Zoya Loredana and Silver Swirls

My nails have been kind of a mess so far in 2015.  I'm not sure if it was the seesaw weather affecting them...one day it's snowing, the next day it's 60...or what the issues were, but I feel like I've had more breaks and cracks so far this year than ever before.  They seem to finally be making a comeback though.  I'm hoping that with the weather starting to level off, and a little extra TLC, they'll be back to normal shortly.  Luckily, I came across a handful of looks from late last year that I had stored away on my desktop, but for some reason just never got around to posting.  This first manicure started off with 2 coats of Zoya Loredana.  On top of that, I stamped a design from Pueen plate PUEEN13 using China Glaze I'd Melt For You.

I didn't really buy many Christmas themed polishes this past winter, but I wanted to get my hands on I'd Melt For You, from the China Glaze Twinkle Collection 2014, specifically to use it for stamping.  Swatches I'd seen of it online reminded me a bit of China Glaze Millennium.  And Millennium, as well as most of China Glaze's chrome-like polishes, always stamps really well.

I'd Melt For You did not disappoint either.  I'm not sure, if worn as a full coverage mani, that I'd Melt For You would have the same mirror like look as Millennium does, but it worked great for stamping.  I need to do a side by side comparison of I'd Melt For You and Millennium to see if I like one more than the other.  Zoya Loredana is a matte finish polish, but I did top this look off with one coat of top coat to protect the stamping.  I think Loredana looks just as great top coated as it does when left as a matte finish.

Liquid Lacquer Pink Elephant

Alright, so here we are with the 4th and final Liquid Lacquer polish from the blogger package.  This glitter topper is called Pink Elephant.  I have two combos to show.  These swatches have been sitting on my laptop for a while.  I wore a few other polishes in between and I also had a few breaks, hence the longer silver nails and shorter blue ones.  I went back and forth on whether to re-swatch these because of that, but finally decided just to go for it as is because I've put off this post long enough, over thinking it.  And I don't think any of you will mind.  First up is one coat of Pink Elephant over Zoya Trixie.

Pink Elephant is a clear base with different sized hexes and squares in neon pink, black, white and grey.  It does remind me a bit of DIFFERENTdimension Another Brick in the Wall, which I reviewed last month.  Pink Elephant does not have any holographic micro glitter, which I think I prefer that it doesn't.  And I love, absolutely love the grey matte glitter in Pink Elephant.  Both are great glitter toppers but I think I would give a slight edge to Pink Elephant just based on my personal preferences.

I have to say, I'm a little bummed about the way this photographed.  I tried a few times but I could not capture how cool Pink Elephant truly looked over Trixie.  The grey matte glitter especially looked really great against the metallic silver background.  The second combo I have to show you is one coat of Pink Elephant over OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui.  I loved this glitter over a cream base as well.

Check out Pink Elephant and a ton of other great polishes on the Liquid Lacquer shop page.

Christmas Tree Wrapping Paper

Last weekend was the annual Christmas party held by the owners of the company I work for and I wanted to do something new on my nails for the party.  I decided to try out the little abstract Christmas tree design on the newest Bundle Monster set.  It is from plate BM-321.  I was actually planning to use the Christmas tree stamp along with a few other Christmas themed stamps like the gift box and the ornament but I didn't like the way that they were stamping so I decided to just stick with the trees.  I was afraid that the trees would be too plain completely by themselves, so I came across a swirly type design on Bundle Monster plate BM-224 and stamped it a couple times on each nail as a background to the trees.  The final result ended up reminding me of something you might see on Christmas wrapping paper.

For my base color, I used Orly Dazzle.  I stamped the swirl design with Konad Special Polish in white.  Then using Konad green for the tree and Konad red for the tree base, I stamped about four trees randomly on top of the swirls on each nail.

I really like Orly Dazzle as a base for stamping.  I've used it before and I love the way the stamped designs look over the silver background.

I'll probably do at least one or maybe two more Christmas type manicures before the holiday, but I don't know if I'll have time to actually post them until after Christmas.  So if I don't get a chance before Tuesday, here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!