Minty Faux Marbling + More Nail Max

Didn't really like this when I first did it, but it grew on me.  I sponged on Wet N Wild Craze Undercover Graffiti and Sally Hansen Xtreme-wear Mint Sorbet.  The Undercover Graffiti got lost in the sponging, but you can still sort of see it.  Then I did a layer of KleanColor Holo Green.  Once that was dry, which took a while, I stamped on the draggy marbling design from large plate b or Konad m78 with Konad special polish in white and then again with Mint Sorbet.  The Mint Sorbet overlaps the white polish a bit so the white bits aren't super bright and you can see the mint stamp more.

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Three more designs from the December issue of Nail Max.

My favourite is the last one.  I think the characters are just too cute, but my versions are definitely less cute looking than the ones in the magazine.

It Snowed!

It snowed today!  Light and fluffy snow.  But it didn't stay on the ground and melted all away in the afternoon.  Much better than the rain that we had yesterday.

 

Did this a couple of days ago, seems kind of wintry.  One coat  of Color Club Cold Metal, which was sort of unnecessary since the two coats of Color Club Jingle Jangle covered it up.  Stamped using Konad special polish in white using large plate B with an image that can be found on Konad plate M51.  Jingle Jangle is super sparkly but not noticeable in my pictures.  I really love the blue and purple glitters and I love the name Jingle Jangle too.  It's a bit like nonsense words that you might sing to yourself or something.

I bought Jingle Jangle in Color Club set along with another set from Winners last week.

Beyond the Mistletoe - Sultry Color for a Glittering Holiday and Backstage Pass - Glitter Shades to Rock the Stage.

And here's some others that I bought last week too.

A box of H&M mini polishes, three Gosh polishes - Black Passion, Blue Monday and Gasoline and some polishes from the aerie store - Pink Frost, Champagne Shimmer and Brownie Points.  Bought everything except for the Gosh polishes with a gift card and they were all on sale due to Black Friday sales happening on the Thursday before.  The Gosh polishes were also bought on sale last week but on a separate occasion when I had to stop by Shoppers Drug Mart to pick up something for my mom.

I am pretty sure I am set for a no buy in December, but I can't say I'll absolutely stick to it.  I'm already done my Christmas shopping and whenever I go grocery shopping I always stop by the Winners first.  And always to the polishes first too.  A habit I must break.  Early new year's resolution.

More New Polishes

My local Winners started stocking a lot more polishes.  There's now a couple of bins of polishes along with some nail displays of the China Glaze Let It Snow collection, Color Club crackle polishes, Duri Wine Tasting Party collection and Sally Hansen Fast-Dri polishes.  There's also a bunch of polish sets available from a bunch of different brands.  I saw a couple of sets of Barielle polishes available and since I've never tried them I decided to pick one up. 

The set I purchased included Grape Escape, Swizzle Stix, Do Unto Others, Blossom (looks more pink in real life) and Buddha-Ful.  And there was a another set that looked like it had some sheer nudes so I skipped them.  Here's a nail wheel swatch of the colours.

I think the flakiness of Buddha-Ful is hard to see in the swatches, but I have a mani for you see.

This was two coats of Buddha-Ful with Konad special polish in white stamped on with an image from Large Plate B.  The polish is pretty packed with flakes, but because the milky pink colour is so sheer I did two coats instead of one.  And because it's so sheer and I didn't really want VNLs I did the stamping.  Kind of crappy since I'm not so great with stamping nail tips. 

Here's what Buddha-Ful looks like layered over a couple of other Barielle polishes.

You can see the orange/green flakies better in this photo.

Polka Dot Pumps w/Flowers + AA Haul

I didn't take very many pictures of this, so the pics aren't very good.  After 15mins of taking pictures and they all just end up looking the same, I stop and say, good enough.

Two coats of China Glaze Ruby Pumps, used the polka dots on large plate B along with Konad Special Polish in White.  I added some floral water decals. The decals have little dots too and didn't realize it until after I had put them on my nail.  So that's where the white dots that sort of arch come from.

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On Saturday I went shopping and used my second American Apparel Teambuy coupon to buy some more polishes.  Though I think I should have saved it for later.  I was talking to the girls behind the register and they said that some glitter polishes were going to be arriving in stores soon.  They didn't know when exactly, but they said that the polishes looked pretty based on the pictures they had on their computer.  I  didn't see the pictures though as they couldn't swing the computer monitor around for me to see.  Oh well.  On to what I did buy.

Mostly neutrals and the metallic polishes.  Names are already in the picture but here goes:
Top - Make Up and Dance (this is actually quite sheer, wasn't expecting that and also a bit more pink in real life)
Middle - 7th and Alameda and Echo Park, I wasn't going to pick up Echo Park thinking it was close to Factory Grey, but completely different, they didn't have any Factory Grey on the display.
Bottom - Silver Jazz, Gold Flash and Bronze Dash, these were the polishes I wanted to pick up, very good stamping polishes, looks fantastic over black or other dark colours.

And here's a nail wheel swatch of the polishes, two coats each though really the metallic polishes were good with one.

Liberty Charm

My friend who gifted me the polishes from Europe also gave me a teaspoon and butter spreader from Sabre Paris.  The butter spreader is a floral Liberty print and I thought it would be fun to try to replicate the print on my nails.

I didn't do a base colour, but maybe I should have, I dunno.  I was going to be doing super layered stamping so I thought a base colour wasn't needed  I used Wet N Wild Craze Mad-Styles, Etude House WH709 and WH708 to stamp on my nails multiple times until the the design was opaque.  I used my large plate, but the images I used can be found on Konad plates m60 and m64, the grid style images. I didn't count how many times I stamped on my nails, but quite a bit.  I wanted to achieve a woven fabric look, and I think it looks quite nice, though it turned out a bit dark.  The grey I used turned out darker than I thought it would when stamped.  The flowers were done using acrylic paint.  They look OK, but this style is not my forte. 

Stamped Purple Gradient + Haul

Sponged on Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lively Lilac and Innisfree PU08, then a layer of Color Club Starry Temptress Top Coat.  Stamped using a Konad Princess Polish in not sure which colour using a full image design from a large plate B.

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Wasn't really intending on buying new polishes while out shopping, but I ended up getting these four on separate shopping outings.

The Tip Toe polish was from Old Navy and I only got it 'cause my friend needed something to put her over 20$ so she could use a coupon to save 10$.  My swatch picture makes it look like it's kinda matte, but it's actually shiny.

On a different shopping trip I stopped by a Loblaws while killing time before heading to dinner and picked up a few joe polishes.  I picked up Seashell 'cause I thought it would be a perfect match to a dress that I was going to wear to a wedding and got Slate and Iris 'cause I liked the colours and it was three polishes for 10$.

Neon Splatter

Another splatter, different from the droplet splatter of large plate A.  Large plate B has a full nail image with splatter lines.  Just used a bunch of neon colours and layered over one another.  Even though the purple was the first colour stamped it still stands out quite prominently.  The other three just weren’t as pigmented I suppose so they didn’t really cover up any of the purple.

Base colour is Wet N Wild Craze Mad Styles stamped with mini versions of Color Club Power Play, Limelight, Amp’d Up and Lazer Pink.

Paisley Print

The pink looks much lighter in the pictures than it does in real life.  Dunno why.  Always liked this image from the Konad plates and glad I have this on the large plate.

Base colour is The Face Shop PK101 stamped with ELF Smoky Brown.

Super short post.

Houndstooth

Houndstooth design from the large plate.  This one looks a bit awkward.  On some nails it looks like the darker pink was stamped onto the lighter colour and on others it looks like the lighter colour was stamped onto the darker one.  Weird.  I chalk it up to my lack of stamping.  However I will get back into it since I’ve got this large plate and I still haven’t used all the designs available on the newer BundleMonster plates yet.

Base colour is NYX Girls Heather stamped with a light pink ENAS stamping polish.

Lazy Plate Comparison

Here’s a pic of one of the large plates that I bought off eBay.  This one features the full nail designs.  I am going to do a comparison between the large plate and some Konad plates.  I would have done it with the other large plate with just individual designs, but I didn’t have any Konad plates that matched those designs.

One close up pic of the plate.

I just simply stamped all the designs from the Konad plates then did the large plate designs underneath.  You can click the pictures to see the differences and similarities better.

Overall the images on the large plate are good copies of the Konad designs.  Some images may be thicker or thinner.  Any gaps in the stamping is more my stamping error than the plate being off.

Here’s the first mani I did with the big plate.

Done on shortened nails.  Once again going shopping has made me chip the nail on my index finger and this time a bit on my middle finger.

Faux water marble looking design.  Base colour was a faux mini OPI that I got at a random store in Markham with KleanColor Metallic Aqua as the stamp colour.

Layering + Zombies

Don’t really wear dark colours alone and most of the time I usually have something stamped or painted on, but I liked this layering experiment alone.

One coat of Wet N Wild Vandalize with one layer of H&M Blue Wave and also a layer of Maybelline Colorama Ruby Rays on top.

I found the Colorama polish at Winners in a value pack thing with other make up goods.  I didn’t really care for the other things in the package, so I just gave those to my mom and kept the polish for myself.

After awhile I decided to stamp on my nails after all.  Used the zombie images from the large plate and also some hearts from the same plate. 

Stamped using Konad special polish in white and also used made it matte with Orly Matte Top.

I also dented index finger nail after putting on the top coat.  Always denting and smudging my nails lately.  I think I need to get those nail guard things that help to prevent denting and smudging.

Glittery(?) Splatter

Splatter nails done using large stamping plate A that I purchased through eBay.  I had wanted the Konad plate that had the splatter design, but didn’t want the other images on the plate so getting the big plate was cool with me.  Getting tons more images for the price of about three/four Konad plates.  Though I think some of the images on the plate are a tad smaller than what’s on the actual Konad plates.  Most of my Konad plates are full nail designs, but I’ll try to see if there’s any that match up with my plates and do a comparison.

Base was an XO Hugs and Kisses sheer pink with Wet N Wild Fast Dry Party of Five Glitters added.  When I swatched the polish on a nail wheel more glitters showed up than what’s on my actual nail.  I tried to use the same colours that were found in the glitter for the splatter.  Konad special polishes in sky pearl, red, pink, violet pearl and green and KleanColor Barbie Pink were the stamped colours.

Also I didn’t notice that my pinky was dented/smudged until I saw the pictures.  D’oh.