Shangri-La Abstract Stamping

For the past month or so, I've been in a nail art slump.  I just haven't felt motivated to do anything other than switch out the polish on my nails.  Seeing this look though, that I wore pre-slump, is reminding me why I got into nail art in the first place, and also that a manicure doesn't have to be super complicated to have it turn out to be one of your favorites.

This mani was actually from back in July, I just never got around to using it in a post until now.  It had been a little while since I'd done any matte nails, and I was loving a look that Oooh, Shinies! had posted at the time.  It made me think about the China Glaze Romantique collection, which I had purchased online ages ago solely to use the polishes for stamping.  I also had just recently ordered the Shangri-La Master Set from Bundle Monster and was itching to try out one of the new plates in the collection.

For my base, I started with a polish probably almost as old as the Romantique Collection, OPI Steady As She Rose.  Then I stamped part of the design from plate BM-S105 with China Glaze Joy.  I finished the look off with one coat of OPI's matte top coat.

I need to remember to pull out some shades from the China Glaze Romantique collection more often.  They are great for stamping, and they look amazing matte as well.

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!

KBShimmer Celebration Duo: The Grape Beyond and Would Jubilee It?

Press Sample

This month, KBShimmer is celebrating its 5th year in business!  In honor of this accomplishment, Christy has released 2 new polishes, The Grape Beyond and Would Jubilee It?, plus everything on the site is 20% until August 14th.  So not only are all the great polishes on sale, but so are the other great KBShimmer products like Christy's handmade soaps, bath bombs, sugar scrubs and more.  Christy sent along a few samples of her polishes for me to show everyone throughout the month of August.  Included was the Celebration Duo, which I'll be showing you today!  These two polishes are sold separately, but are meant to be paired together.  First up is The Grape Beyond, a matte purple polish with a slight turquoise shimmer.

It took only 2 coats for full coverage.  This is a really great shade of purple.  I don't find myself wearing matte polishes very often, but I really do love the matte look of this polish.  After I finished swatching the other samples Christy had sent, I found myself reaching for this to put back on.  I got several compliments this morning when I walked into work wearing it, even from friends who don't usually gravitate to matte finishes.

The turquoise shimmer is very strong in the bottle.  It is much more subtle on the nail, but you can still see it at close range.  And if you decide to top coat the polish, it brings out the shimmer even more, as you can see below.

The second polish is Would Jubilee It?, a great glitter topper that Christy describes as containing all of her favorite glitters: "circle glitters in fuchsia, aqua and silver, hex glitters in sapphire and turquoise, and micro slices in fuchsia, aqua and silver."  I layered one coat of Would You Jubilee It? over The Grape Beyond.  This is definitely loaded with glitter, so I applied a generous coat of Gelous before finishing it off with one coat of Seche Vite top coat.

This glitter would work great over a number of colors, like a bright turquoise or maybe a baby blue cream.  It really does compliment The Grape Beyond perfectly though.

You have until the 14th to take advantage of the anniversary sale on the KBShimmer site.  For international customers, check out the KBShimmer page at Harlow & Co., where KBShimmer is also on sale!  I'll have swatches of a few other KBShimmer polishes throughout the the week.  In the meantime, you can check out some posts from last year of a few KBShimmer polishes I purchased myself, Berry Patch and Orange-A-Peel.

*Polish sent for honest review.  Review contains only my personal opinions.*

Spun Sugar: Take 3!

It has been a while since the last time I tried out the spun sugar technique.  My last attempt was not one of my favorites...it was ok, but not as exciting as the first time I tried this technique.  I had been wearing OPI We'll Always Have Paris Suede for about two days and was staring at my nails trying to decide if I wanted to change it up and the idea try a spun sugar mani again finally hit me.

Before I get any further, here are a few shots of We'll Always Have Paris Suede by itself.  This was two coats, no top coat.

I love the OPI Suedes.  All of them.  As a whole, it is definitely one of my favorite collections of all time.  Without top coat they are prone to chip quicker, just like most matte finishes, but application is so smooth and they just look fantastic once dry.  I think I'm going to have to try out each one of them as a base for a spun sugar mani at some point.  Just like with the my first attempt using OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow Suede as my base, I love the way the subtle sparkle squeaks through between the strands of creme polishes layered over it.

For the strands, I started out with applying random lines of the original/non-suede OPI We'll Always Have Paris.  That was followed by strands of Orly Artificial Sweetener and Orly You're Blushing.  I went back and added just a few more strands of We'll Always Have Paris at the end because I felt it needed just a few more dark lines.  Once that had set up for a bit, I tried to get the surface as smooth as possible by applying a coat of Seche Vite, one coat of Gelous and then one last coat of Seche Vite to finish it off.

I can't wait to do another one, definitely one of my favorite techniques!  Also, I finally caved and bought myself a new camera with the help of some gift cards I was hoarding since Christmas.  It's a Canon PowerShot SX50 HS and I love it.  I think you can tell the difference in clarity right here in this one post between all the swatch pics of We'll Always Have Paris Suede, which were taken with my 9 year old Sony, and the pictures of the spun sugar mani, which were all taken with the new Canon.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #9: Fresh Cut Lawns

Sunday afternoon, I took off Hatched and I knew I had to get working on Fresh Cut Lawns for the ASBMF Challenge.  If I didn't at least start it, I knew that I would just end up putting it off for the entire week.  Having no real idea what I wanted to do, I decided to pick out a green polish to paint my nails with and then hope and pray for inspiration.  It finally came when I decided to make my Fresh Cut Lawns manicure more abstract themed and try my hand at a newer technique that I've been drooling over for a while now, the Spun Sugar manicure.

I don't know if that's the accepted name for this technique but I've seen it used as the name a few times and it seems like the catchiest name out of all the one's I've heard.  I can't remember exactly where I first saw this, but it may have been from an entry by The Nail Buff on Chalkboard Nails' dotting contest back in February.  Also, she links to this video on YouTube, which I remember watching back when I first saw this technique online.  There's also a pretty good tutorial video here where it is referred to as "Sugar Spun" nails, rather than Spun Sugar.  I started by testing it out on just my thumb, using an orange stick and three different greens.  And it was a good thing I tested it on just one nail first because I totally overdid it on my thumb!  I applied way too many strings of polish.  You couldn't even see the base color anymore and it was just a lumpy mess.  Adding top coat made it even worse!  That really helped me though to get an idea of how to limit the number of lines to use and the rest of my nails came out great, as well as my thumb which I had cleaned off and repainted.  And even when I got a small blob on my ring finger when I bonked the orange stick off my nail, I didn't mind how that mistake ended up looking.

My base color was OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow Suede.  And let me just say, I love the OPI Suede Collection polishes!  They're matte polishes, but like the name implies, with more of a suede look to them rather than a pure flat, matte finish.  They are really great left matte/suede, but when you add top coat...WOW!

I managed to top coat my nails before thinking about taking a picture of the original matte finish.  I actually wasn't planning on taking a picture of this color by itself at all, but once I added the top coat, I couldn't resist snapping at least one shot.  I used to think it was odd to add top coat to a matte polish.  If you're specifically buying a matte nail polish, why un-matte it?  (Is that an actual word?)  But then I realized it just gives you another option for how to wear that polish.  And adding top coat affects the look of a matte polish in a completely different way than it does when applied to a regular polish, especially with the OPI Suedes.  They are absolutely my favorite matte polishes ever.  They have such depth and they have more of a gritty look to them.  But gritty in a completely awesome way.  Adding top coat just makes that gritty appearance sparkle in a "jump up and smack you in the face with all its sparkly glory" kind of way.  Actually, I didn't start the Spun Sugar part of this manicure until the next day after work.  So I had worn Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow Suede with just top coat all day on Monday and got a lot of compliments on it.  For the design, the colors I used for my "grass" were (in the order I applied them) China Glaze Tree Hugger, OPI Don't Mess With OPI and OPI Did It On 'Em.

This technique definitely takes some patience, but it's so worth it.  Clean up really wasn't all that bad either.  I considered taping off my nails, but I was worried that the tape might tug on the strings of polish and mess up the edges when I tried to take the tape off.  So I just used a small brush and acetone to clean up the sides of my fingers after I applied each color.  There really wasn't that much polish around my nails to remove, but next time I might try putting some Vaseline or chap stick on my skin first just to see if that makes any difference.

After letting the polish strings dry and set up a bit, I added two coats of Seche Vite top coat.  I can just barely feel a little texture on my nails from the polish strings.  So even with two coats of Seche Vite, it's not perfectly smooth, but it's close enough that I don't feel like I need a third coat.  I know this is my lawn manicure, but every time I look down at my nails it makes me think of the Green Bay Packers!  And dare I say, Zubaz!!!

Talk about a flashback!  Oh and here's a close-up of my index finger from my cell phone, so you can see all the stringy-ness!

Be sure to check out some of the other ladies who participated in this challenge!

Hannah from Polished Prisms
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Heidi from DIY Polish & More
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish
Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails
Tess from Football and Fingernails
Karine from Karinea0a
Victoria from Manicurator
Sharon from What Color is My Coat?
Ashley from One Nail To Another
Dani from Rustic Comfort
Sue from Creative Nail Design by Sue
Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss
Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind
April from Munia's Nails
Sharra from The Blahg
Jess from Nearly Natural Nails
CR from Color Me Silly
T from Mami Blogs
Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #8: Matte Magic

Yay, I finally did a manicure for the Matte Magic part of the challenge that I don't hate!  It's not that I don't like matte finishes, cause I do like them.  I've rocked a matte manicure before, I just could not for the life of me put anything together for this challenge that I liked enough to post, until now.  I think maybe I was trying too hard, over thinking it instead of keeping it simple.  I just got Barielle Elle's Spell yesterday in the mail, which I managed to snag off of Enamel Girl's blog sale.  So today while I was staring at the bottle (again) I decided to try flakie tips with Elle's Spell over black and then add matte top coat.  Flakies + Matte = Joy

My nails are a little shorter now, I trimmed them back before my last mani with KBShimmer Berry Patch, so it was a good time for the black polish.  Not that long nails have ever stopped me from using super dark colors in the past, but I do sometimes agree that darker colors can look better on shorter nails.  I just don't necessarily stick to that rule all the time.

This manicure started with one coat of Finger Paints Black Expressionism.  This is an awesome black!  Great coverage in one coat.  I bought this back when Finger Paints put out their Special Effects collection.  Black Expressionism wasn't a new shade but they were marketing it with the flakie polishes to use as the base color.  I had heard it was a good black polish, so I grabbed a bottle to try.  I liked it so much, I ended up going back and getting a second bottle later when Finger Paints were on sale.  Once the black base coat dried, I dabbed on Elle's Spell on the tips in a slight curve, rather than straight across my nails.  I went over the flakes two more times and then added a coat of Seche Vite.  I was going to skip the Seche Vite and go straight to Essie Matte About You as the only top coat used, but when I did that to the first nail, it ended up not being completely smooth.  So I decided to add the Seche Vite first, then matte the whole thing.

A quick peek at the challenges yet to check off my list (I need to get my rear in gear!) and a reminder to check out the other fabulous ladies participating in the ASBMF Challenge.

Hannah from Polished Prisms

Amanda from Mandy's Polish

Heidi from DIY Polish & More

Katee from A Girl and Her Polish

Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails

Tess from Football and Fingernails

Karine from Karinea0a

Victoria from Manicurator

Sharon from What Color is My Coat?

Ashley from One Nail To Another

Dani from Rustic Comfort

Sue from Creative Nail Design by Sue

Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss

Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind

April from Munia's Nails

Sharra from The Blahg

Jess from Nearly Natural Nails

CR from Color Me Silly

T from Mami Blogs

Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Glitter Sammy Mattified

Just a quick post before I head to bed.  Last week, I wore the the OPI Big Hair...Big Nails glitter sandwich from the challenge for a few days but then I started to get bored with it.  I still didn't have any new ideas for the next part of the challenge, April Showers, and I wasn't in the mood after work for removing all that glitter, so the next best thing was to slap some Essie Matte About You on top of it.  I really liked the way it looked with the matte top coat added.  I never used to be into matte polishes but, especially with glitters, I'm really starting to love experimenting with matte finishes.

I have a small haul post I'm working on and some swatches of one of the polishes from my most recent nail mail, so I hope to have those two posts up within the next day or so.  And if the weather decides to cooperate tomorrow, I'll be able to take some pictures of my April Showers mani that I finally got around to doing today.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #1: Spring Pastels

Yes, I entered my first challenge.  I can't believe it either.  I see people doing different challenges online all the time and it's like boom, boom, boom...they just keep spitting out new designs every couple days.  I don't know how they do it all, I think I'd give up after like day 3!  But then Hannah from Polished Prisms suggested a more laid back challenge on Facebook and she came up with this Spring "April Showers Bring May Flowers" Challenge.  We don't have set dates.  Everyone can do it at their own pace, according to what meets their schedule, which is perfect for me since I usually only change my nails once a week, maybe twice.  A few people are already on ladybugs, but that's the whole point...you do it when you can.  I just need to remind myself not to panic when I start to see more people getting days ahead of me, lol.  If you're interested in joining the challenge yourself, Hannah set up a group on Facebook, April Showers Bring May Flowers Challenge.  You don't have to have a blog, you can join the Facebook group and post your challenge pictures there instead.

So I was planning to start this a few days ago, but for some reason I really hit a brick wall trying to decide what to do.  Since Easter is this weekend, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone and pastels work great for Easter anyway.  I did have this elaborate idea for small Easter eggs all over my nails, which I actually attempted.  The end result though just reminded me that I need to invest in a small kit of acrylic paints for more intricate designs like that.  It actually was not completely hideous, lol, but because the nail polish is not as opaque as acrylic paint, I really had to layer the nail polish on to get the designs to show and that just made the whole thing a lumpy mess!  Off it came and on went plain polish just to get me through the next two days at work.  Last night I came home and grabbed a bunch of pastels ready to tackle the challenge.  I started with 3 coats of Orly Lemonade, hoping for inspiration.  I was planning to do a patchwork scotch tape design with Lemonade and two other Orly colors, Prelude To a Kiss and Jealous, Much? but then the idea of a water marble popped into my head and that somehow led to the idea of doing a splatter manicure instead.

I've never done a splatter mani before, but I've seen them online and I absolutely love them.  A splatter manicure is basically dipping a drinking straw in some polish and then blowing air into the straw with strong, quick puffs to make the polish splatter over your nails.  You repeat that with different colors to get a messy, but very cool effect.  I think mine was a success and a disaster all at the same time.  In the end, it was a success but along the way I definitely had some disaster moments and this is a technique that takes both practice and luck.  Since I was doing a splatter, I also decided to add another color, OPI Rumple's Wiggin', which is pastel purple.  The picture above is of the final manicure, which includes a coat of Essie Matte About You.  I decided to make it matte before even thinking to take a picture of it still glossy, d'oh!  So here is a picture of my right hand, which I don't usually photograph since I'm right handed and taking pictures with my left hand is a royal pain in the rear.  But I wanted to show how it looked with just plain top coat, so I snapped a pic of my right hand, before adding the matte top coat to finish it off.

If you've never done a splatter manicure and are interested, there is a good tutorial from The PolishAholic's blog that you can read and I would also suggest checking out the different splatters that Sarah from Chalkboard Nails has done.  If her splatters don't inspire you to try it, then nothing will!  Here's a link that will take you to a list of all her blog posts tagged with the splatter label, http://www.chalkboardnails.com/search/label/splatter.

A few things that I learned while doing this for the first time: practice and experiment!  There are various methods to do this and you might find one way works better for you than it does for someone else.  It definitely helps to hold the straw a few inches away from your nails.  Too close and you might get big blogs of polish that just flood your entire nail.  It also takes some practice to figure out exactly where to hold the straw.  I can't tell you how many times I tried it and the polish splattered in a circle around my nail without any of it actually hitting my nail!  I held my nails over a paper plate, which was resting on a big piece of cardboard.  I wasn't sure how far the polish would splatter, but it didn't go any farther than the edges of the plate.  It all will depend on how far away from your nails you hold the straw.  Just be sure to cover and protect the surface you are working so you don't get polish all over the place.  Here's a shot of how my paper plate looked after I was done with all 10 nails.

Even though it can be pretty messy, I definitely plan to try this technique again with different colors.  The edges between the splatters of color seemed to be more defined before I added top coat.  The next time I do this, I'm going to try to be more patient with drying time before adding top coat, to see if that will cause the end result to have some more sharp edges between colors.  But for a pastel splatter, I do like the way the colors kind of melted into each other.

***Edit*** April 8th 11:41pm: I had to come back and add a picture of my thumbs, especially my left thumb.  Even though my thumbs ended up having the least amount of splatter on them, I think I like them the most.  I don't know if it's that Orly Lemonade is just that pretty or if it's the subtle splatter versus the bigger blobs on all my other fingers, but I have been just constantly staring at my left thumb all weekend with this manicure.

Connect The Dots

Connect the dots, la la la la...connect the dots, la la la la...  Seriously, am I the only one who hears Pee Wee Herman singing that every time they think about Lynnderella's Connect The Dots???  I used to love Pee Wee's Playhouse.  Ok, moving on...ha ha ha.

Friday was my birthday, so I had decided Thursday night that my Spring mani was coming off and I was going to do something new for my b-day.  I considered doing a glitter sandwich using Deborah Lippmann's Happy Birthday...oh so corny, I know!  But I resisted that urge and decided that I wanted to use Connect The Dots instead.  I had received it about 2 weeks earlier but had yet to use it.  I was completely dying to wear it but hadn't yet due to St. Patrick's Day and also the Spring Stamping contest I entered on Enamel Girl's blog.  I wore CTD over Zoya Lolly.  This is the same pink I used in my swatches of CTD back when I posted about my Lynnderella order.  But I liked the way it looked so much on the nail wheel, that I decided to use it as the base color on my nails as well, rather than picking out something else.  This was one coat of Connect The Dots over three coats of Zoya Lolly and then a coat of Seche Vite top coat.

Zoya Lolly ends up looking darker than the bottle color once you add top coat.  If you leave it matte, it does more or less look just like the bottle color.  Even with the Zoya matte polishes coming in the frosted glass bottles, it's a pretty close match to the bottle color without top coat.

I've read on some blogs that a few people had trouble applying Connect The Dots and getting the glitter to distribute evenly.  With the first brush stroke, I did seem to get mostly clear polish and just the small micro glitter.  But what seemed to work well for me was that I would wait a second or two after the first brush stroke and that made the polish just a bit tacky.  When I went in with the second brush stroke, that helped make the bigger glitter stick.  I also would try to lay the brush as flat as possible during the brush stroke and that seemed to make all the black and white glitter transfer from the brush to the nail in one big blob of glitter glory.  Then with one or two more regular brush strokes, the glitter would spread out perfectly.  Hopefully that's not totally confusing.  It's hard to put into words exactly what I mean.

I love this polish!  It's as great as I imagined it would be when I first saw it online and I'm glad I bought two bottles.  I'm a little sad to be taking it off but I've got something equally awesome coming up.