#Stamping Saturday - Festive Nails

Hello! It's definitely been a while since I've made a post - busy holiday season, and IG takes less work to get a picture up, so please follow me there as I post more frequently! (Social media buttons on the left side) This mani is actually from last Saturday, we had our Christmas photo shoot and I asked out photographer to snap a couple pics! So this post will be a little more personal as I thought it'd be fun to include a few extra pics :)

#52WPNMC & #StampingSaturday

Of course with the holidays it's harder to find time to do manicures more often, so gotta combine these challenges and post something!

For 52 Weeks Pick And Mix Challenge the prompts this week were "brush stroke" and/or "favorite brand". I went with brush stroke this time, and it's my first time seriously attempting it. I don't think visible brush strokes on past manis count for the technique, haha.

Stamping: Winter Trees

This mani was a lot of fun to make and with way more polishes than I normally use! The multi-stamp layering is more complex than what I've tried before, and I have a new stamper to play with from the Creative Shop. Overall I'm really pleased with the result, hope you enjoy it as well!

#StampingSaturday + Enchanted Polish

It counts as Stamping Saturday if you started last Saturday and then had to wait for decent weather for photos and then make a post the following Saturday...right? Because that's what happened with these!

#52WPNMC - 3 Shades of Blue

 The two prompts for this week were - domestic animals and 3 shades of blue. I attempted to do 2 in 1, with slight cheating!

#52WPNMC - Week 4; 3 dark colors

I somehow missed last week's prompt, but it's alright, just jump back in whenever I remember about it! This mani was actually inspired by another blogger, Andrea over at Handtastic Intentions. We met up with a few local polish addicts enthusiasts last week to hang out and chitchat and she mentioned she hasn't tried Julep's Valerie yet. And I realized that Valerie came out in the Oct 2013 collection, and I too, have not tried it...oopsie, time to remedy that! So I thought, hey! green and gold roses would look good! The stamping plate is MoYou London Gothic 07 with the roses, bird and cat. And wouldn't you know it, the mani is right on cue for the 3 dark colors prompt in 52 Weeks Pick-n-Mix Challenge.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

Here's the mani I wore today - even got away with it at work! I don't interact with too many people and so far only 1 person noticed my nails, so we'll see if I can sneak in with nail arts more often!
When it came time for the pics, I have to say I'm a bit bummed that they didn't turn out that great...the light reflection and the complex polish layers..gah, it looked much better on my nails! I guess it'll be a while before I get the hang of nail photography well enough to show the polishes as I mean for them to be, so tips are appreciated!

Behind the Scenes - Polish Removal using Julep's "Party's Over Kit"

Putting on that glitter or textured polish is a lot less daunting when you know removal's going to be easy! So which getting ready for my next mani, I had my husband snap pics of what my removal process looks like. Hope someone finds it useful!

Husband's got the caps on his fingers from Julep's "Party's Over Glitter Removal Kit" for a little demo - he doesn't have any polish on!

#StampingSaturday - Silver Roses

Yet another Saturday, and my work mani managed to last without chipping (just minor shrinking from Seche Vite ), so it's time to stamp over it!

For my base I wore Zoya Carter - a pixie dust! I love purple and this has so much sparkle!!

Lime Dandelions

This is a mani for Mental Illness Awareness Week (NAMI) Oct 5-11, which I didn't get around to posting, but here it is!

Halloween Bats!!

Surprisingly this year I'm intrigued and drawn towards Halloween manis. I have maybe 3-4 orange polishes and basically no stamping plates with Halloween imagery.. so, what better excuse do I need to order MoYou London Gothic plates and pick up a new polish? ;)

#52WPNMC - Week 3; Matte

Week 3: I went with the matte prompt. Other choices were 60's and textured. I really wanted to try and do matte blue nails, like ones I pinned so long ago but didn't get the polish name. So I used what I did have on hand.

Julep Marisa topped with NYC Matte Me Crazy 

I stamped the flowers using plate m57 and Konad Special White. It's been a while sine I used this white to stamp and it didn't want to cooperate with me. 

A lot of you might have seen this pic on Pinterest, & it was the inspiration behind my mani. Maybe I'll get a navy blue someday and be able to match this closer :) 

An InLinkz Link-up

#52WPNMC - Pink

For Week 2, the choices were either a 3 color gradient or pink (or both..or any combo of the two) and I tried to incorporate a little of each, but mainly pink!

It's like pink candy corn, lol! 

#StampingSaturday - Black & Silver Floral

So, I don't own a lot of OPI polishes, but more and more variety of colors has been showing up at Marshall's recently (or maybe I just go there more often, lol) so every now and then I'll come home with a new bottle or two (2 packs for $8!) and the most recent is DS Coronation. There are so many prompts and challenges going on in various FB groups that it's hard to narrow down sometimes, and it being October and pink everywhere for breast cancer awareness, I really wanted pink and silver. But looking at my stamping plates to see what catches my eyes, had to go with the tried and true - Konad Black!

The floral design is from PUEEN SE04B plate. 

#52WPNMC - Week 1

I stumbled upon the 52 Week Pick and Mix Challenge late in the week and lucky for me, the first week's prompt was something I actually tried to do already that week! Dual purpose mani :)
The prompt is - gradient and/or teal!

NYC Rule the City & Stamping

NYC has a new limited edition collection called Fashion Queen - and this is one of the Crystal Couture polishes called Rule the City. It's a unique color to my collection but it slightly reminds me of an indie I picked up a while ago that has a similar thing going on - gray and bright glitters of color. Maybe I'll do a mani using each and see if they're anything alike! 

This is my attempt to better show the color under the stamping. And of course it's a better closeup of the tip wear I've got going on, lol. I used Sinful Colors Casablanca for stamping, and one of my new plates from the HeHe collection (which I swatched here). I totally thought I'd use the swirls from plate 015 in a blue ocean-y mani, but here it is, fitting in nicely with this color scheme :)  

Fall Colab Contribution

One of the FB groups I'm in, recently had a fall manicure collaboration and I was glad that I participated, even though I procrastinated till the last minute! But that's how it usually goes for me, lol. I really wanted to try for a "leaves floating on water" look and thanks to the new BM Sun Kissed collection's plate 509, I had the tools for the water effect!!! I even had comments on IG and FB about the water - which means I successfully transferred my idea onto my nails! Woohoo!! And BM 004 for the maple leaves of course :) 

September is Stamping Month! Day 15 - Clouds/Rain

I've been waiting to do this design! I was inspired by mypolishstash 's mani on instagram and have been eagerly waiting for my chance to re-create it :)

September is Stamping! Day 14 - Leaves

Here we are with day 14! I totally missed all of the ones I was looking forward to the most (dragon & fish) but I'm still around :)

I started a new job last week...but it's more like a transfer, so still the same strict polish rules and it just discourages me from doing nail art during the week :(

New Stamping Plates: HeHe & Qgirl

I'm very excited to be adding these plates to my collection, they're so cute! And the packaging is adorable!

I ordered these through a group buy, so I don't have the whole sets for these, but only the plates I really wanted.

September Stamping: Day 2 - Lace

Day 2 - Lace
I'm still around for day 2, this time with more neutral and subdued colors!

I used Julep Lorenzana as my base, and topped it with Liquid Sky Lacquer Holo Top Coat, and I gotta say it looked pretty awesome - office appropriate holo!!

Polishes and Plates in use:

Also (not pictured), MdU #2 Black for the stamping

PUEEN 27

The stamping continues!

See what others participants did :)

September Stamping: Day 1 - Flowers

I found out about this challenge in AiS group on FB and would like to attempt it as best as I can for the month of September :)  Details and info can be seen here, and a list of participants over here.
I know I won't be able to do all 30 days, as I'm leaving for vacation soon, and then there's my work restrictions on no nail art..but I'll do what I can, and put my plates and polishes to good use :)

Day 1- Flowers
This look was inspired by nail wraps I saw while out shopping this weekend. I often see pretty designs on them but always think "I bet I can do the same look with stamping"....and then never actually attempt it, lol. This time the inspiration and the prompt were just days apart and I had to try it.

Extra Toppings: Holo Top Coat!

I've ordered my first holo topper as soon as I realized how pretty holo polishes are - and let it sit there without use for too long....my fingers are always wearing something else and I forget to holo them, lol
So for this look I used the following polishes:

ULTA -Envy, Liquid Sky Lacquer - Holo Top Coat, Bonita - You Mint a Lot to Me

I've had Envy for years, and last week I used up pretty much my whole bottle on craft project (another dragon egg) and had to repurchase to make sure I had enough. And as you can see from the orange sticker, it's on clearance because it's being discontinued! At least I got a second bottle white there was still some left in the bins.
The Bonita polish is new in my collection - I'm moving over from purples to minty greens and picked this one up at Rite Aid.

I wore You Mint a Lot to Me for a few days with the holo topper before stamping over it. Whatever base & top coat I used this time around made the polish wear pretty well, so before taking it off I wanted to stamp over it, the green was just pulling me to use it...

Stamping done with Envy and MoYou London plate Sailor 04.
I've been meaning to try a summery/beach mani, and I think this design is actually fitting - there's more in the sea than just colorful fish, the plant life is pretty as well!

I really need to work more on my clean up and photography...close ups make me cringe, but this is all I got for now.

Stamping: Grey & Aqua

It's definitely been a while since I've made a blog post...work has really been putting a damper on any nail art :(  But I've been trying to post on IG a little bit more, username is koikitty if anyone would like to follow :)

So here's what I managed to put on my nails, in anticipation of #StampingSaturday but then I didn't see a linkup from The Fancy Side! :O

Base: Julep Braiden, stamping with MdU #24 (Aqua), PUEEN plate 32

#StampingSaturday: Pink and Green

My Saturdays seem to blur into Sundays! But that's ok.. there's still 5 days to add a post to the linkup ;)

With the recent Sinful Colors sale at Walgreens, I was surprised I only picked up 3 bottles - and one of them was a clear coat! My husband even offered to buy 3 more for me, but nothing drew my eye :o *shock* And after seeing how the new Color Foil polishes stamped, I couldn't wait to get a bottle for myself. Initially when I saw the whole collection and knew they stamped - I looked guiltily at my husband and said "I think I might need to buy them all.." Haha, thankfully when I found them in stores, there was only one I still wanted and purchased.

Sally Hansen Color Foil Titanium Flush, and Sinful Colors Peppered Amazon, stamping plate W202 from my AliExpress plates

Color Foil states that it works best with no base nor top coat, and I was afraid that it would smear if I applied one, so the pics are sans topcoat. I used my Konad stamper, as I heard these polishes don't like squishy stampers, and this dried super fast! You can see some uplifted bits around the edge of the design, as I'm still hesitating putting Seche Vite on it... But overall, I really liked how this turned out! And ever better, that these are pretty recent colors and I used them right away..not months later ;) 

An InLinkz Link-up

#StampingSaturday

I was still trying to decide on a design to stamp on Saturday when unexpected events happened...didn't get out of bed till noon due to feeling ill, and then going out with friends and missing all the daylight for photos, haha. But at least I was being social!

Stamping plate MoYou London Pro 4, I swear this design looked better in my head...maybe because my nails are always nubs so the design doesn't have enough space to look as beautiful as it was intended =/

At least I was pleasantly surprised that Sally Hansen Pedal to the Metal stamped enough to be seen :) And I've been planning to use China Glaze Rendezvous with You again <3

An InLinkz Link-up

Julep June 2014: Swatches + Free polish coupon

This month I picked the Bombshell box, and added on a few extra colors - for which I got 2 freebie polishes (Veronica and Marjorie).

#HePicksMyPolish, for the first time...

I'm excited to be joining #HePicksMyPolish this week and taking on the challenge! This isn't the first time I've asked him to help me pick out polish or designs, but usually he responds with "whatever you like" and I'm back to trying to get inspired to do something myself. This time it's official - and he knew it!

"He" is my husband, Sam. And he was really sweet about the challenge. He was heading out to work for an evening shift just as I got home from work, and I told him I was really anxious about work on Friday and stressed out thinking about what I will have to be doing. So he set down his things and went to my polish rack and started picking things our - as I heard the bottles clanking I kept reminding him that it's just 2-3 polishes, not a dozen! He came back downstairs and handed me my polishes, and said I should spend the evening on the challenge to take my mind off work, and to make something elegant. I don't think I got the elegant part, but we both think it's cute :)

Here are my materials:

Julep Kai - baby blue sea salt

Julep Mackenzie - sour apple green frost

Sinful Colors - Black on Black

I've actually never used these Julep colors, which is great because now I had to actually try them. On the other hand, I purchased them because I liked them, but they didn't scream at me "use me now!!" which is why I haven't done anything with them - I didn't have a design  in mind with green and blue. And now he's challenged me to it. I went for my stamping plates right away, and after looking through half of them, I picked MM19.
And this is what I made of it.

Verdict: I think he picked good :)

May 25-31, have him pick your polish!

An InLinkz Link-up

Mint Meadows

As I was doing my review of new Aurora Lacquers polishes, Mint Meadows inspired me to do just that- a meadow stamping design!

Vivid Lacquer plate 019, and SC Black on Black. Base color can be seen here. 

Aurora Lacquers: Swatches!

I would say that I'm relatively new to discover the indie polishes, but when I found out that a new one was being created - Aurora Lacquers, I was very excited. I think it's an awesome opportunity to watch a brand be born and expand their collections and create new polishes right before your eyes. So I'm very grateful for being given the opportunity to try their beautiful polishes! These 4 were sent to me for review. 

New polish + new plates: Freaky like Freud & W208

I picked up a new polish at Sephora and could not wait to try it out! So many of my recent additions were justified with "It's my birthday..and I know no one else is going to get this for me." I guess that's the downside of owning a lot of polish, people know what you like but don't know what you have and what to get and end up getting something unrelated, lol