Digit-al Dozen Does Patterns on Patterns; Day 1

Welcome to Digit-al Dozen week!  This month's theme is patterns on patterns....and hands down, the hardest challenge I've participated in yet!  The pressure to come up with something creative enough....and with Valentine's Day so close.....plus I rarely do double stamping....well, let's say I thought I couldn't wait to have my five mani's done!  And I do have all five done!  Yeah me! I felt so badly last month that I only was able to post three and not complete the challenge that I did some of these as soon as my hands were good enough!  Anyway, enough rambling; here's what I came up with for day 1!

Started with a base of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, two coats, then topped with KBShimmer Clearly on Top (no pix has have shown many times before).  Stamped using Mundo de Unas #2 using Apipila P.11. As much as I love the squishy stamper, unfortunately, you have to gauge your stamping pressure just so or you get squiggly lines, as you can see here.  But this is a very unforgiving image to stamp and didn't turn out half bad!

Added hearts from Konad m95 using Mundo de Unas #15.  I have to admit, while I don't mind the look of this, I didn't want to use this colour; I actually wanted red.  But when I did my test hand first, I couldn't get a red to stamp dark enough to cover the black lines; at least enough that I was happy with as you can still see the black faintly here.  So by trial and error with stamping polishes (well, until I exhausted the 5 nails on my test hand), this is what I ended up using.  In hindsight, I wished I had have done hot pink lines and black hearts...but that's another mani, another day!

Top coated with KBShimmer Clearly on Top to finish.

I actually wasn't too fond of this when I did it....but it kind of grew on me!

Here's the other ladies amazing Day 1 pattern on pattern mani's!

An InLinkz Link-up

Thanks for looking!

10.1 Snake Venom

It's an overcast, raining day; after rain off and on most of the weekend as well as a lot of thunder and lightning the past two days,  I thought it would be a good time to feature a bright summery polish on such a dreary day to brighten the day!  This is a mani featuring a new indie polish maker; 10.1 Polish**!  

Started with a base of two coats of 10.1 Snake Venom, no topcoat.  10.1 Snake Venom is a beautiful colour with a very light holo and added shimmer; perfect to wear on it's own, or a great base for stamping!  

Different lighting.  Polish colour is more true in the pix below (but this lighting gives me lobster hands all the time!)

Bottle shot. 

My apologies to the creators of 10.1 Polish Snake Venom, but as soon as I seen this base on my nails, my first right away was to pair it with pink! To take such a cool, edgy polish name, then pair it with pink and then make it extremely girly....well, just seems wrong!  In a good way!  It's no secret that one of my favourite colour combinations is green and pink! But to make matters worse, I really girly upped 10.1 Snake Venom! Just seems wrong! But right or wrong, I love how this turned out!

Stamped using MoYou Mother Nature Collection-11 (index), MoYou Princess Collection-12 (thumb, middle and pinky) and Apipila P.11 (ring).  Stamping polishes used are white Konad and Mundo de Unas 15 (light pink) and 20 (darker rose).  

Doubled stamped the thumb and added roses on the ring using the darker Mundo de Unas 20 using same images.  Added a few white dots on index for interest.

Topped with KBShimmer Clearly on Top to finish.

10.1 Polishes are available here and they retail for $6.50!  

I will be featuring more 10.1 Polishes soon!  The 10.1 Polish Facebook page here also has a lot of great pictures of their products!

Thanks for looking!

**polishes sent for review; please refer to disclosure policy 

Digit-al Dozen Does Vintage; Day 3

There's been a few of the Dozener's (as we were affectionately called by Bee Polished in her post here) do vintage roses for this weeks challenge, so I thought I would do my take on vintage roses too.  I have no freehand skill to speak of so of course turned to stamping to create the look; here's what I came up with!

Started with a base of one coat of American Apparel The Valley then topped with SV.  Unfortunately, this pix isn't the best for a few reasons; I was under some time restraints when I set down to do this mani and I allowed myself an hour start to finish before I left for work this morning.  One coat had pretty good coverage and I knew I'd be stamping quite a bit on top of it so left at once coat and topped with SV. I'm not entirely sure if it was because the polish was fairly thick, or the SV too thick, or not waiting enough time for the base to dry a little bit more before applying SV, but one way or another, my base kind of bunched up and slid down my nails a little creating thin spots in some areas and pools of polish at the sides.  You won't see a thumb in this pix because my attempt to remove a little random fibre resulted in nicking both the thumb on this hand and the middle on my right.  Because I was strapped for time, I just removed the area a bit with a brush, reapplied polish and SV again but it really isn't a good finger to show, especially for a polish swatch. Anyway, this polish is really so much nicer than my pix in my haste show!

I waited a few minutes, even putting my hands under a dryer, to get the polish and topcoat to dry before stamping.  Then added stripes using Apipila P.11 using white Konad special polish.



I did a very quick cleanup for this pix because I was keeping mind of the time; you can see my thumb isn't the best in this pix too. At this point, because the stripe didn't cover the misapplied polish on the thumb, I was hoping at least the next layer of stamping did!

Stamped using CICI & SISI 11 using Mundo de Unas stamping polishes in colours 20 and 37. I was glad to see that the roses covered the missed polish on the thumb! 

Here's a closer look at CICI & SISI 11.

Apipila P.11

 Topped with SV to finish.

Here's the other ladies Day 3 mani's!

An InLinkz Link-up

Hope you've enjoyed Vintage Week so far.......thanks for looking!