Summer Skittles

What awesome weather we've been having!  This weekend, the weather was perfect...beautiful, warm and sunny!  My nails were screaming for something bright and fun in the sunshine...this is what I came up with!

Base polishes used, starting from thumb and working clockwise are:  Essie Lights, Essence Wake Up!, Essence Lime Up!, Essence Walk on Air and Essence Wanna be your Sunshine, all two coats. 

Stamped using CH12 using white Konad special polish.  I can't believe I reached for this plate again when I have so many options...but it's my most favourite full nail flower image right now!  I say right now because of all the different image plates being released soon, that may change!

I had picked up a few of these Xtreme Nail art pens not too long ago at Rite Aid....and they happen to match the colours of the skittles bases I was wearing so thought I try them out.

The yellow, blue and orange worked perfectly for dotting; however, the pink was a little too sheer for good dots.  It looks like I forgot to do some moisturizing and cleanup before taking these pix...oops!  Please overlook that nastiness!  lol!

I know its a long weekend in the United States and if you're one of the lucky ones off today, enjoy the rest of your day!  Hopefully everyone else had a great weekend!

Thanks for looking!

Last Call for Giveaway!!

A quick reminder that my giveaway ends tonight at midnight.....if you are interesting in entering, please make sure you go here!

I thought I'd show a mani I did a few months ago using CH12, which is part of the 26 set offered in the giveaway.  If you've been looking for these, you'll be pleased to know that they are back in stock on Amazon....and for any Canadian gals, you'll soon be able to order directly from Cheeky-Beauty and have them mailed directly to you!  I know there is a lot of interest in these plates based upon the emails I've received asking how I got them.  I've also emailed Cheeky and asked if they will be available worldwide to countries that they don't already ship to via their Amazon stores......I'll update the post once I hear back from them. *Edit*  Cheeky have confirmed they will ship worldwide!

Started with a base of Duri Don't Think twice; two coats.

Did a coat of China Glaze Let's Do It in 3-D on accent.

Stamped with Konad Black special polish using  CH12.  Looking back now, I kinda like this look.

Dotted flowers petals with Let's Do it in 3-D.

Added accent dots using CND Raspberry Parfait.

Topped with SV.  I did quite a bit of experimenting with dotting of holos for this type of look....the scattered holo in the China Glaze Kaleidoscope collex by far worked the best.  I didn't get nearly as good holo dots with other polishes such as OPI DS polishes as I them too.

Hope you had a fantastic weekend!  Thanks for looking!





OPI What's the Cattitude with CH12

Hope you had a great weekend! Other than a bit of fog on Saturday morning, it was a perfect weekend...more like summer weather, not spring...certainly not weather typical for March!

With St. Patrick's Day out of the way, my next giveaway will be announced soon....I'm still working out the details, but here's a hit of what's coming up!



Started with a base of OPI What's the Cattitude, two coats.



Accented ring finger with China Glaze Kaleidoscope Him Out; just one coat as I try to conserve these HTF polishes!



Stamped using CH12 using Konad white special polish.



Filled in a few dots with Kaleidoscope Him Out. I did some experimenting with holo polishes for this type of mani.....holo OPI DS's don't work worth a darn...so far, the polishes from the China Glaze Kaleidoscope collex work the best for sparkly coverage with just a hint of holo.



I did the large flowers first but decided to fill in a few more.



Added a few random dots with Konad pastel yellow stamping polish, then finished with SV.



This CH12 image plate is part of the 26 piece collex from Cheeky-Beauty; their products can be seen on Amazon here. Canadian gals will be happy to know that Cheeky is working of getting these available for shipping to Canada...when I hear when, I'll let you know but last I heard is that it should be within weeks! And these plates may just might be part of my giveaway coming up! These along with a whollllle bunch of other plates from Cheeky-Beauty...please watch for details to be announced soon!

Just a couple more pix because I love how this turned out! Perfect for a weekend like we just had!



I've used this plate so much...probably more than any image in my stash...there's so many looks that can be achieved just by changing up the base, stamping polishes, accents, dots!



Hope you had a great weekend! Thanks for looking!

I was the recipient of a RAOK this morning....

....I start most days by going to my local Tim Hortons for my morning coffee. This morning when I drove up to the drivethru window to pay, the cashier told me that the car in front of me had paid for my coffee! Wasn't that nice? I was expecting to pay for my coffee anyway, so I paid for the car behind me....I always wonder how far these things go as I've participated in this type of random act of kindness before but of course, you're never around to see how long it lasts. Anyway, it was a very nice way to start my day!

This is the mani I've been wearing for the last few days.



I've been challenging myself to see how many different combination of colours, stamping polishes, etc. that I could come up with using image plates that are full size but you can see the base colour well and then play with dotting, etc. (I've also been fiddling around with my camera settings as all my pix lately seem like I have lobster hands so sorry about the various colour variations; not all them are true to life).

Started with a base of CND Sweet. This is one coat.



Added a second coat of CND Sweet on ring finger and then a coat of KleanColor Pink holo on the rest.



Stamped, using white Konad special polish using CH12. (These pix going forward are very close to colour accurate).



For whatever reason, when I usually do this type of mani, I typically do a creme base with a holo accent finger; then add dot interest with the holo polishes. This time I did it different...holo base with creme accent and then did dot interest with the creme polish just to see what it looked like. So here's CND Sweet dotted randomly into the flowers petals.



Then KC Pink Holo dotted onto the accent creme nail.



Lastly, dotted flowers using light gray Konad stamping polish.



Topped with a coat of SV.



Natural light pix taken the next morning.



Just before I took it off last night, I decided to matte it using Essie Matte About You...this was very cool...maybe the version I liked the most! (please excuse the tip wear; this was after 3 days!).



Hopefully these mani's aren't boring you...but these type of mani's that you can use a stamp that you can see the base colour well, and then funky it up a bit are just up my alley lately!

But I'm sure this will be changing as St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner!

Thanks for looking!

Another Mani Using Cheeky Plates

I have so many mani's yet to post, but this is the mani on my hands right now which I've decided to post.



When I was out Christmas shopping, one of my stops was at Ardene's as my DD wanted one of those never-ending scarf thingys. When I was paying, I seen a few polishes in bins at the check out and picked up a couple; this is the one I decided to wear when I did my nails last night. The brand is ACO and this is two coats of Royal Wink. Its a deep purple and dries satin, what you are seeing is with a coat of SV.



I can't remember how much these polishes were; the bottle says $3.50 but I seem to think they were 2/$6...anyway, a whole lot of gorgeousness even if I paid $3.50! My only fear is nail staining...I guess I'll know later when I take this mani off...maybe tonight or in a day or so (Edit: no staining when I removed this mani!). These pictures show the polish much brighter and lighter than it is in real life; it is pretty dark and deep, more in colour like the stamped pictures.

I also picked up a glitter which I put on to accent. This pix is with one coat of the accent glitter, ACO Confetti Glitter, but I actually did two...just couldn't get a good picture to post with two coats on.



Stamped using CH12 with Konad white stamping polish. This type of full image design, when you can see the base colour well, lots of opportunity to add some dots and glitter, is right up my alley....I could wear a variation of this mani for weeks all using the same image plate just by changing the base, stamping colours and dots! This type of design is exactly what I go for when I don't have lot of time to do my nails but it is so easy to jazz up to make a cool mani....my opinion of cool mani anyway!



After stamping, used CND Raspberry Parfait to dot center of the flowers.



Do you see my boo-boos? When I first stamped the image, I royally messed up the image on the tip of my index finger and because it was in such an obvious spot, I just took a bit of remover on a brush with acetone and took it off as you can see above..but then I thought I'd give a try on isolating one of the flowers and stamp one in...which I did as you can see from the pix below. On my ring finger, I did an extremely heavy dot on the little flower so I removed it too (look two pix up at the tip) and restamped a new one as you can see below.



I was browsing Amazon earlier today and seen that these Cheeky plates are back in stock at Amazon**. They are available for shipping within US. Amazon UK and DE also have them available (edit: Amazon UK only have 4 sets left and it seems that Amazon DE are sold out as noted by Chester. I believe US only has limited quantaties as well!). I had my plates delivered to a mail delivery store (UPS Store), then drove to Niagara Falls USA to pick them up...really the only option if you live in Canada unless you know someone in US who can have them delivered to their address and then ship them to you!

Hope you're having a great weekend....thanks for looking!

**Please note that I paid the invoiced amount in full for my plates. I do not endorse nor promote this website/etailer other than I am passing on the info of where I got them to those who may wish to know. I have no affiliation with any company and received no compensation for promotion of these products, nor am I promoting them...just letting fellow bloggers where they may be obtained should they be interested!