valentine's Day so the black was a welcome change.

I used China Glaze Tip Your Hat and Wet N Wild black for the stamping.

I used Bundle Monster plate BM-H18 from their Holiday Collection for the heart image. 

That's all for now :)