Remembrance Day Manicure - 2018

Today is remembrance day in Canada. This remembrance day in particular is quite special, in that Novermber 11th, 2018 is the 100th anniversary since the end of the first world war. Today, I have a remembrance day manicure to share:

Polishes Used	Stamping Plates Used
OPI 'My Wishlist is You'	Messy Mansion Plate MM78XL
Wet n' Wild Wildshine 'Black Crème'	Clear Jelly Stamper Stamping Plate:
Nicole by OPI 'Scandal, Secrets...	'True North Strong' Plate CjSLC-08
& Sparkle'

I really like the completed manicure. It is very understated, and tasteful. Here is a shot of the polishes that I used to create the manicure:

Here's a link to the last Remembrance day Manicure that I did, back in 2014.  And below are additional shots of this years manicure.

Modified Anniversary Mani

Today I have a modified version of my 'First Blog Anniversary' manicure from my last post:

I toned-down the manicure by changing the thumb, index, and middle fingers to a neutral polish, and then I stamped a design on the middle finger in gold, to tie the whole look together.

Polishes Used	Plate Used
Essie ‘Brides to Be’	Messy Mansion Leadlight Lacquer
Orly ‘Halo’	- Plate A01
Sally Hansen Color Foil ‘Liquid Gold’

The neutral polish that I used was 'Brides to Be' from Essie's 2015 Bridal Collection. It's a beautiful creamy taupe colour, that looks like a lighter shade of the same colour of my natural nail bed. The glitter polish is Orly 'Halo' from their 2012 'Naughty or Nice' holiday collection. It contains a mix of gold and silver glitter particles. The metallic gold polish that I used for stamping is one of my most used polishes - Sally Hansen Color Foil 'Liquid Gold'.

Overall, I'm really happy with the way that this manicure turned out. It gives a nice 'muted bling' effect that looks both casual, and elegant all at once. Also, it's always nice to be able to get two looks out of one manicure!

Burgundy and Gold Mani

Today I have a quick impromptu manicure to share:

Polishes Used	Plate Used
OPI Black Cherry Chutney	Messy Mansion The Bridal Nail Collection:
Sally Hansen Color Foil ‘Liquid Gold’	Plate 04

Polishes Used

For this nail stamping manicure, I used as my base polish 'Black Cherry Chutney' from OPI's India Collection for Spring 2008. The gold stamping over it was done with my favourite gold nail polish for stamping, Sally Hansen Color Foil 'Liquid Gold'. 

Here's one final picture of the manicure showing my right hand.

Black and Silver Simple Stamped Mani

Polishes Used	Plate Used
Nicole by OPI 'Scandal Secrets & Sparkle'	Messy Mansion Leadlight Lacquer A03
Konad Special Polish in Black

Today I have a very simple nail stamping manicure to share. I modified my last nail look by adding a few stamping details as accents.

Overall, I like the way that the black details completely refresh the look by adding a bit of sophisticated edginess! 

Polishes Used

OPI Color Paints Leadlight Mani

Today I have a nail stamping manicure created using the 'leadlight technique' to share with you. For this mani I used the new OPI Color Paints Collection that has recently been released for summer 2015:

It's been a while since I've done a manicure like this. I usually try to avoid doing full-hand leadlight manicures, since they tend to be very time-consuming. However, I was really excited to try out the entire line of OPI 'Color Paints', so I made an exception!

I first found out about the 'Color Paints' collection sometime in April, and learned that it was supposed to launch in early May. I was so eager to try these polishes, that I actually began hunting for them in different beauty supply stores near the end of April (just in case they were put out early!). I had no such luck. In fact, compared to other OPI collections, these polishes were relatively hard for me to get a hold of. A lot of the places that I usually go to buy OPI polishes don't seem to have them (...yet?). Perhaps that will change as we get a little further into the season.

Around the first or second week of May, I finally saw them on display in one of my favourite beauty supply stores. At the time, they only had a small display featuring only one each of the full sized colours, and 4 bottles of 'Silver Canvas'. Unfortunately, the one bottle of 'Magenta Muse' was sold out, so I could only purchase the other colours, and continue the hunt for the missing bottle. Funnily enough, that same colour was also sold out at the only other place I was able to find these at the time - and their display originally contained 3 of each colour! It took about another 2 weeks for me to finally be able to acquire that last polish - I ended up getting it when the first store I went to eventually got the larger '3 of each' display.

Polishes Used	Polishes Used (Cont’d)
OPI Color Paints ‘Pen and Pink’	Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear ‘Celeb City’
OPI Color Paints ‘Magenta Muse’	Konad Special Polish in Black
OPI Color Paints ‘Chromatic Orange’	OPI ‘In True Stefani Fashion’
OPI Color Paints ‘Primarily Yellow’
OPI Color Paints ‘Landscape Artist’
OPI Color Paints ‘Turquoise Aesthetic’	Plate Used
OPI Color Paints ‘Indigo Motif’	Messy Mansion Leadlight Lacquer Plate A06
OPI Color Paints ‘Purple Perspective’
OPI Color Paints ‘Silver Canvas’

As for my first impressions, I am quite pleased with the collection as a whole. The polishes worked really well for leadlighting, and that was the main use I had in mind when getting them. Also, I really like the 'foil wrapper' look that you get when you layer these translucent colours over a silver base. Normally I would use a white base for leadlighting, so this is a new idea for me, and I love it! My favourite colour in the collection is 'Turquoise Aesthetic' - it's a gorgeous shade, and it looks absolutely amazing layered over the silver base.

The only colour that I have a minor complaint about is 'Purple Perspective'. I find that it is almost a little too highly pigmented so you have to be really careful to not use too thick of a coat or else the purple doesn't 'glow' as much over the silver base, and reads almost as black. 'Indigo Motif' was the second trickiest one to work with due to the intensity of the pigment, but even with a slightly thick application, it still reads as blue, although it won't 'glow' as much.

And as for the manicure, I like how it turned out. It's colourful and fun, and again, it's something new for me because of the foil look that the silver base gives. The manicure is really busy, because the driving force behind my colour selection was to use all 9 colours from the collection, however, due to the success I had with this trial mani, I can't wait to start experimenting with these polishes using smaller colour palettes, and less intricate designs!

Vintage floral print mani

Today I have a quick and easy vintage-looking floral print nail-stamping manicure to share with you:

The base colour is OPI's 'Hands off my Kielbasa' from the Spring 2013 Euro Centrale Collection. I recently purchased this polish on clearance at a beauty supply store. It's a shimmery bronzy-pinky-tan colour, and I have nothing like it in my collection. It's not the type of colour that I would usually gravitate towards, but for the price, I thought I would give it a try. It's a very neutral, understated look on me, so it probably is going to get most of its use as a base for nail art.

For this manicure I paired '...Kielbasa' with a black polish using a floral print stamping image. The end result reminds me of a vintage, ornately-patterned, silk curtain or wallpaper!

Polishes Used	Plate Used
OPI ‘Hands off my Kielbasa!’	Messy Mansion MM46 ‘Flowers Theme’
Konad Special Polish in Black

If I had to do it again, the only thing that I would change about this look would be to add some sort of black or predominantly black accent nail - just to spice up the look a little!

Pastel Neon Paisley Skittles Mani

In my last post, I did a simple manicure using 'Hot-Hot-Hot Pants' one of the colours from the Color Club 'Poptastic Pastel Neons' collection. For this manicure, I decided to use the remaining colours that I owned from the collection to create this paisley-printed skittles mani:

In my last post, I mentioned an embellishment idea that I had, to use with these bright pastel colours. The idea was to stamp over them with white stamping polish, as I have done in this manicure. White seems to be the perfect colour for combining with these 'Pastel Neon' colours - it keeps the look fun and light and doesn't overpower the already eye-catching colours.

Originally, I was thinking about using simple white stripes for the stamping image, however, I've already used my stripe plates for a few manicures, while so many other plates in my collection have gone unused. So I decided to try something else. I chose my paisley-themed Messy Mansion plate mainly because I just recently purchased it and was excited to give it a try!

Polishes Used	Plate Used
Color Club ‘Feathered Hair out to There’
Color Club ‘Disco’s not Dead’
Color Club ‘Under the Blacklight’	Messy Mansion  MM48 ‘Paisley Theme’
Color Club ‘Til the Record Stops’
Color Club ‘Meet me at the Rink’
Konad Special Polish in White

I like the end result, but the only problem is that there isn't a lot of contrast with the delicate white lines of the paisley print stamped over the yellow and light green shades, so it's hard to see the details of the stamped image. In retrospect, a stamping image with thicker lines would have probably worked a little better. Polka dots would have been lovely as well!

Pink and Silver Manicure

Here's a quick manicure I did to try out a new polish I bought on Tuesday:

Polishes Used	Plate Used
OPI ‘Elephantastic Pink’	Messy Mansion ‘The Bridal Nail’-
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri ‘Silver Sweep’	Plate 05

The polish I bought was OPI's 'Elephantastic Pink' from their Spring 2008 India Collection. This pink is very bright and summery, and in real life appears a touch more coral than it does in the picture above. Just to add a bit of visual interest, I added a little bit of nail stamping on my ring fingers using my go-to silver stamping polish, 'Silver Sweep' (original formula). 

Polishes Used

'May the Fourth Be With You' Mani

In honour of May the 4th, I decided to rework my previous mani into a space themed galaxy manicure:

May the Fourth be with Your Manicure!

There is so much wear and tear on this manicure, that it's not even funny! The base for this manicure was only supposed to be an impromptu weekend manicure, that was hastily applied on top of the manicure I wore for most of last week - it's unbelievable how many layers of polish are on my nails right now! The plan was originally to do a new manicure on Sunday night, so that everything would be fresh for Monday morning, but then I came up with the idea to re-purpose the mani, since I already had the galaxy framework that I could build upon to create a May the Fourth Mani.

My previous mani featured a black base of Wet n Wild 'Black Crème', and a black, gold, and holographic glitter, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure 'Midnight Glitz'. That combination already looked very 'spacey' so I just emphasized that by adding a cute spaceship from one of my Moyou London 'Sci Fi' plates, and some planets in orbit from my Messy Mansion 'Space Themed' plate. I made the rocket ship decal using advanced stamping technique.

Here are the details of the polishes and plates that I used to create this look:

Polishes Used:	Plates Used:
Wet n Wild Wild Shine ‘Black Crème’
OPI ‘Romantically Involved’	Messy Mansion ‘Space Themed’ MM33
Essie ‘No Place Like Chrome’
Sally Hansen C.S.M. ‘Midnight Glitz’	Moyou London Sci-Fi Collection - 03
OPI ‘Atomic Orange’
OPI ‘Embrace the Gray’

Polishes Used

All in all, I think it is a super cute manicure (minus the tip wear, and bulky, multi-layered polish application!). I really like how the space-ship decal turned out, and how cool it looks floating on the background of the black and holo-glitter 'space'.

Red and Gold Heart Mani

Today I'm finally getting around to posting the manicure I had on about 5 days ago. I usually like to finish the post for the manicure while I'm still wearing it, so everything is still fresh in my mind. However, I've had a pretty hectic week. I had time for a couple impromptu polish changes, but every time I sat down to work on my posts about them - I fell asleep!

This is the manicure that I followed up my 'Cream Knit Mani' with. The Cream Knit Mani started chipping a bit, so that prompted this impromptu mani:

Red and Gold Heart Mani

I remember it took a while for me to decide what to do for this manicure. I always find it difficult to choose a theme for a manicure without inspiration. When my decision to do a mani comes about because I'm 'over' my old one, as opposed to because I have a great idea for the next one, I find it very easy to get overwhelmed by options.

That's why I tend to do basic nail stamping mani's for these situations. I usually try to use something new. Sometimes, I'll use a polish or plate that I haven't used before, because I'm always trying to decrease the amount of 'untrieds' in my collection. Other times, I'll try out a new tool or technique, because I'm also trying to improve my nail art skill set. For this manicure, both the red polish I used as my base colour, and the heart-themed stamping plate were previously untried.

Polishes Used

The polishes I used were China Glaze's 'Seeing Red' from The Giver Limited Edition Collection, and Sally Hansen Color Foil in 'Liquid Gold'. 'Seeing Red' was one of the polishes I picked up last week for only a dollar during Sally Beauty Supply's 'Black Friday' sale! The plate I used was Messy Mansion plate MM31, 'Valentine's Day'.

I also did another yet un-posted impromptu manicure following this one.  Stay tuned to hear about that in my next post.

Burgundy and Silver Halloween Manicure

Today I have a quick and easy Halloween manicure to share:

Burgundy and Silver Halloween Manicure

The polishes I used to create this look were Revlon's 'Divine', and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in 'Silver Sweep'. The deep red colour of 'Divine' kind of reminded me of the colour of dried blood, so it seemed perfect for Halloween. I chose silver as the stamping colour because of the sharp contrast it would provide against the base colour.

Polishes Used

I used Messy Mansion's Halloween Themed plate MM11 for the stamping. I really love the images on this plate - especially the spooky word collage on my thumb, and the monster heads on my pinky! I'm probably going to have to come up with some pretty creative reasons to be able to use this plate throughout the year!

Green on Green Mani

Today I have an impromptu manicure to share. I got bored of my previous mani, and decided to change my polish. However, I didn't want to continue with the Moyou London Artist collection challenge in the middle of the week, because those manicures tend to take a long time to do - and if I'm going to spend that kind of time doing my nails, I prefer to do it on a weekend! So I decided to do a basic stamping manicure (only 2 colours).  In my last post, I mentioned how much I loved the combination of colours I used on my pinky fingers, and that I'd love to do a whole manicure with that combo some day in the future.  Well, that day has arrived! Here is the finished mani:

Green on Green Mani

I used Moyou London's Fashionista Collection 10 for the hound's-tooth pattern on my thumbs and ring fingers.  I used Messy Mansion plate MM16 'William Morris and Friends' for my index and middle fingers, and I recycled my pinky from my last manicure where I used Moyou London Artist Collection 5. The polishes I used were Essie 'Sew Psyched', and Maybelline Color Show 'Walk in the Park'.

Green on Green Mani

This manicure is kind of a hodge-podge of different patterns. I was trying to use different designs that I thought would work well with the colour combo. I chose the Messy Mansion plate images because they have a very woodsy feel to them, so I thought they would look great with the deep forest green. I chose the hound's-tooth image, because I've been really drawn to that pattern lately, and I just couldn't wait any longer to try out this plate! It also was a contrasting image that I thought would stand out as an accent. 

Polishes Used

I really love how the stamping turned out on this manicure, but I think altogether, the look is a little busy. If I had to do it again, I would probably stamp all of my nails with the image on my middle finger. It's so ornate and beautiful. Unfortunately, I think it gets a little lost when put beside all the other patterns that are going on.

Black Lace Mani

Today's manicure is a nice way to lighten to look of dark nail polish.  By using black lace images instead of a full black nail, you still get the chic, edginess of black nail polish, but with a bit more softness and sophistication. Now normally, I tend to shy away from doing a full set of black nails, but I'm rather pleased with how this manicure turned out:

Black Lace Mani - Right

I used Messy Mansion's Plate MM44 for the lace images. They were stamped with Konad Special Polish in Black.  I used Sally Hansen's 'Big Smoky Top Coat' as the base for this manicure. I put one coat of the smoky top coat over my regular base coat, and then stamped the image over it.  I followed up with a coat of my usual clear glossy topcoat, and then added nail art rhinestones to my ring fingers. I finished the manicure with another coat of clear, glossy topcoat over the rhinestones to seal them on the nail. 



Black Lace Mani - Left

The photos above are with flash. In normal lighting, the nails look a touch darker, but there still is enough contrast between the stamped image and the negative space that you can see the design. I must say that I'm really impressed with the MM44 plate. This was my first time using it, so just before I did my nails, I experimented with the images. This is the 'laciest' of all the lace plates I own - the images are more delicate and intricate than I've seen on other lace stamps. I really like it! I can't wait to try to incorporate these images into other manicures!

Polishes Used