Stamping Saturday: Mermaid Nails

Purchased By Shelby Lou 

For today's Stamping Saturday I have used a new-to-me indie brand, Baroness X, for my inspiration! This lovely mermaid-y polish is Baroness X Mermaid Madness. This is everything I wanted Deborah Lippmann Mermaid Dream and all the dupes to be.

Shelby Lou Nails
Baroness X - Mermaid Madness
without flash

Mermaid Madness is described as "a turquoise shimmer and glitter nail polish." The shimmery base has gold, teal, navy, and gold metallic and holographic glitters along with metallic turquoise dots. With all the stuff going on in this polish I totally expected goop. But no! Buttery formula, great glitter spread. I did three easy coats for full coverage. It's not even that the formula was good, it was noticeably awesome.

Shelby Lou Nails
Baroness X - Mermaid Madness
with flash

Mermaid Madness is so shiny and sparkly! It was like wearing molten metallic turquoise on my nails. Absolutely magical. 

Shelby Lou Nails
Stamping Saturday
Baroness X -Mermaid Madness
MoYou London Sailor 05 & Rica Blackout
without flash

Of course I had to stamp this puppy with some mermaid-y scales. I used an image from MoYou London Sailor 05 stamped with Rica Blackout. I'm not totally happy with my image placement. I think it makes my nails look stumpy and weird curved downwards at the end. Ah well, I'll try a different placement next time. Sailor 05 is easily one of my favorite and most-used plates.

Shelby Lou Nails
Stamping Saturday
Baroness X -Mermaid Madness
MoYou London Sailor 05 & Rica Blackout
without flash

I wish I could have done Mermaid Madness more justice! Alas, my photography skills are limited. Has anyone else tried Baroness X? I have some of her new neon thermal flakie jellies to show at some point, too!

Featured Products:
Baroness X

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HPB Presents: A Beachin' Hump Day HARE

Purchased By Shelby Lou 

Today's post is pulling double duty as both my link-up with the Hobby Polish Bloggers and my Hump Day HARE post! I feel like all I'm doing are beachy nails lately. Seriously, I have another post coming up which will prove it later this week. On to today's the nails!

Today's mani was to be beach-themed for the Hobby Polish Bloggers. I can't get enough teal and gold lately either, so I went with Hare Polish Cabin Fever Fenzy, a teal jeally filled with all kinds of metallic flakies and shimmer. I stamped it with MoYou London Sailor 05 and Essie Good As Gold. I love the Essie Mirror Metallics for stamping, I highly recommend grabbing them if you love to stamp.

Shelby Lou Nails
Hobby Polish Bloggers Presents: A Beachin' Hump Day HARE
Hare Polish Cabin Fever Fenzy
MoYou London Sailor 05 & Essie Good As Gold
without flash

Shelby Lou Nails
Hobby Polish Bloggers Presents: A Beachin' Hump Day HARE
Hare Polish Cabin Fever Fenzy
MoYou London Sailor 05 & Essie Good As Gold
with flash

Shelby Lou Nails
Hobby Polish Bloggers Presents: A Beachin' Hump Day HARE
Hare Polish Cabin Fever Fenzy
MoYou London Sailor 05 & Essie Good As Gold
with flash

Gah, Cabin Fever Frenzy is so squishy! I used three coats and resisted adding a fourth since I was stamping it anyway. Make sure you check out the other manis from the Hobby Polish Bloggers for our monthly link-up party!

Have you loved your cuticles today?

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Guest Post from @swatchbucket

I have a guest post today from one of my nail buds, Samantha! We met through mutual indie nail loves, and we've been enabling each other ever since. Samantha "microblogs" on instagram (@swatchbucket) and I highly recommend following her lovely nails. You can always count on amazing swatches of jellies, crellies, and holos from this girl. And how does she keep them so durn long?! She must be a witch. Let's see what she has for us today!

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Hello, reader! I am Samantha of @swatchbucket on Instagram, and I am your guest blogger for Shelby today! She and I have been polish buddies for a good while now, and she's been a witness to my microblogging development over the past year. Shelby is such a lovely and encouraging person, and holy crap is she a (fabulously) ruthless enabler! She and I share a lot of polish loves. As a result of this, she has made me more HARE Polish crazed, and she is also to be blamed for my latest polish brand obsession, Renaissance Cosmetics. In exchange, I have tried to get her hooked on WingDust polishes. All three of these brands make absolutely stunning crelly glitter polishes, and since I know that she and I love a good crelly, I have decided to use such along with an accent nail. 

I started this mani off with two coats of Serumn No5 Ho No! and smoothed it out with two coats of KBShimmer Clearly on Top. This grey crelly is absolutely packed with metallic blue, red, yellow, and matte white microglitters and small circle glitters. The formula is lovely and almost completely opaque in one coat. The base also has blue shimmer that can look pink in some lights. The shimmer is much more prevalent in the bottle and on the nail without top coat. If you like textured polishes, I highly recommend not putting a top coat on this polish, because the blue/pink shimmer looks absolutely stunning as a frosty matte finish. With top coat, the shimmer provides a more subtle yet sparkly effect. You don't want Ho No! for the shimmer and glitter mix alone, though. You NEED it because it looks good with the light on AND off! Ho No! is one of Serum No5's many famous glow in the dark polishes. This one glows blue (forgive the poo glow in the dark shot further down). 

Things have to look jank before they look swank.

The glow in the dark effect looked especially really cool with my accent nail. After I did two coats of Ho No!, I topped it with KBShimmer Clearly on Top top coat and let it dry for about 30 minutes just to make sure it would hold up against nail vinyls. I also applied a layer of Ellagee's Lickity Split liquid latex around my nail to make clean up easier. Once the latex was dry, I applied an Up Your Nail Moroccan vinyl guide, snipped it to make it hug and adhere to my nail better (I have really curved nails), and applied a layer of Enchanted Polish December 2014 (blue holo full of blue glass fleck) on the bottom half of the nail and February 2015 (tomato red holo) on the upper half. I then sponged on another layer of the polishes and blended them by using a cosmetic sponge. Once I was satisfied with how it looked, I immediately pulled the vinyl guide off with tweezers and pulled off the liquid latex before topping it off with another layer of KBShimmer Clearly on Top.  

#swankshot

Glow shot! 

I'm so used to microblogging, so this was definitely a different experience for me. Thank you guys for having me! All shots were taken in natural lighting with my Samsung Galaxy S3. I *love* how this mani turned out, and the customers I dealt with at work really loved it too.

Polishes used

KBShimmer Basic Training

Serum No5 Ho No!

Enchanted Polish December 2014

Echanted Polish February 2015

KBShimmer Clearly on Top

Products used

Ellagee Lickity Split liquid latex

Up Your Nail Moroccan vinyl guides

cosmetic sponge

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Thank you so much got such an awesome post, Samantha! Didn't she do great? Make sure you check out @swatchbucket on instagram, I know you'll like what you see and give her a follow!

Have you loved your cuticles today?