Stamping with Accent Nail

This weeks FB Adventures in Stamping challenge was stamping with an accent nail.  This is what I came up with.



Started with a base of three coats of Love & Beauty Gunmetal/Multi.



Stamped with black Konad special polish using GA29 with an accent of GA30 using red Konad special polish for the Gals Fairy set.



Added a few random black dots as well as a couple in the centre of the flower on the accent flower.



Topped with SV.



GA 29 and 30 are part of the Gals Fairy set which was part of my last giveaway....speaking of which, a winner was chosen with random.org not to long ago and the name chosen was....




vwolfe!!!




vwolfe was emailed, responded and replied; the Gals Fairy set is on the way to her! 

Edit:  vwolfe has sent an email confirming that her plates were received!!

Gals Fairy and Princess image plate sets can be ordered from Cheeky's website directly, as well as Amazon.  This is the first time that I've used these plates and I had no problems at all; they stamped well  and there were a lot of full size images which I always love to see!


Thanks to the 25 entries received on the post...and a reminder that I'm doing random giveaways for those who follow and happen to see the giveaways mentioned in the posts...this was the second random giveaway since I've been holding them...who knows when the next one will be...but I can say that I do have more plates....and polishes.....already set aside for future giveaways!

Hope you had a great weekend....and thanks for looking!

Elevation Polish Freeway Park

I've been enamoured with Elevation Polish since I first picked up Stay Behind, Catch a Wave a few months ago.  During one of the December restocks, I was able to pick up a few others; this is one of them, Freeway Park.



What you are seeing is one coat....yes, one coat!  In hindsight, I perhaps should have applied two just for coverage on a few areas that didn't cover that well the first time like at the cuticle on the ring finger (my fault, not the polish) but because I knew I'd be stamping over it, I left.  The pix below do not have topcoat.









Here's a bottle pix of Freeway Park.  Feel free to click to enlarge.



I decided to stamp over Freeway Park using newly purchased Pueen plates.  When I was looking through them trying to decide which plate to use, I noticed that there are a whole lot of circles in the bunch, so decided to do a skittle of stamps using them; stamping polish is white Konad special polish.  Image plates used were Pueen02 (index and ring), Pueen04 (thumb), Pueen13 (middle) and Pueen08 (pinky).



The stamping on my index finger wasn't 100% (my fault because it stamped well on the other hand) which I touched up with a brush.  While my poor touch up is noticeable in macro, it wasn't so much IRL and I wore this for a couple of days.  Topped with SV.



A couple of these images reminded me of the funky 70's vibe and I could see myself using them again.....particularly the images on the thumb, ring and middle finger.  I also liked how large of an area that the base polish can be seen in the these fingers.......great for some future layering and stamping! 

Elevation Polish is available via Etsy and Big Cartel; those who already have discovered Elevation Polish like Fingers will already know that she has restocks on the 7th and 22nd of each month. 

Pueen image plates can be bought via eBay and Amazon.  Unfortunately, on eBay where I got my set, international shipping isn't available, I'm not sure if this will be changing or not. (Edit:  I seen that international shipping is now available but shipping is fairly expensive).  My set of image plates came with two 22 plates and was missing 23; however, I contacted the seller who mailed me out a replacement plate. 

Thanks for looking!

Light Over Dark

This weeks FB Adventures in Stamping challenge was light stamping over dark.  Here's what I came up with.



Started with a base coat of New York Summer Hot Purple, three coats, no topcoat.



This is two coats for comparison.  I probably could have left at two coats if I wasn't taking pix as it did have pretty good coverage IRL and the VNL wasn't as obvious.



Topped with a coat of KBShimmer Hex Appeal.



This is Hex Appeal bottle pix.



Stamped with light gray Konad special polish using VL 001.  I chose this image specifically so the glitter from Hex Appeal would be visible underneath.



While I didn't mind the look of this, I decided to add random flowers on top using pink Beautiful Scratchers special polish using XL F; topped with SV.  Even with the additional flowers, you can still see the glitter underneath which was cool!



I got my bottle of KBShimmer from Harlow & Co. as KBShimmer does not offer international shipping of nail polish.

Hope you had a great weekend....thanks for looking!

Digit-al Dozen: Art, Day 5

Day 5 of the art challenge is here and I made it!  I actually did better than I thought I would with the challenges mainly because of my lack of knowledge regarding art so it was a real challenge coming up with some mani's around the theme.  It also expanded my mani horizons if you will....I'm definitely sure I never would have done a Pollock inspired mani otherwise, or even the Warhol one...and I think the Warhol mani was one of the more interesting mani's I've done in a while....anyhoo, here's the mani I came up with for the last day!



Cartoons are art, aren't they?  I've had a note to do a Sponge Bob mani for a while now (I have an ongoing list of mani ideas as I think of them, or while I'm searching through my plate stash, I may get an idea but it's not appropriate to do the mani I'm thinking of doing, like Sponge Bob at Christmas or whatnot, so I keep an ongoing list of mani ideas on my notepad on my iphone for future use in case I'm lacking inspiration some day!).  The challenge, combined with the newly purchased bottle of Hit the Lights moved the mani idea to reality. 

Here's two coats of Nicole by OPI Hit the Lights, part of the Selena Gomez collex.  This is two coats, topped with SV.  I know this isn't an accurate colour for Sponge Bob but I had picked this bright yellow up as I had read out there on the blogesphere that it applied well, was non streaky for a yellow and wanted to try it out for myself.....and I have to agree!  No complaints here!  I'm sure this will be a colour I'll be wearing for many summer mani's!



Added images using Konad black special polish being XXL Big SdP 2 (pinky), 12-56 (thumb), Apipila 03 (index), and QA2 (middle and ring).



Using Konad pastel blue special polish, added a few dots as well as blue irises for Bob.  Also stamped in the flower on the ring finger using another image from QA2.



Added a few more dots using Nicole by OPI Selena, another polish from the Selena Gomez collex. I chose this colour to mimic Patrick's skin tone (hopefully).



Gave Bob some pupils with black Konad special polish.



Topped with SV.



Here's the other ladies posts for Day 5 of the challenge.

Well, I survived the art challenge!  I actually expanded my horizons and learned some interesting facts in the the process as I did a lot of googling of art, did reading on certain topics like Egyptian history, loads about Andy Warhol's life, etc. so the challenge was fairly successful to me personally even if it wasn't translated onto the blog....but to the ladies in the Digit-al Dozen who may be reading this....let's make art a challenge in 2016 next, k? lol!

Have a great weekend and thanks for looking!!!

Digit-al Dozen: Art, Day 4

Day 4...almost there!

Here's the mani I came up with using Andy Warhol's pop art silk screens of Marilyn Monroe as inspiration.



Started with a skittles of colours, all two coats and topped with SV, starting at thumb and going clockwise:  Essie Where's My Chauffeur, Nails Inc. Portobello, Nicole By OPI A Like-Haley Story, Zoya Yummy and Nicole by OPI Love Song.



Stamped using plate Fun 1 using Konad black, red and yellow special polish, as well as Fun stamping polish in Cotton Candy, Bubble Blue, Lavender, and Avocado Green.



Topped with SV.



Here's a couple pix of the stampings in progress.  This is before scraping the middle image.



This is after scraping the pinky image.



This is the pix for my inspiration, to be honest, I'm not sure if it's a Warhol original or not either...but it was one of the coolest pix I seen so used it to go on!

Thanks for looking.....and here's the other ladies mani's from Day 4!

Digit-al Dozen: Art, Day 3

I have to laugh at myself regarding today's post.  It was decided that those who were doing Jackson Pollock inspired mani's would post today.  So I did a bunch of googling last night for inspiration and found a pix that I thought I could come up with.   When I googled Pollock paintings this morning to post and credit the pix, the pix I was basing my mani couldn't be found, but with a little bit more surfing, I found it, only to discover that in fact the painting I was using wasn't a Jackson Pollock original, but a Jackson Pollock 'inspired' painting.  *head thumb*  Too late to change it, so here's my Jackson Pollock inspired mani based on a 'Jackson Pollock inspired' painting.



Started with a base of two coats of OPI Bride's Bouquet, topped with SV (no pix as have shown many times before). Then to do the quasi flinging of paints Pollock style (I knew I'd never be able to tolerate the mess), used a stamp to do something similar!  Stamped using Konad red special polish using MJ II.



Did a second layer of red stamping.



Another layer, using Konad orange stamping polish; repeated a second time.



Added a hot dog to thumb using black Konad special polish using MJ VIII.



Added a layer of lines with Konad yellow special polish; repeated a second time.



Finally, after stamping 31 times in total, did some clean up.



Topped with SV (before doing it, I hand filled in a couple lines on the hot dog where it looked like there was a white dog on it as seen in the first pix ...I have no idea how it escaped getting a few lines but it was sticking out like a sore thumb and I couldn't stand the look of it!)

Here's the pix used as my inspiration, even though its not a Jackson Pollock original.

 Painting/image credit given to Kyle Dreir. 

Here's the mani's from the other ladies....I'm sure they know the difference between a Jackson Pollock original!

So what do you think....was I close....even though it's Pollock inspired and not an original? 

Thanks for looking!

Digit-al Dozen: Art, Day 2

Did I mention that I'm not too much into art?  For a little inspiration, I did some Googling and a few of the images that were found in the search results were related to Egyptian art, so I thought, why not?  Here's what I came up with.



A lot of the Egyptian art that I seen is on a beige/sand coloured base but when I went looking through my stash, I decided I wanted to jazz it up a little, yet at least be in the beige/sand family (somewhat!), so started with a base of China Glaze It's My Turn; this is three coats, no topcoat. 



Added images using D23 (both images on thumb), H25 (top image on index) VL 006 (bottom line image on index), FUN 2 (ring), OMG Nails unnamed XL plate (pinky) and Blink H43 (middle) using black Konad special polish.



When I was browsing Egyptian art pix, I noticed that occasionally there were bright turquoise and orange-ish accents so I chose these colours for a few accent dots; Color Blast by Orly Ablazing Aqua and Konad Gold/Brown special polish.



Topped with SV to finish.



I thought this turned out pretty cool!  I wished there were more Egyptian images available like King Tut's mask and a few others....but was happy that at least there were enough to squeak out a mani with some improvising and artistic liberties!

Thanks for looking!

Here's the other ladies art! These gals are so creative!!