Green Plaid Manicure

I decided to do a green plaid manicure as a warm-up to St Patrick's Day. Here's what I came up with:

For the plaid nails, I used Zoya 'Ireland' as the base, and I double-stamped plaid images from my UberChic Beauty stamping plate, 'Pretty in Plaid 2'. For the stamping, I used Zoya 'Hunter', and then Sally Hansen Color Foil 'Liquid Gold'. I did a sparkly hunter green accent nail on my ring finger, using Morgan Taylor 'Mistress of Mayhem', from their Fall 2020 'Disney Villains' collection. I also did a gold accent nail on my middle finger, using Rimmel 'Dazzle'.

To finish off the mani, I put on a layer of glossy topcoat - but then I decided it would look better matte! I then carefully applied a mattifying topcoat, trying to avoid putting it over the gold stamping,  so that the gold would still be super shiny.

All in all, I'm really happy with how this mani turned out. I purchased the 'Pretty in Plaid 2' plate relatively recently, and ever since, I've been wanting to do more plaid manicures. I'm glad that I was able to incorporate some plaid into this one!

Blue, Orange, and Silver Stamped and Dotted Manicure

I finally managed to do a little nail stamping! It's been a while, but it was fun to get back into it again. Here's what I came up with:

I started with a simple base of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure 'Calypso Blue'. Then I stamped some silver accents on my middle and ring fingers using an image from my ÜberChic Beauty ‘Culture Rich’ stamping plate. I finished it off by using a dotting tool to add orange dots on the nails.

The manicure came together rather quickly, as the embellishments were done pretty much at the spur of the moment. However, I really like how it turned out!

 

Blue and Silver Stamped Manicure featuring China Glaze 'Dorothy Who'

Polishes Used

China Glaze ‘Dorothy Who?’

Sally Hansen Color Foil ‘Sterling Silver’

Stamping Plate Used

Maniology/Bundle Monster ‘Chic Peek’ BM-XL476

ÜberChic Beauty Love and Marriage – Plate 02

Here's a little mani that I threw together with a glitter polish that I had handy, and some nearby stamping plates! This is the first time that I've used my bottle of China Glaze's 'Dorothy Who', so I'm glad I was able to take this one off the untried list... It truly is a lovely shade of blue! 

After painting my nails with the polish, I wanted to jazz the look up a bit with a little stamping. I had used the ÜberChic Beauty Love and Marriage 02 plate for my last manicure, the Burgundy and Gold Stamped Mani, and had not put the plate away yet, so I decided to use it again for this manicure. The negative space heart stamped image on my middle finger is from that plate. On my ring finger, I stamped a textural image from my Bundle Monster Chic Peek BM-SL476 plate.

Burgundy and Gold Stamped Mani

Polishes Used

Essie ‘Spiked with Style’

Sally Hansen Color Foil ‘Liquid Gold’

Stamping Plate Used

ÜberChic Beauty Love and Marriage – Plate 02

Today I have a really quick and easy manicure to share. It was created using a base of a gorgeous burgundy creme polish from Essie's Gel Couture line called 'Spiked with Style'. I then embelished my thumbs, middle and ring fingers with some images from ÜberChic Beauty plate 'Love and Marriage - 02', which I stamped in one my favourite gold polish for stamping, Sally Hansen's 'Liquid Gold' from the limited edition Color Foil line. I reviewed this line for my first ever post on this blog, back in July, 2014.  Aaaah, the memories!

My favourite part of this manicure is the elegant negative space heart with filigree background image that is stamped on the thumbnail...  it is so precious! The image is designed so beautifully - I just love it! I think that the colours I chose work really well with the design, and I'm also really impressed that I managed to centre the image quite nicely on the nail (well, at least I did on the hand that I photographed!  😉).  

Below I have a few additional shots of the manicure, arranged into a photo collage... Enjoy!

Metallic Red and Silver Stamped Mani

Today I have a simple nail stamping manicure to share using metallic red and silver polishes, and embellished with some nail art jewels:

Polishes Used	Stamping Plate Used
OPI ‘A Little Guilt Under the Kilt’	Über Mini: Texture-licious – Plate 3
Sally Hansen ‘Silver Sweep’*

*Original formula                 

I created this manicure by starting off with a base of metallic red nail polish, OPI's 'A Little Guilt Under the Kilt'. Next, I stamped 2 separate textural images from ÜberChic Beauty's ÜberMini 'Texture-licious' plate 3 on both my ring and middle fingers. I used a metallic silver polish for the stamping, my quickly depleting bottle of original formula Sally Hansen's 'Silver Sweep'. I completed the look by placing 2 colourless nail art jewels each, on my pinky and index fingers.

I did this manicure during the middle of the work week, so I didn't really have a lot of time for planning and execution. Typically in these situations, I would do a traditional manicure using just one shade of polish on all of my nails. However, I've been trying to get back into the habit of doing nail art regularly, so I decided to go a step further and do some basic nail stamping and add some embellishments. I'm really pleased with how the look turned out, and it has served as a reminder for me that a manicure does not have to be complicated or time-consuming to be beautiful. In fact, sometimes simpler is better, since I don't end up going over-board and doing way too much! 😄

Below, I've included a few additional pictures of the manicure:

'Panning for Gold' Stamped Glitter and Pond Manicure

Today's manicure is a water-themed look centred around the idea of panning for gold. I wanted to do a pond manicure using the Essie jelly polish collections that I've been playing around with for the last few posts, the 'Silk Watercolor' collection from 2015, and the new 'Glazed Days' collection released earlier this year.  

Polishes Used	Stamping Plates Used
Essie Silk Watercolor ‘Pen & Inky’	ÜberChic Beauty – Moroccan Delight
Essie Glazed Days ‘Ooh La Lolly’	Über Mini: Texture-licious – Plate 2
China Glaze ‘Water You Waiting For’
Sally Hansen Color Foil – 'Liquid Gold'

However, I wanted to do something a little different for the pond manicure, so I came up with the idea of irregular gold flakes visible through the layers of blue and teal jelly polish, as if they were small pieces of gold at the bottom of a river bed, being brought to the surface while panning for gold.  I used this concept for my index and middle fingers, using Essie jelly polishes 'Pen & Inky', and 'Ooh La Lolly', and then painted my other nails using 'Water You Waiting For', a gorgeous teal glitter from the China Glaze Cirque du Soleil 'Worlds Away' collection from Winter 2012. This polish was included in my 'Project Polish' list of polishes that I'm trying to use up soon(ish 😉). 

I finished the manicure by stamping a gold arabesque pattern over my ring finger as an accent, and then topping everything off with a quick dry, glossy top coat. The arabesque pattern was from the ÜberChic Beauty - 'Moroccan Delight' plate, while the gold flakes in the 'Pond' portion of the manicure were stamped from ÜberChic Beauty's Über Mini 'Texture-licious' plate 2. Below I have a collage featuring a few additional shots of the manicure.

I really like how this manicure turned out! It actually kind of reminds me of the 'Teal and Gold Crackle Sandwich' manicure I did years ago on this blog as part of my '2015 Crackle Polish Challenge'. 

I really love how the featured 'pond' portion of the mani turned out, but interestingly, this manicure has really revived my appreciation for the China Glaze glitter 'Water You Waiting For'. I've always loved the stunning, deep teal shade, but wearing it now, I see how well it works with my skin tone, and just how genuinely sparkly and beautiful it is!

Neutral Mani

Today I'm sharing a neutral, subdued and understated mani that still has a bit of style and creativity.

I don't typically do a lot of neutral manicures as I tend to favour fun and colourful looks that 'pop', however, I like to switch things up every once in a while too.  I actually was quite surprised by the neutral base colour that I used, 'Tickle my France-y'.  I had it in a miniature size and I'm pretty sure that this is the first time that I've used it.  I really liked how the colour worked with my skin tone. I was so impressed that I even went out and purchased a full sized bottle!  

I did a little bit of stamping on my nails using Uber Chic Beauty's 'Texture-licious plate 01', for a little bit of visual interest. And as an accent nail, I did a glitter gradient using Sally Hansen's 'Big Money', and then placed 3 nail gems down the middle of the nail for a bit of added bling.

Polishes Used

Polishes Used	Stamping Plate Used
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri 'Silver Sweep'	Uber Chic Beauty - Texture-licious-01
OPI 'Tickle my France-y'	Uber Mini Nail Stamp Plate
Sally Hansen Gem Crush 'Big Money'

I really like this textured stamping plate. It's such an easy way to spice up a simple mani without doing a lot of design work. Sometimes I want to paint my nails, and would love to do some nail art, but I'm not inspired to design an entire themed look. I'm thinking that these texture images would be perfect for those times. They should also be great for making textured backgrounds to double stamp, or place a decal over. I'm going to have to keep these handy to use a bit more frequently!

Red and Gold Mani using L'Oréal Paris Vernis à l'Huile - Rubis Folies

Today I have a quick manicure that I did to try out a new polish I purchased recently. This was my first time trying the L'Oréal Paris Colour Riche Vernis à l'Huile nail polish line.  I hope to do a  more in depth review later after trying some of the other colours that I purchased from the line.  For now, here's the manicure I created using colour 552 - Rubis Folies.

Polishes Used	Stamping Plate Used
L'Oréal Paris Vernis à l'Huile -	ÜberChic Beauty Love and Marriage -
552 – Rubis Folies	Plate 01
Sally Hansen Color Foil – 'Liquid Gold'

Polishes Used

Overall, I like the colour and the way the manicure turned out.  I was never really big on red polishes, but lately I've found myself more drawn to them.  I really enjoyed wearing this darker, blue based red on my nails.

Halloween Day Manicure featuring OPI 'Today I Accomplished Zero'

My manicure for Halloween was OK, but I was a little disappointed with it overall. I left everything to the last minute this year, so I didn't have much time to do my nails after getting everything ready, and packing my Halloween treat bags for shelling out. As a result, I had to rush through this manicure:

The manicure is cute, but I didn't have the time to re-do any wonky stamping image transfers, and/or fix any stamping errors. I also would have really liked to find a way to add some 'Wow! factor'.

Polishes Used

Konad Special Polish - White

OPI 'Today I Accomplished Zero'

The featured polish in this manicure was OPI 'Today I Accomplished Zero' from the Summer 2014 'Coca Cola' collection. It's funny that I was able to use 2 different polishes from that collection for both of my Halloween manicures this year. Here's a link to my previous 'Sparkly Halloween Jack-o-Lantern Mani', featuring OPI's 'Orange You Fantastic!' from the same collection.

My favourite parts of the manicure were the adorable 'scary cute' images on the thumb nails. The ghost image is from Bunny Nails plate HD-C, and the mummy image if from Überchic Beauty plate Halloween-03.  The remaining images from the manicure were stamped from Überchic Beauty Plate Halloween-04. Here's a close up shot of my thumb nails:

Have a safe and happy Halloween!!!

Sparkly Halloween Jack-o-Lantern Mani

Today I have a Halloween Manicure to Share:

I really wanted to do a Jack-o-Lantern manicure, and at first, I thought I would use a typical creme orange polish, and an orange glitter.  However, as I was looking through my collection for the orange glitter, I came across a glittery metallic coppery-orange polish that I thought would look amazing with the orange metallic glitter polish. I decided to use the two polishes for more of a Glam-o-Lantern look!

Here are the polishes I used:

Polishes Used

Polishes Used

OPI 'A Woman's Prague-ative'

Bundle Monster 'Straight Up Black'

OPI 'Orange You Fantastic!'

The orange metallic foil polish, 'A Woman's Prague-ative' is from OPI's Euro Centrale Collection from Spring 2013. The orange glitter polish 'Orange You Fantastic' was from OPI's Summer 2014 Coca-Cola Collection. I really can't get over how nice they look paired together!

For this manicure, my thumb, middle and ring finger on both hands are painted with a layer of 'A Woman's Prague-ative', and then with 2 layers of the glitter polish. When looking at it in real life, the glittery combination would sparkle through the full nail jack-o-lantern images stamped in black over the middle and ring finger nails. Unfortunately, that doesn't quite translate in the picture, so I just thought I'd mention it.

Below, are rotated images of my thumbnails which provide a better view of the cute Jack-o-Lantern Faces I stamped from Moyou London's 'Festive Collection' - plate 29.

My 'Thumb-o-Lanterns'

The stamped image on my middle fingers was from Bunny Nails plate HD-C, and the stamped image on my ring fingers was from ÜberChic Beauty plate Halloween-03.

Stamping Plates Used

Moyou London Festive Collection - 29

ÜberChic Beauty 'Halloween-03'

Bunny Nails Plate HD-C

All in all, I absolutely love the way this manicure turned out. I normally try not to repeat manicures, but I could definitely see myself using this polish combination again to do another 'Glam-o-Lantern' manicure in the future!

Mix and Match Mani

Today's manicure has a little bit of everything - I used crème polishes, metallic polishes, glitter polishes, nail stamping, light colours, darker colours, and two different but complimentary manicures on each hand! 

Purple and White Manicure

Today's manicure is a mix-match of purple polishes, with a white polish and some holographic glitter thrown in for good measure!

The inspiration for this manicure came from the NCLA's 'Let Them Eat Cake', the polish that I am wearing on my ring finger. I purchased this polish several months ago after becoming hopelessly smitten by the gorgeous mix of purples in its glitter colour palette. I remember being so eager to try it out when I first got itbut unfortunately, I just never got around to doing it. For this manicure, I decided that enough was enough - I resolved to design a manicure around this amazing polish in order to finally take it off my untried list!