St. Patrick's Day 2015

Happy St Paddy's Day!!!  St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays, and I'm really not sure why.  I'm not even Irish.  But I do love green and, thanks to the influence of my older sister, I've always had a love of Ireland while growing up.  For St. Patrick's Day this year, I finally busted out my bottle of the Extra Fine version of Lacquistry Amazeballz, and combined it with a little stamping on my other nails.

I love the extra fine version of Amazeballz even more than the original.  The formula is incredibly smooth, and you could almost get away with a single coat.  I did apply a second coat just to even up the coverage though.  For my other nails, I applied 2 coats of KBShimmer Eyes White Open and topped that with 1 coat of Sephora by OPI It's Real 18K Gold top coat.  Over that I stamped a shamrock and clover pattern from Bundle Monster plate BM-723 using Konad Special Polish in green.  I topped everything with one coat of Seche Vite.

I only wish that I had applied 2 coats of the It's Real 18K Gold top coat on my index and pinky nails, instead of just 1 coat.  With a close-up view like in the blog pics, it's pretty easy to see it on the nails.  But in real life, it's hard to spot that the gold flakes are even there.  I think a second coat would have made them much more noticeable, but I still love how it turned out.  Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great St. Patrick's Day!

St. Patrick's Day Skittles

I'm always jealous of skittle manicures.  I love them when I see them, but my brain goes completely blank if I try to create one of my own.  I can never think of designs that will be cohesive and so I usually scrap the whole idea and do something else.  But I was determined to do skittle nails for St. Patrick's Day this year, and I think I actually pulled it off.

I'm really happy with them, I think they turned out pretty damn cute!  I already had a basic idea in my head for what to put on 2 or 3 of my nails, so I started there and came up with the rest as I went along.

I started with 2 coats of China Glaze White On White on every nail.  On my index finger, I stamped an argyle pattern from Konad plate m60, using Konad Special Polish in pastel orange.  For the Irish flag, I used striping tape to mark off the nail into thirds, then used OPI Don't Mess With OPI for the green stripe, and OPI Where Did Suzi's Man-Go? for the orange stripe.

For the nail on my ring finger, I used Konad Special Polish in green to stamp the larger shamrock from Winstonia plate W105.  Then I used the two tiny shamrocks from the shamrock design on Bundle Monster plate BM03 and randomly stamped them around the rest of the nail.  And on my pinky nail, I used dotting tools to randomly dot Don't Mess With OPI and Where Did Suzi's Man-Go? around the nail in 3 different sizes.

Finally, on my thumb, I double stamped the plaid pattern from Konad plate m60, first using the Konad green Special Polish and then the Konad pastel orange.  The plaid is a little wonky but the Konad full nail patterns are a little small for my thumbnail, so it was a bit hard to stamp it smoothly while trying to make sure I had it lined up on my nail just right.  In retrospect, I probably should have put the plaid on another nail, like my pinky, and dotted my thumb instead.  But by the time I decided on doing the plaid design, all my other nails were already finished.

In real life though, looking at it from a distance, the plaid looks much better.  And I'm not expecting anyone to be grabbing my hand to get in nice and close like how it's zoomed in tight in the above picture, so I'm satisfied with it.  And I absolutely love the overall look of all 5 designs together.  If I had to choose though, I think the dots would be my favorite.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A few months ago, I was contacted by Born Pretty Store with the opportunity to review one of their products.  I've been wanting to try playing around with loose glitter and they have a wide selection to choose from.  I ended up picking out some mini round glitters.  I wanted to try something other than the typical hex glitters but I wanted to try something a little more versatile than a specific shape, like hearts or stars, which might limit what designs you can use them with.  I originally was planning to use these in a Valentine's Day manicure, but I ended up saving them for St. Patrick's Day instead.

The glitters come in a set of 12 colors for $7.60.  Each color comes in its own resealable pot.  The pots may seem small but they are packed full of glitter.  I used anywhere from 15 to 20 pieces on each nail for this manicure and it didn't even make a dent in the glitter left in the pot.  They will definitely last a long time.  Click here to view more information on this product.

photo courtesy of BornPrettyStore.com

As you can see in the image above, the glitters are iridescent.  You may want to keep that in mind when deciding how to use them.  For example, I was originally thinking of using the white glitters for some type of Irish Flag design, but at different angles the white glitters reflect back a bright pink color and I didn't want that to throw off the design.  In the manicure I ended up doing, I used only the orange glitters.  But you can see in all the pictures, depending on how the light hits them, they also flash shades of green, which worked perfectly for this design actually!

My base is 3 coats of Revlon Tantalize.  I love shades of green like this!  I especially liked using it for this manicure because, while it is green, it is a bit of a non-traditional shade for St. Patrick's Day.  The application of this polish was super smooth, even though my bottle had a brush that was a bit lopsided.  And it doesn't say anything, anywhere about this polish being scented, so call me crazy, but the entire time I was painting my nails I could smell nothing but sour apple gum!  And the same thing happened when I was taking the manicure off.  So weird!   The shamrock was stamped on each nail using Konad Special Polish in white.  The design is actually from Born Pretty Store's Hello Kitty plate.  But I already owned that plate on my own, it was not sent to me for review as the glitters were.  To make the surface super smooth, I applied one coat of Gelous before applying Seche Vite as my top coat.

The glitters are pretty easy to apply.  I worked one nail at a time and just swiped on some top coat at an angle, then dipped a dotting tool in a bit of top coat to pick up and place the glitters one at a time in a staggered pattern.  I would suggest either using the glitters that stick to the lid first or spreading a little bit of the glitter out on either a piece of paper or a paper plate in order to pick them up.  Any time I tried to pick one up with the dotting tool straight from the pot, there was a static cling effect and I ended up with a little string of glitters.  You want to make sure to only pick up one at a time to be able to place them exactly where you want them on the nail.  If you decide to give these a try, or want to check out some of the other items available at Born Pretty Store, they have provided a code for my readers to get 10% off your order!

*Glitters sent for honest review.  Review contains only my personal opinion.*

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Even though it turned out that my favorite St. Patrick's Day themed manicure was the plaid shamrocks I wore last week, I still made sure to rock some green all this past week up until today for St. Patrick's Day.  I have to say though, I just wasn't up for elaborate designs.  Am I the only one who was hit hard by the time change last weekend?  It never bothered me in the past, but this year it just threw me completely off and I was just tired and lifeless all week long.  I hope that's over with now and I'll get back on track this weekend.

For the first few days of the week, I had on a striped manicure using three different shades of green.  I started with three coats of China Glaze Gaga For Green.   I probably could have stopped at two coats, but there were a few thin spots on a couple of nails where Gaga For Green was going to be showing, so I went for a third coat to even it out.

Once that was done and dried completely, I scotch taped my nails and put on a thick coat of Zoya Shawn.  When Shawn was dry, I repeated the scotch tape closer to the tips and put on a thick coat of China Glaze Holly-Day.

I wish it had looked as nice in real life as it does in the picture.  In the picture, you can easily spot the difference between Zoya Shawn and China Glaze Holly-Day, but in real life you couldn't tell them apart in most light and so it looked like a weird two-tone off center pattern.  It wasn't horrible like that, but it bugged me so I ending up wearing it like this only on Monday and then Monday night I took Zoya Goldie and attempted (key word: attempted) to freehand some straight lines to separate the three greens.

That just made it worse!  If I could have done super thin lines, I think it would have worked better or if I had some thin gold nail art striping tape, that would have been perfect for this.  This only lasted another day and then I put myself out of my misery with an Irish flag design with a twist.  I started with three coats of Wet n Wild White Creme.  Then using China Glaze Four Leaf Clover and Orly Crush On You, I made the horizontal stripes.  I wore that plain for one day before deciding to take my red Konad Special Polish and Bundle Monster plate BM02 and stamp the lips design on as an accent on my ring and thumbnails, as a take on "Kiss Me, I'm Irish."

St. Patty's Plaid

If I had any idea how much I was going to end up loving this, I would have saved it for next week instead of doing it the week before St. Patrick's Day.  But, like most of my manicures, it wasn't planned.  It just kind of happened.

First off, I was wrong about the Super Bass Shatter/Rumble's Wiggin' combo.  I didn't get bored with it.  In fact, I ended up keeping it on all week.  Although, around Wednesday or so, I decided to put a coat of Essie Matte About You on top.  I wish I could have gotten a good picture of that.  I tried.  I failed.  I took a couple, but it was late at night and I couldn't get the artificial light to cooperate.  By the time a day rolled along that the weather didn't suck and the sun was out, there was so much wear and tear on the polish, it just wasn't worth photographing any longer.  A matte top coat over shatter or crackle is mesmerizing.  At least to me it is.  There's something about the matte top coat that makes the ridges from the shatter just vanish.  Even with a decent layer of Seche Vite, you usually can still see the edges of the shatter raised up, where the shatter lays over the base color.  But with the matte coat on top, it practically melts into the base color.  It's perfectly smooth and almost looks like it would have been a Sally Hansen polish strip rather than something you did yourself.  It's bizarre.  But awesome.  I couldn't stop staring and examining it.

Anyway...back to the current manicure.  When I took off the Super Bass Shatter mani on Saturday, I was trying to decide what to put on next and I kept going back to butter LONDON's Bossy Boots.  I just bought it last weekend and wanted to try it out.  This is 3 thin coats of Bossy Boots.

I wanted to do more than one St. Patrick's Day themed manicures this month and after I put on Bossy Boots, I thought it would work great as a background color for one of them.  There's a shamrock design on one of the Red Angel plates that I decided to use, but I thought the shamrock alone would be too plain.  So I took the plaid looking pattern from Konad plate m60 and stamped my nails once with Konad Special Polish in brown.  Then to really make it look more like plaid, I stamped the same pattern again but with Konad Special Polish in white.

I love the plaid design by itself.  But then I took Red Angel plate RA-116 and Konad Special Polish in green and added one shamrock to each nail.  I finished it off with a coat of Seche Vite top coat.

Holy cow, I love this!  I love plaid.  I love green.  I love St. Patrick's Day, even though I'm not even remotely Irish.  So this is the trifecta of nail art for me!  The plaid pattern shows through the shamrocks a little bit, but I don't even care.

Now I'm just a little worried I won't be able to think of anything else for St. Patty's Day.  At least nothing that I'll like as much as this.