Stamping Saturday: Chromatic Candy Clouds

Purchased By Shelby Lou 

I hope all the Americans had a great Thanksgiving! I will be celebrating today with my parents and my husband. On Thanksgiving I went to my in-laws but my husband worked, boo. I'm still a little bitter. I had a lovely visit with my MIL though, I really lucked out with her!

Today I'm doing that mean thing where I show you polish you probably won't be able to get. I lemmed this so hard and was ecstatic when it was offered once again: Pahlish Chromatic Candy Crunch. CCC was a Bespoke Batch that Shannon, the creator of Pahlish, offered for a second round via pre-order by popular demand. CCC is a metallic silvery lavender metallic holo with all kinds of brightly colored flakies. Gah! I just have no words. Here is the polish alone with flash to show off the holo. I used three thin coats and did add just a lil thinner, as I tend to do.

Pahlish Bespoke Batch
Chromatic Candy Crunch

Isn't that lil ghost adorable? So seasonally inappropriate at this point but who cares, the polish is amazing! I will be trying this over some different colors, I'm sure it would be stunning over black. After wearing this for a day I chose to stamp CCC with one of my favorite images from Nailz Craze NC02 and Rica Whiteout.

Pahlish Bespoke Batch
Chromatic Candy Crunch
Stamped with Nailz Craze NC02 & Rica Whiteout

I always tell myself I should freehand something or use vinyls... but stamping is just so damn quick and satisfying. I'm enjoying Stamping Saturdays, let me know what you think!

Products: 
Pahlish
Nailz Craze
Just Ricarda

Have you loved your cuticles today?

Zoya for Summer 2014: Bubbly Collection

***Products provided for honest review***

This is a picture-heavy post so I'll get right to it. I have a highly-anticipated collection from Zoya for the summer today, Bubbly! All of these six polishes have a "liquid-metal holographic jelly formula" exclusive to Zoya. The effect of these on my nails was mind-blowing, so sparkly and bright. Swatch time!

Zoya Alma
Bright yellow-orange holographic metallic jelly with golden shimmer

Zoya Jesy
Bright red-orange holographic metallic jelly with golden shimmer

All of these polishes applied like a dream. They go on like a jelly and have some of that squishi-ness yet are also metallic. The only clean-up I did was with an orange stick as I was polishing. I'm glad they applied well because I could foresee how cleaning up cuticles would cause some major sparkle herpes. I suggest painting carefully as well and using the foil removal method in order to contain the awesome to your nails only.

Zoya Harper
Bright pink holographic metallic jelly with golden shimmer
This one really needed a unicorn (from Nailz Craze plate 02)

Zoya Binx
Bright orchid holographic metallic jelly with golden shimmer

For all of the swatches I did three coats. I did four thinner coats on one, Jesy, but I found no difference in opacity or application. I also did not use any TC for these swatches as they were already so shiny! Make sure you use it when you wear them though to make the color last though. When I wear Zoyas I also use their Color Lock System. For me it makes my Zoya color last longer and they play nicer together than my other BCs and TCs do with Zoya.

Zoya Muse
Bright blue holographic metallic jelly with golden shimmer

Zoya Staasi
Bright pink holographic metallic jelly with golden shimmer

I can't decide which is my favorite, they are all so stunning. Well-done, Zoya!
I will have the creme half of the Summer collection, Tickled, coming up soon. And of course some nail arts.
Edited to add: You can see swatches of the Tickled Collection here.

Products:
Zoya Bubbly

Have you loved your cuticles today?

Dollish Polish Poor Unfortunate Souls Skittle

I haven't been able to wear as many skittles as I used to since I changed jobs. I have found I don't need strictly traditional work-appropriate polish, but I think the skittle mani might concern patients haha! Here is one I did for a weekend. Poor Unfortunate Souls is one of those polishes I HAD to have, which is hilarious because it took me forever to finally wear it.

Pinky: China Glaze Bump In The Night
Ring & Middle (& Thumb, not shown): Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure I Lilac You, Dollish Polish Poor Unfortunate Souls
Index: Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure I Lilac You, stamped with Nailz Craze NC02 & Mentality Scoundrel

Remember how to put together a skittle mani? Pick your undies (I Lilac You) for your glitter (Poor Unfortunate Souls), use a neutral from the glitter for pinky accent (black), then stamp the neutral on the index (black swirls). Show me your skittles on my facebook page!

Selected Products:
Dollish Polish
Nailz Craze

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!

Jindie Nails For Fall 2013: Shimmer Me Timbers & Midnight Rainbow

I've finally got some Jindie Nails to show you! This year Jindie came out with five shades for her "Fall Chic" collection and this line also debuted her new 9ml bottles. The new 9ml bottles are amazing! So easy to use and plenty of polish. I had to use a topcoat bottle for the pictures though because I couldn't pose witht he long skinny ones. I've got two of the jellies to show you today, one as a traditional swatch and one as a skittlette inspired by the polish. I did these swatches on different days, and the skittlette I felt turned out better on my right hand. Apparently I am ambidextrous when it comes to nail polish.

I want to discuss formula as they were the same for both. Jindie has some glorious glitters, jellies, and crellies which require some extra patience in applying. Shimmer Me Timbers and Midnight Rainbow both have giant circle glitters which require some fishing and dabbing, worth the effort but you might need a little practice.

Jindie Nails - Shimmer Me Timbers

2 coats basecoat--major stainer, double up on base and paint carefully!

3 coats Shimmer Me Timbers

2 coats KBShimmer Clearly On Top

Shimmer Me Timbers is an emerald green jelly with all sorts of glitter in gold, green, purple, holographic, squares, circles, hexes, and more! I like this a lot, I love greens. There is some VNL but nothing that bothers me.

Application is tricky, I had to do this swatch twice haha. For this swatch I did a thin first coat with no glitter. Then I did another coat with whatever glitters decided to be on the brush. Lastly I did a third coat by fishing and dabbing.

Oops, forgot the watermark! And a little lobster-y here :-/

Jindie Nails - Midnight Rainbow

Index: China Glaze liquid Leather, Image from Nail Craze NC 02 stamped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Silver Sweep

Middle, Ring, & Thumb: China Glaze Liquid Leather, 2 coats Midnight Rainbow, 2 thick coats KBShimmer Clearly On Top

Pinky: Zoya Dahlia, 1 coat topcoat

Midnight Rainbow is a black jelly with rainbow shimmer and holographic circle glitters. I did a first coat with just the shimmery jelly part then dabbed and fished the big circles onto the nail.

I was initially going to stamp with a color, but I think the silver and black really feature the polish much better.

I will have some more Fall Jindies tomorrow! Did you pick any up yet?
Remember to love your cuticles as much as you love your polish :-)