Jindie Nails Olive You with Vivid Lacquer Stamping

I have a swatch with a lil stamping today for y'all! Olive You is a beautiful silvery sage-y olive green linear holo with metallic green/gold glitter. This is one of those polishes I waited way too long to get. Even though this came out for Fall I love it for Spring, too. This is a must-have shade for any green lover. Conversely if you want to get your feet wet with greens this is a nice way to do it since it's such a light shade with the silver feel to it. The duochrome glitter really makes this special and unique!

Jindie Nails
Olive You

Jindie Nails
Olive You

 Olive You was begging for some white vine-y stamping--can you tell I am dying for Spring? I used an image from Vivid Lacquer VL19 stamped with Konad Special White. I have yet to find a better stamping white and I already need another bottle. I like to place my stamp patterns randomly because I know I would drive myself bonkers trying to get all the nails perfectly centered. Contrary to popular belief nails should be fun, not anxiety-provoking.

Jindie Nails Olive You
With Vivid Lacquer VL19

Something about these nails makes me think about The Sound Of Music, you kno when she makes the curtains for all the kids, no? The version with Julie Andrews (and really, is there any other version worth watching?) used to be a favorite sick-day movie of mine :-)

Products:
Jindie Nails
Vivid Lacquer

Have you loved your cuticles today?

Jindie Nails Love Conquers All

I am not ready to give up Valentine's manis. I figure if it's February it's time for pink, red, and hearts! I have a really interesting Valentine's polish today from Jindie Nails called Love Conquers All. It is limited edition... and I mean come on, can I really not buy an LE? It made an appearance last year and it back for another run--I love second chance LEs!

Love Conquers All is a white crelly base with all sorts of satin and matte glitter goodness. And also: hearts! I went a little nuts placing the hearts on my left hand because I wanted to be able to show you all the different colors in here. I see lavender, sky blue, blue-toned red, orange-leaning red, light pink, salmon, black, and white. I love how unexpected and yet perfect for the holiday it is.

Jindie Nails Love Conquers All
Stamp: Vivid Lacquer 001

I decided to pull the blue out of the glitters for my accent nail and used OPI What's With The Cat-itude? The image is from Vivid Lacquer 001 stamped with Konad Special White. I only redid this accent 3 times hahaha! I topped the accent with HK Girl.

Jindie Nails Love Conquers All
Stamp: Vivid Lacquer 001

I used my patented (ok not technically) method of applying crellies by using a thin basecoat (Essie Marshmallow) and very thin coats of the crelly over that.  I made sure to dab a few hearts in between each thin coat for varying coverage. There are a ton of hearts available and fishing for all the colors was super easy. For my other hand I only did two to three hearts per nail. For the longest time I was using a white creme for a base but it really takes away from the crelly appearance. I like the look with the sheer white much better. I topped Love Conquers All off with two thick coats of KBShimmer Clearly On Top.

There are still a few Love Conquers All left in stock, grab yours now!

Products:
Jindie Nails

 Have you loved your cuticles today?

It Starts: Valentine's Day Mani with Love, Angeline & Vivid Lacquer

It's time for Valentine's Day manis! I love enjoying pinks when the doldrums of winter start to set in--where I'm from it's been known to snow in April. My husband and I never really celebrate this holiday. First of all, we are usually working. Cats would eat our flowers, at the very least knock them over and make a mess. We used to do cards but I've banned those this year because they are just way too freakin' expensive. Would it be wrong to order in and watch Shameless? Clearly I am not the romantic one in this relationship teehee.

So here's what I wore today!

Love, Angeline Ta-da!
Butter London Trout Pout accent with image from Vivid Lacquer 009

White Base: Cult Nails Tempest
White Crelly: Love, Angeline Ta-da!
Accent Nail: Butter London Trout Pout with image from Vivid Lacquer VL 009 stamped with Konad Special White

Love, Angeline is a new-to-me indie, and I might be in love. Ta-da! is a perfect white crelly with pink and gray glitters in a variety of size, shapes, and finishes. I did a little fishing and dabbing, which I figured I would need to do so I used a base of one coat Cult Nails Tempest (a great one-coater white for undies). I topped it off with two thick coats of KBShimmer Clearly On Top for a glassy smooth finish. I have one other Love, Angeline polish to try right now but I'm sure it won't be my last!

You already know how much I love Vivid Lacquer. When stamping a fine line image like this I paint the whole image with the polish to make sure it's all filled in.

Selected Products:
Love, Angeline
Vivid Lacquer

Have you loved your cuticles today?

Happy New Year! One Last Christmas Mani

I just had to share this last Christmas mani I did. One side of my family gets together after Christmas to celebrate the holiday, this is what I wore this past Sunday. This was done and dry in one hour, not bad! Read on to see my fool-proof formula for skittle manis.

Pinky: OPI Solitaire with one coat topcoat
Ring, Middle, & Thumb: Essie Going Incognito (base color) and I Love Nail Polish Something About Merry
Index: Essie Going Incognito (base color), stamped with Nailz Craze NC 03 (I can't quit the sweater stamp!) and Konad Special White

Christmas Skittles featuring OPI Solitaire, Essie Going Incognito,
I Love Nail Polish Something About Merry, Nailz Craze

ILNP Something About Merry is pretty much my perfect Christmas glitter, I think it's the white satin glitters that do it for me. I like to be inspired by the colors in a glitter for a skittle mani. I knew Something About Merry would be perfect over Going Incognito (have I mentioned you need to own this yet?). Then I took the basic color of the glitter, white, to stamp and use for my texture/glitter pinky.

This formula works really well for me:
(1.) Use your base color on all nails then glitter two or three of them.
(2.) Choose a basic color from the glitter or a complementary basic color to do a glitter pinky and
(3.) stamp one or to accent nails. Basic colors are black, white, silver, gold, and even browns and bronzes in metallic or creme finishes. Texture polishes are my preferred type of pinky accent ;-)

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday!

Products:
ILNP
Nailz Craze

Have you loved your cuticles today? Who is going to take better care of their cuticles this year?

Holo-day Sweater Nails with Liquid Sky Lacquer & Nailz Craze

Hello my lovelies! So I realized today it is practically Christmas and I have not done too many Christmas nails. Must get better at thinking ahead.... Anyway, no matter how overdone they are, I love a good Christmas sweater mani. I have worn these for a few days now and they still make me so happy to look at :-)

For my version of this Christmas classic, I used a base of Liquid Sky Lacquer in Sleigh Me. I bought a few holiday holos from LSL and I am very pleased! I used three thin coats and wore just the red holo for a day with a nice thick, shiny topcoat. I find that planning like this makes a nice dry base so I don't get smushing when I stamp. Plus when I inevitably mess up a nail (or two or three) I can swipe off my stamping mishap with a cotton ball without eating into my base color up to two times.

For my stamping I used the sweater pattern on Nailz Craze NC03 and Konad special white stamping polish. Nailz Craze is a really nice indie plate maker, I mean, look how crisp the pattern came out! I have used so much of my expensive Konad, but the white stamping polish is so nice and I don't know of any other good ones--feel free to leave me your recommendation!

Of course I topped this with Glisten & Glow's HK Girl. If you don't own this put it on your Christmas list STAT. I can mess around entirely too much with this topcoat and still not smear my art, love!

As with many of my posts, I want to remind everyone that nail art should be fun, not perfection. I try to plan my art so that it doesn't have to perfectly match on each nail, because, in the words of the infamous Sweet Brown, "Ain't nobody got time for that!" Still working on some tutorials... I am a serious under-estimator of how much time my life takes hehe.

Where to find selected products from this post:
Nailz Craze
Liquid Sky Lacquer
Glisten & Glow

Remember to love your cuticles! You always have time for that.

Picture Polish Majesty--Part Two & Stamping!

I finally crashed early last night and got a full night's sleep for today, yay! I swear my brain still does not want to function so early in the morning though. The woman I'm shadowing is basically having me do her job with supervision (which is totally awesome) but right after I got in at 8am I could not completely compute what she was telling me about a form.

Anyway here is my lovely stamping I did over Majesty! I wore Majesty for THREE days, which is unheard of for me. I really really think I should invest in a back-up bottle--it's that perfect.

To see Part One and swatches of Majesty, go here.

I decided to stamp over Majesty with a pretty floral design from Nailz Craze plate NC 03 (you can see the plate's images here). This was the first time I used a Nailz Craze plate and I was very pleased! The images came out nice and crisp after scraping and transferred beautifully--note that a gift card or credit card is the best scraper you can use.
 

The stamping is definitely... subtle. I really wanted a brown polish but I had no browns that would have stamped. I settled for Konad special white. Must invest in more stamping polishes...

Here is a different angle and lighting so you can see the pattern. It is really very pretty without being too much like grandma's doilies on the couch. I turned the pattern and stamper around a bit to get a different look on each nail. There was no way I would get them to look uniform so I went for randomness.
 

One last shot with adjusted lighting. I used to have this reverence of indies and only wear them in their true state, like it was blasphemy to alter their beauty with art. Obviously I was mistaken! I think the stamping really adds to the polish and I love it.


You can purchase Nailz Craze plates here.
So did you buy Majesty yet? Have you tried Nailz Craze?
Winter skin is thirsty skin, make sure you moisturize!