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.

Mini Hauls, Part 1

I was writing this post Thursday night and it started to take on a life of its own.  So I decided it would be better to split it up into two somewhat smaller posts, so as not to bore anyone to death!

I did a little bit of shopping this past week, starting with last Friday when I went to Wal-Mart to pick up Nicole by OPI's Fabulous Is My Middle Name.  I saw swatches of it on The PolishAholic's blog while at work.  So when I got out of work, I ran straight to Wal-Mart to pick up a bottle!  And I never go to Wal-Mart, so this is how I've come to realize that my little polish obsession had severely grown since last summer.  I used to like my local Wal-Mart but then they had to relocate the store and the second location...it's just a mess.  From bottle necks at the single entrance to the parking lot right to the harsh lighting and tiny aisles that are constantly a mess...I'm just much happier shopping at Target.  So when I saw Jen's swatches and realized it was a Wal-Mart exclusive color, I was a little bummed at first.  But I said screw it and drove over, got in, grabbed the polish, paid and got the hell out of there!  I also grabbed Have A Heart.  I already had Love Your Life, which is pink heart glitter, so I decided to grab Have A Heart to have some matching red hearts.

The next day, Saturday, I decided to trek to Ulta.  The closest Ulta to me is about a 30 to 40 minute drive down the highway.  I don't mind the drive actually, but fuel efficiency is not my friend when it comes to this trip!  And on this day, it really ended up being a waste of gas because they didn't have any of the OPI's I wanted to get in stock.  Everything I did get I could have just ordered online and used the free shipping code that was available.  But oh well, at least my Ulta is in a pretty decent sized shopping district, so there are tons of other stores around Ulta to hit while I'm there.  From Ulta I picked up two butter LONDON's from the Spring/Summer 2012 Collection, Slapper and Bossy Boots.  A friend had picked up Knackered for me a few weeks ago, so now I just want to get Trout Pout, which Ulta was out of when I was there.  I'm not sure yet if I want Disco Biscuit, which would be the only other color from the new collection I don't have.

I also got a few polishes from the Orly Cool Romance Spring 2012 Collection, Faint of Heart and You're Blushing.  And since I've been meaning to try both, I grabbed Sally Hansen Instant Cuticle Remover and Orly Cutique cuticle and nail stain remover.

I plan on putting up part 2 sometime Saturday.  After last Saturday's trip to Ulta, I didn't do any shopping until Thursday, when I ran in to Sally Beauty Supply and finally was able to buy some of the China Glaze Capital Colours polishes.