Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

Top o' the mornin' to ya!

This is the last St. Patrick's Day mani I'm going to share until next year!



Started with a base of Zoya Veruschka.



Added Icing Evergreen to start a gradient.



Then Midie No. 4, which is a lighter green glitter with various sizes of glitter versus the fine, darker glitter of Evergreen.



Here's a bottle shot of Midie No. 4. I'm glad I stumbled across these at a little shop not too far from my house....pretty, but they are certainly on the smelly side.



Stamped using CND Gold Chrome using the various size of clovers on XL F and BM03 for the accent middle finger. (It seems I forgot to upload a pix of the mani at this point and I've already deleted the pix from my camera so no shot of the mani in progress here!)

With all this glitter action, I knew I had to matte this mani...so a coat of Essie Matte About You was added.



Then I remembered how chippy matte mani's are.....so added a topcoat of SV. This is how I wore my nails when I was out and about...but I much prefer the matte look.



Have a fantastic St. Patrick's Day! Thanks for looking!

May You Find a Pot of Gold at the End of a Rainbow!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!!



As you may recall from my posts and some of my comments, there's only so many image plates out there with a St. Paddy's theme, so last weekend, I sifted thru all my plates to try to come up with something that weren't just all shamrocks and here's what I came up with!



Used IP's H17, fauxnad m28, B05, HB44, HB30, BM03 and HB40. Stamping polishes are Konad special polishes in green, red, white, black and yellow and CND Gold Chrome.

Here's the polishes before stamping:



Starting at thumb and working left to right: OPI Alpine Snow matte, Essie Going Incognito, Color Club Wild Child, LA Girls Disco Brites Can U Dig It, and LA Girls Disco Brites Turntable.

And in case enquiring minds what to know, I finally used the soft stamping plates that I got from nailart und mehr last summer. Here's what they look like if you aren't familiar:



(As they are made out of rubber, lint and hair stick to them like no tomorrow; they don't usually look like this after wiping with acetone... its just I wiped them with a paper towel for the picture and then all the lint and fibres rubbed off on them and I had no acetone with me to take it off!)

While last year when I seen the soft plates on their website and watched the youtube tutorial, it was not in English but looked simple enough so I bought a few to try out. Low and behold, it wasn't as simple as it looks (to me anyway!)... no matter how much fooling around with them I did, I couldn't get it. So when I went to their site a few weeks ago, I seen now that they have posted some instructions on their use in English so tried it again and was comfortable enough to attempt to try the stamp on my nails. This was the first time but now that I have somewhat the hang of it, I'm going to try them more often as they have some really cool designs on them!

Here's a shout out to Lacquer Ware who suggested I attempt to freehand a Leprechaun on one of my St. Paddy's mani! I have absolutely no freehand skills...I can barely do those accent strokes with nail stripers....but I thought, "What St. Patrick's Day mani would be complete without a leprechaun?" Then I remembered I had gotten out my St. Paddy's day pin for my sweater for this morning and took a quick pix of it...(I have a soft spot for all holidays and themes and decorate my house theme crazy! I also have pins that I put on my coats or sweaters for every holiday and this is the one I'm wearing today!.)

So here's my Leprechaun!!! It's the best I could come up with!!



Thx for looking!

OPI Aragon Suede for St. Paddy's Day Mani..

THIS was the polish I was searching for last time for a St. Patricks Day mani. After some stash searching, it was in my hands.



After two coats of the polish, stamped with China Glaze Cheers to You and Nicole by OPI Positive Energy. I was fooling around with some polishes to see hwo they stamped and discovered Cheers to You worked not bad for stamping...and so did Midnight Kiss...they were slightly glittery; different that the sharp silver contract with my prefered go-to silver, Positive Energy.



Image plates used were XL F and BM03...unfortunately, there aren't a great deal of St. Paddy's image plates out there to chose from, so these were used again!

Here's OPI Aragan Suede by itself....


Lastly, as I didn't want to have to deal with a chipped, matte mani, decided to add a quick topcoat of CND Silver sparkle.


In real life, the silver sparkle isn't so obvious and you can still see the stamping but this doesn't relay in the pix!



I guess St. Patrick's Day is coming up! I'm not Irish, but love themed manis so thats why I've been doing them...do you have one planned? I know I've seen some great ones in the blogesphere....and its always so interesting to see everyone's interpretation of the day!

Thanks for looking!

St Paddy's Day Mani with NYX Jungle....

I'm not a big fan of greens and the green polish that I happen to be looking for, I couldn't locate. So going thru my stash, I came across NYX Jungle, so thought I'd give it a whirl for my next St. Patricks Day mani.


This polish is very very sheer and even with three coats, can still see VNL in certain lighting. You are looking at three coats. It has an interesting gold shimmer that peaks thru...I liked the smooth application (a little on the runnier side but I had no issues applying it) and the kind of shimmer finish that is easier (for me) to clean up so I was happy as I'm still working on my cleanup skills!



Stamped using CND Gold Chrome using BM3 plate and for a bit of interest, used Nubar Martini glitter on the tips.

I intially tried Lippmann Boom Boom Pow for the gold glitter interest, but it was too yellow making the tips turn lime green and not enough glitter (at least what I had envisioned in my mind) so opted for Nubar Martini instead.



Hope you have a great weekend and thx for looking!