Quick and Easy Gmen!

I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to do a New Year's mani yet; I'm hoping to get one on my nails maybe this afternoon and post later but time will tell. I've been dealing with a lot of work related emergencies, my husband had a death in the family and had an out of town wake to go to, haven't been feeling too well, so just no time and/or energy to do nails.  But there are other priorities over doing nails, not to mention working enables me to pay for all the plates and polishes so can't really do much about it for now! There's always next year!

This is a mani I did Christmas night to wear on Boxing Day.  Super quick and easy!

Started with a base of two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.  No pix as have shown many times before.  Stamped using red Konad special polish using HD-E and HD-F (the small gmen are isolated from the full nail image on HD-F and the large are a single image from HD-E).



Added dots using green and yellow Konad special polish.  Then added some glitter from Lynderella Do You See What I See?  I was looking for green glitter in a clear base, which I thought this, but it looks like there is faint glitter bleed.  (I also went to Lynderella blog and the description says that it is in a clear base so obviously glitter bleeding has occurred).  The tinge looks pretty obvious in these pix but in real life, it wasn't so obvious, plus gave a little holiday colour!  Just wasn't what I had in mind when I envisioned the nails though. No cleanup as I knew I was adding more glitter.)



Added more glitter using Revlon Graffiti 678.  I honestly did some cleanup but not the best obviously from these pix!



Added topcoat to finish. (That isn't a blue glitter on the ring finger, just a reflection!)



This didn't turn out too badly even though the bleeding glitter tinged the base a little.  It was very festive I thought and super duper easy and quick which was what I was looking for that night!

Have a fun and safe New Year's if you are venturing out and about tonight to celebrate!  All the best to you in 2014!

Thanks for looking!

Christmas Overload and Giveway is Up!

How about a little Christmas overload!  This mani is a smattering of a few things associated with Christmas!  

Started with a base of one coat of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, topped with two coats of Contrary Polish Hallelujah, topped with SV.

Bottle pix of Contrary Polish.  This picture, you can see both the very fine glitter as well as the golden shimmer.  While I did a coat of white as a base, I *think* that full coverage could be achieved using this in three coats. It is simply beautiful!

Added assortment of images; MoYou Festive Collection-03 (thumb and pinky), HD-E (index), HD-F (middle) and Chez Xmas-001 (ring).  Polishes used for stamping are Sally Hansen Jumpin' Jade (green), Kiko 323 (brown) and Konad special polish (red).  I did some minor filling in on a few areas that didn't stamp as well as I wanted (but see now I still missed a few areas lol!)

Added random dots and glitter to accent.  The added glitter is from KBShimmer Kringle All The Way; the polish dots are from the same stamping polishes.  I wanted to add a star to the top of the trees but when I picked one from a bottle of polish, it was too large to fit on top of the trees. Then I remembered that I had received a Sally Hansen Nail art pen as part of a promotional package** so decided to use it for some hand drawn stars. My freehand skills are still to be desired but I still like how the stars turned out!  The pen was easy to use; I'll be doing a review of it and others in future posts!

Added a few more random dots to accent.

Topped with SV to finish.

I loved how this turned out (well, minus the ouchies I'm sporting again!)

I also have some exciting giveaway news!  I mentioned a couple posts ago about a giveaway and here's the details!  There is one prize only....one lucky person takes all!   The prize consists of the following:

Seven MJ plates have been supplied by My Online Shop (MJ XI, MJ XVII, MK XV and MJ Special Edition plates as well as XXV, XXIII and XXIV test plates which are slightly different that the ones that the shop sells even if you have these already!!).  Also, three MoYou plates; Festive Collection - 04 (the elusive sweater mani plate that keeps going out of stock!), Pro Collection-06 and Time Traveller Back to the 70'x 01.  The three polishes shown are also included; KBShimmer Snow Flaking Way, KBShimmer Urban Camo and I Love Nail Polish Babes in Toyland.  

In addition to the above, there's still more more!  There's a brand new Canadian indie polish maker, Candy Nail Polish, who has also offered your choice of three full size polishes from the the Candy Nail Polish Holiday Collection.  Please make sure to check out the Candy Nail Polish link for a better look at the polishes as you'll need to list your three choices from the Holiday Collection only to answer one of the raffleopter options.  

Please feel free to click on the pix to look at better or visit the websites to view!

 

Please go here for better look at My Online Shop plates (except test plates).

Please go here for better look at MoYou plates.

Please go here for better look at CandyNailPolish.

I'm going to do things a little different this time and attempt a raffleopter (if anyone notices as error, please comment below as me and raffleopter don't seem to get along too well...but I do think I figured it out!!).  The contest will run from today's post until the time runs out on the raffleopter on or about Monday, January 6, 2014. Once a winner has been chosen and verified, they will have 48 hours from the time of the email notice to contact me; if no response is received, another winner will be chosen.  Open internationally; please refer to giveaway policy for further details!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks so much to My Online Shop, Candy Nail Polish and MoYou UK*** for their generous sponsorship in the giveaway!  It is gratefully appreciated (and will certainly be appreciated by the one lucky winner!) Other items have been provided by moi!

Good Luck!!!

**item received for review; please refer to disclosure policy for information.

***The MoYou plates are plates that either I bought or had been sent a second plate in error. In the instance that I did receive the second plate by error, I had contacted MoYou to let them know that I had received an extra plate and had asked if they wanted to have it returned or if it was OK to use for a giveaway; they had indicated it was OK to include for a giveaway! 

Mistletoe Tips!

Believe it or not, this mani has been sitting in archives for almost a year! These are the nails I was wearing on Boxing Day last year, just never got around to sharing on the blog.   I personally love these kind of funky french mani's but they don't always seem to be terribly popular when I blog about them.  None the less, I love how these turned out!

Started with a base of two coats of OPI Bride's Bouquet (no pix as I've shared many times before).  Added a light coat of NYX Silver Glitter at the tips.



Added Essence Nail Art Twins Julia over the silver glitter for more interest.



Stamped using Fauxnad E03 using Sally Hansen Jumpin' Jade.



Apparently fishing out glitter is nothing new to me, as last year I fished out glitter from Lush Lacquer Ho Ho Holidays for the berry accents.






Bottle shot of Lush Lacquer Ho Ho Holidays.



Topped with SV to finish.



Hope you are having a fantastic weekend....and although I know it's a busy time of year, please be sure to check back soon for some exciting giveaway news!

Thanks for looking!

Digit-al Dozen Does Red, Gold and Green; Day 4

When I did this mani, I was all impressed with myself because I thought I found the ultimate challenge appropriate polish......a green base with red, green and gold glitter!  Perfect for the challenge!  So off I did my nails.  Howeverrrrrr, it wasn't until I uploaded these pix I see the blue glitter......making it not as perfect as I thought. While it's still OK I suppose (and will have to do as I have nothing else to post in it's place!) , I was a little disappointed in myself as I was trying to stay true to the scheme of the challenge.   Anyway, here's what I came up with (just pretend you don't see blue glitter!)



Started with a base of three coats of Dare2Wear Mood Polish, Night Stars 2 White Cloud.  I have no idea if in fact this does change and surmise it won't as it's so old.  I've been wearing it for a while now and haven't noticed anything .but if I do notice it changing while I'm wearing it, I will update the post!





It dries on the matte side, so added a layer of topcoat.



This is a fairly busy base, so wanted some simple stamping.  Decided upon Cheeky Jumbo 6 Happy Holidays, using CND Gold Chrome.



I was a little annoyed as the mis-stamping of the star on every finger so decided to add random red star glitters.  No fishing for glitter this time as I happen to have a little pack of loose stars...yeah me!  So much easier than fishing glitter out of a polish.  I initially was going to add a red star to each tree top, which I did do on the thumb which was the first finger I did, but it was far too busy for my liking.  So for the rest of them, I just placed on the flawed star image.



Topped with SV to finish.




I'm on the fence if this is funky cool or if I overdid it with the red star glitter.  It's not as garish in real life as you can pretty much only see the gold and red glitter in the base but I don't know....

Anyway, here's the other ladies Day 4 mani's!




Thanks for looking!

Lest We Forget

Today is a Canadian Nail Fanatic first.....first time ever for two posts in one day (please don't get used to it as I doubt it will happen that often! lol).  I already posted the Digit-al Dozen Day 1 mani, which is a mani I did a few days ago in preparation of the weekly challenge.  But it's also Remembrance Day here in Canada; Veteran's Day in US.  This is the mani I'm wearing today.



Started with a base of one coat of Duri Taming of the Shrew, with an accent of Sally Hansen CSM Greige, no topcoat (or cleanup).  For the red nails, I was adding stamper decals but wanted a base coat of polish in case my stamper decal wasn't that opaque as I didn't want to see bare nail underneath.



Added a layer of Hare Swanky Soiree on accent, topped with SV.



I had made a series of stamper decals earlier in the week in preparation of doing the mani using red and black Konad special polishes.



Applied the stamper decals.  The full size decal is made from an image on Apipila P.01 and the individual ones are from Big SdP E.  The Konad double ended stamper also has a small poppy on it.



After I got all the stamper decals applied, I had a d'uh! moment.  The full size image on Apipila P.01 is clear underneath...which means I could have just stamped it onto a red polish base!  All this work (and terrible cleanup!) for nothinggggg!  Grrrr!  I had a plausible reason for making the stamper decal at the time but now for the life of me, I cannot remember why.  Practise, I guess???!!



Added one of the small decals from Big SdP E to accent.  I know one thing for sure is that I much prefer applying the smaller decals versus the full size ones which are a pain to size, clean up, etc.



I had a few of the small decals left so added them to my right hand, which I did a little different.



Please honour and remember those who died so that we have the freedom we have today.

Thanks for looking (for the second time today!)

Digit-al Dozen; Day 1, Black n White

This month's challenge for Digit-al Dozen is black and white.  How can something so seemingly easy be so hard?  For me, the colours black and white are easy enough; the problem is trying to come up with something different for each of them only using black and white so that they don't all look the same!  I guess we'll see how it goes as the week progresses as I haven't finished them all yet!  Here's the first mani I came up with.

Started with a base of one coat of FingerPaints Black Expressionism and two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales walls, no topcoat (with terrible cleanup, I see!)

Stamped using white and black Konad special polish using FUN 7 (thumb, middle and pinky) and OB29 (ring and index).

Topped with SV to finish.

A look at OB29.  Why is there no five....I guess you are suppose to be talented enough to stamp a little dot in the middle of the four or double stamp the two and three perfectly!

Here's the other ladies Black and White mani's including a couple new members too!!!  Can't wait to see all the awesome mani's everyone comes up with...and read their blogs to see if they had a hard time with the challenge or it is just me!

Thanks for looking!