Stamping Over Lilac Base

This weeks FB Adventures in Stamping challenge was stamping over a lilac base.  I had picked up Essie Under Where? which is part of the Essie Resort 2013 collex recently, so decided to use it; this is what I came up with.

Started with a base of two coats of Essie Under Where? as well as an accent of one coat of Julie G Crushed Candy.  I had asked a friend to look out for the Julie G Frosted Gumdrop collex on her recent US visit and lucky for me, she found them all!  Under Where? is a little on the thin side, but personally, I prefer thin as easier to apply and find it easier for clean up.  All fingers but the accent were topped with SV. 

Stamped using Pueen44 which is a part of the new 2013 Love Elements collex. I'm not sure how obvious it is in these pix but as my nails have a fairly significant curve when they get long, they didn't stamp right to the tips on the fingers using my normal Konad stamper so I had to hand paint in some lines and do some filling in with a brush.  I used the squishy XL stamper for the accent and it stamped much better right to the tips.  (I also cut my nails right down right after this mani as I'm not a fan of using the squishy stamper but hate how they don't stamp right down to the tips because of the curve.  Short nails = problem solved!)

Topped with Orly Love Each Other which you can see over the lilac if you look realllyyyyy close..and squint! I perhaps should have done a second coat to make it more visible but left it with one as pressed for time.

For those who may be international (aka not live in US) and are looking for Pueen plates as I believe they are not shipping international via Amazon (at least they weren't when I was looking to buy) I picked these up on eBay where international shipping was offered.  (When I went to get the link, I see they are no longer available, but with the help of google, found they are selling and shipping international now here via Big Cartel.)  I paid a little extra for the shipping but when you consider otherwise, I wouldn't have got them at all, or had to drive to US to collect like the first set, it was worth it.  I have to say that overall, I like this second set of Pueen plates over the first one; they seem to stamp better and the images are larger.  A lot of the plates are themed around love, so there are lots of Valentine's Day images too which I'm sure I'll put to use next year!

Thanks for looking!