OPI Feel the Mo-heat-oes & Roses

I posted a picture of this matte nail design several days ago on Instagram, planning to write up a post, and then...it just never happened.  Bad Sarah.  But, I was determined to not put it off any longer, so here I go.

For this look, I started with 2 coats of OPI Feel the Mo-Heat-oes.  It's such a beautiful shade of green.  For a leafy background, I stamped part of a design from Pueen plate PUEEN73 using Konad Special Polish in green.  The roses are a single rose design from PUEEN14, which I just stamped multiple times, in random spots.

The colors used for the roses were all recent purchases from Rica Nail Polish on Etsy.  Lavender Lotus, Pinky Promise and Ain't It Peachy? are all stamping polishes but also serve double duty because, unlike Konad stamping polishes, you can apply any of Rica's stamping polishes just like regular polish and wear them alone.

I had actually started out wearing this for a day with regular, glossy top coat and felt really "meh" about the whole look.  I'm so glad I decided to try it matte, because applying a coat of OPI Matte Top Coat really brought the whole look together and I went from meh to completely loving it.  In case you're curious though, here are a few shots I took that first day, when it was glossy.

Still pretty, but definitely not as nice compared to how it looked with the matte top coat.  Here's one last look at it matte!

OPI Taupe-less Beach and Floral Double Stamping

Here's an older mani I hadn't gotten around to posting yet.  I put a pic of this up on Instagram about 3 weeks ago, and I actually had worn it about a week before I posted it to Instagram.  This was another one of those designs that I didn't really have planned out ahead of time.  I just started by picking a polish that I wanted to wear anyway, then browsed through my stamping plates and messed with some ideas while my base color dried.  What I ended up with was this floral look, the result of some double stamping using 2 different designs and colors over OPI Taupe-less Beach.

Taupe-less Beach went on very smooth.  I had just picked it up not that long before at Sally Beauty.  When the Brazil Collection was first released, I started out only wanting, and only buying, 2 of the shades.  But thanks to a few sales and grabbing 2 more here and there, I've come to realize that I now own almost the entire collection, lol.  Taupe-less Beach is definitely one shade that I do not regret picking up though.  It is a great neutral color and was perfectly opaque in just two thin coats.  For the design itself, I started with a leafy pattern from Pueen plate PUEEN33, which I stamped using Konad Special Polish in white.  Over that, I used Konad Special Polish in dark purple to stamp part of a flowery design from another Pueen plate, PUEEN59.

A pretty simple and quick design, but I think this is definitely one my favorites so far in 2014.

China Glaze Metro Pollen-tin

Here's another look with my nails still a bit shorter than usual, thanks to a broken index nail.  This mani is about a month old.  Posting a manicure from Mother's Day a few days before Father's Day makes total sense, right?  Ha, well really it wasn't meant to be a Mother's Day look, except that I put this together during Mother's Day weekend and my mom ended up asking me to repeat it on her for Mother's Day itself.

I started out with 3 thin coats of Metro Pollen-tin, another polish I picked up from the China Glaze City Flourish Collection.  The first coat was a little streaky, but it was almost completely even by the second coat.  I ended up applying a third coat just to get it perfectly even.  After that dried, I stamped a floral pattern from Pueen plate PUEEN25 using Konad Special Polish in pastel orange (which isn't really pastel to me, but that's what Konad calls it).  I added an orange rhinestone to the nail on my ring finger as an accent, and topped everything with Seche Vite.

The Rain Song - Stamped

I do still have one last Liquid Lacquer polish to show you, as promised, but before I get to that I just wanted to show some stamping I did over The Rain Song a few weeks ago before taking it off.

It's been a little while since I've done any stamping and this one was actually inspired by a similar mani done with nail decals.  Fellow blogger Stephanie from A Little Polish used The Rain Song as a background for some 3D decals from Born Pretty Store.  Once I saw it, I had the look stuck in my head for weeks.  I loved the way the white and yellow looked against the teal in her photos.  I also had just purchased the Pueen stamping plates set and thought that the image on plate 19 would be perfect for creating a look similar to the Born Pretty decals.  I stamped using Konad Special Polish in white and then, using dotting tools, I added the yellow dots using Zoya Pippa.

I really loved wearing this mani.  I loved it so much that I hardly even minded the little smudge and streaking on my middle finger.  I had a bridal shower to attend that weekend and it turned out to be a perfect look for the event.  

Spring ASBMF Challenge #12: May Flowers!

Um, ya...wow, remember this challenge?  You know the one that started in April...that I still didn't finish.

...awkward silence...

Trust me, I had no intention of putting the next challenge post off for this long.  I believe my last challenge post was in June, which wasn't so bad for only having three parts left to do.  But considering that it is now mid-August...well, smooth move exlax!  I think it was just one of those things where, each time I went to paint my nails, I thought of the challenge but wasn't really sure what I wanted to do and just decided, "oh what's one more week?" instead.  Well Sarah, do a little math here...what is "what's one more week?" times 6 weeks?  Answer: way too friggin' long to be procrastinating on finishing this challenge!!!  You may be asking, why even bother?  Well...I don't know.  Even though I feel like a bit of a jackass for putting these last three parts off for so long, there is another part of me that doesn't want to just quit so close to the end and then pretend like it never happened.  So instead, here I am in mid-August with a post on...May flowers...lol.

This is two coats of Styled Out, from the Maybelline Color Show line, stamped with Konad plate m64 using Konad Special Polish in pastel blue.  Styled Out is part of the Denims set of polishes from Maybelline's Color Show line.  This is really the only Color Show polish I was interested in getting when I saw the swatches.  I might even grab a back up bottle since the bottles are only 7ml and this color is stinkin' gorgeous!  My favorite color may be green, but when it comes to polish, I can't resist a sparkly dark blue.  I used two coats but it was near perfection with just one coat.  I'm just crazy and felt like I needed to have a second coat because of some spots that seemed patchy to me, which in reality were probably fine.

The pattern is not your typical flower pattern, but I really like it and have used it a few times before this.  It has sort of a country/farm house feel to it.  Sort of reminds me of a pattern you might find on an old bandana, other than the typical paisley designs you normally see.  I also love the blue on blue look.  I don't stamp enough using something in the same color family as my base color and I really need to do it more often.  I'm getting in the habit lately of over analyzing what to paint on my nails instead of remembering that sometimes the simplest designs can yield the most amazing results.  "Keep it simple, Stupid!"  I have to remind myself of that every so often.

If you hadn't noticed, I decided to set up a custom domain so my blog address is now officially Allthispolish.com, and I'm also experimenting a bit with an updated watermark to match.  I actually bought the domain a couple weeks ago, but thanks to a bit of over zealousness on my part, I managed to screw it up.  It wasn't working and I didn't realize at first that I had done something to directly cause that, so I ended up waiting about a week and a half before trying to investigate what the issue was.  Then, with a little help from a friend at work, I got it fixed.  Here's a hint to anyone who is thinking of buying your custom domain through Blogger...when you get your Google domain registration confirmation email, DON'T activate Google Sites when you click the link to create your administrative account.  In fact, don't even click the links in the email at all, unless you're thinking of using Google Apps to set up a custom email address.  The domain will redirect to the blog on its own within a day or two.  But activating Sites will cause Blogger to think some other blog is already using that domain and it won't redirect automatically.  All you would need to do then is deactivate Sites and add the domain manually to your Blogger settings, but Blogger and Google Apps don't always want to cooperate so it may not get corrected on the first attempt.  Ok, end of rant, hee hee.  It's all good now so who cares!  Now to see if I can get the last two parts of this challenge posted before, oh let's say Christmas, lol.

April Showers Bring May Flowers

Ok, so yes, it is technically still March.  But this Tuesday does mark the official beginning of Spring and also, this post is serving as my entry into Enamel Girl's Nail Art Stamping Contest, which ends this Wednesday.  The theme of the contest is "Anything Spring" and when I think of Spring, I think of cooling afternoon rain showers and fresh flowers starting to pop up all over.

I decided to use Sinful Colors Cinderella as my base.  I just received it in the mail Friday.  I couldn't find it anywhere around me so I ended up buying it, along with Sinful Colors Green Ocean, from Traci's blog sale over at The Trace Face Philes.  Cinderella is very, very sheer though, so I decided to layer it over Revlon Blue Lagoon.  I originally bought Blue Lagoon to possibly layer Revlon Whimsical over, but it turned out to look almost exactly like the same shade of blue as Sinful Colors Cinderella.  The big difference is that Blue Lagoon has a silver shimmer and Cinderella has that awesome pinkish-copper shimmer that is making everyone go nuts over, myself included.

Revlon Blue Lagoon is a bit on the sheer side as well, but no where near as sheer as Cinderella.  It builds up very nicely after just two coats, whereas Cinderella would take 4 coats at least to be just as opaque.  So my base ended up being two coats of Revlon Blue Lagoon topped with one coat of Sinful Colors Cinderella.

Then I broke out my Konad Special Polish in white and a bunch of pastel Konad Special Polishes for the designs.

Using Konad Special Polish in white, I stamped the clouds design from Konad plate m79 onto my index and middle fingers and my pinkies.

Then on my thumbs and ring fingers, I stamped a flower pattern from Bundle Monster BM-224.

To get flowers of different colors, I placed drops from Konad Special Polishes in pastel violet, yellow, pastel green and pastel pink onto different parts of the flower pattern, then scraped and stamped on the flowers.

Taking my dotting tools, I then used the same Konad colors to dot the centers of all the flowers with a color different than the petals.  I waited for that to set up and then put a coat of Seche Vite top coat on the flowers and let that dry.  This way I didn't have to worry about bumping and messing up any of the flowers while I was trying to add raindrops with China Glaze Blue Year's Eve to my other nails.  To make the raindrops, I used the smallest dotting tool available and once I placed the dot of Blue Year's Eve on my nail, instead just lifting the dotting tool straight up, I gave the dotting tool a small, quick flick upward to stretch the dot into the raindrop shape.  Once the raindrops dried, I added a coat of Seche Vite to those nails to finish everything off.

This is my first time entering a nail art contest online.  There have been other contests that I've thought about entering but ended up procrastinating and just never tried.  So I was very happy with myself that I followed through on this one and making this design was a lot of fun!