Happy Easter!!!

Easter Sunday at my house starts with an Easter egg hunt so this was the inspiration for today's mani.  This is my Easter egg hunt mani!

Started with a base of two coats of NCLA AM: Beauty Sleep, PM: Shopping Spree from the Spring 2013 Life's A Beach collection, another polish sent for review by Nail Polish Canada.  This is two coats topped with SV.  NCLA AM: Beauty Sleep, PM: Shopping Spree is a smidgen darker in real life and is a very light mint green which isn't so obvious in these pix.  I don't have another polish this shade in my stash and it was a great creme base to highlight stamping.

I didn't take too many pix as I went along but this is two stamper decals (basket, plate T21 and kids, B.1) using assortment of Konad special polishes.  Other plates used were A35 (eggs on ring and index), Nailways Easter plate (eggs under basket on middle and bunny on pinky), HD-A (Happy Easter on thumb as well as all the grass) and Big SdP 0 (little bird on middle above basket).

Added a few dots (of course!) on the eggs on the middle and ring finger eggs for decoration.

Topped with SV.

Hopefully you had a fantastic Easter weekend; I just got home from having Easter dinner with my family and I'm still stuffed as I type this a few hours later!  And the kids had another Easter egg hunt this afternoon with all their cousins which was a lot of fun for them!

Thanks for looking!!

Colourful Easter Bunnies

A quick Easter mani I did last night!

Started with a base of two coats of OPI My Vampire is Buff; topped with SV.

Stamped using plate XXL Big SdP 2.  Stamping polishes used, starting at the thumb and going clockwise, Sally Hansen Instra Dri Heat Flash, Sally Hansen Instra Dri Fast Fuchsia, Konad yellow special polish, Sally Hansen Lickety-Split Lime and Sally Hansen Blue By! (One of the green bunnies didn't stamp too well but I just filled it in with a bit of polish using a brush as you can tell two pictures below.)

I debated on whether or not to add some dots...I thought if I do any more dotty mani's, I'm going to have to change the name of my blog to the Canadian Dotting Fanatic...but ultimately decided to add them anyway.

Topped with SV.

 

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

Holo Hoppers

Here's another Easter mani; unfortunately, I'm a little later posting that I planned as I was too busy with life to get round to posting it any earlier.  This time, I was trying to come up with something a little different rather than the traditional colour schemes of Easter and decided to do a holo Easter mani.

Started with a base of two coats each of FingerPaints Black Expressionism and Color Club Harp On It; the black has been topped with SV but the holo was not.  (It seems I deleted the uploaded pix inadvertently because blogger was acting all funky and I've already deleted the original from the camera source but I'm sure you get the jest of how it looked!)

Stamped with Konad black special polish and CC Harp On It using fauxnad AT02 (pinky and partial egg on thumb), HD-B (middle, ring and index finger), W105 (zigzag egg on thumb) and Nailways 06 (small bunnies on thumb).

Added a few dots using the same polishes.

Topped with Sally Hansen Diamond Flash Fast Dry topcoat.  The holo stamping and dots really popped with the topcoat!

The next day, I took a pix outside in overcast skies; you can see the stamping better without all the holo glare.

More pix because I just can't pick one! 

Thanks for looking!

Let The Easter Mani's Begin!!!

Easter snuck up on me; it seems we just got over St. Patrick's Day mani's and for some reason, I thought I had a few weeks to get a few Easter mani's ready to post; I guess it's a little earlier than normal, which is why I thought I had more time.  Anyhooo, here's the first Easter mani I'm sharing.

Started with a base of two coats of Lime Crime Milky Ways; this is two coats then topped with SV.  I was going for a colour to mimic the colour of egg shells, more off white, but this polish is a little more tinted than I was expecting.  

Stamped using HD-A (thumb, middle and all the eggs) and HD-B (pinky) using Beautiful Scratchers green stamping polish and Konad special polishes in pastel yellow, pastel blue, pastel lilac and pastel pink. 

Added a few random dots using the same colours.

Topped with SV.

A pix in natural daylight (overcast).

I might as well name this weeks posts Easter Week...as I'm sure that's all I'll be featuring for the next little while being the holiday kind of gal I am!

Thanks for looking!

Spring Flowers

This weeks FB Adventures in Stamping challenge was spring flowers.  This is what I came up with.

Started with a base of two coats of two coats of L'Oreal Royally Yours, topped with SV.

Did a few stamper decals for the spring scene.  This is from Lilic's A03.  All polishes are Konad special polishes.

Ladybugs from Lilic's A01.

Both tulip images is from Lilic's A03; I didn't add the butterfly in the image below as I planned on stamping above it.

I already had this one applied before I realized that I hadn't taken a pix of it!  This image was too large for my nail so I tried to position it as best as I could.

Turned out OK.  This is my fave finger (er, thumb!) of the bunch!

After applying all the stamper decals and topping with SV, added a few images to the pinky; CH36 (sun and cloud) and Apipila G04 (bee).  While I had planned on stamping above the tulips on the middle finger, the image was so large that I didn't really have a lot of space so decided to leave as is. 

I didn't do a terribly great job of keeping these stamper decals wrinkle free so you can see the wrinkles quite a bit.  Only visible in macro though so I can live with it!

Thanks for looking!

Scooby Doo and Shaggy, Too!

Isn't it great that there are so many stamping image options nowadays?  So cool that we have more than flowers and butterflies to stamp, right?  (Lol, ironically, my next post is going to be flowers and butterflies for the AiS FB spring challenge!)  Anyhooo, a fairly new plate that I picked up not too long ago has a bunch of cartoon characters; this is a mani I came up with!

Base polishes used, starting at thumb and going clockwise, are L'Oreal New Money, Color Club Pink Flame, China Glaze Bahamian Escape, Sally Hansen Insta-dri Orange Impulse and OPI Funky Dunkey.  All two coats, topped with SV.

I've had Scooby and Shaggy stamper decals sitting for a while now; since before St. Patrick's Day but haven't had a chance to use them as I was doing St. Paddy's Day and various challenge mani's.  So I finally decided to do a mani using them.  These are the stamper decals I had made using 12-56S.

When I went to take them off, I guess they have been sitting too long and had over dried.  While I was able to salvage Shaggy, Scooby Doo fell apart and was unusable (maybe I should have posted this in my last fail post!)

Seeing how I already had the mani planned,  I went ahead with the mani anyway.  Applied the stamper decal to the thumb (and didn't do a great job of painting it, I see!) and just stamped in Scooby Doo using 12-56S with black Konad special polish.  The other plates used were OMG unnamed XL (peace symbol) and fauxnad AT06 (flowers).  Stamping polishes used were FUN stamping polishes in Bubble Blue, Mango Shake and Cotton Candy and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Lickity Split Lime and Orange Impulse.

Topped with SV.

I had only done the two stamper decals so only had them to use; decided to do my right hand slightly different using same stamping polishes, but used SdP 67 for the image. (Please excuse horrible cleanup, hangnails and terribly dry cuticles!)

Topped with SV.  I really like the colour combinations on the thumb and index finger; I'll have to come up with a mani to put these colours to use sometime soon!

The 12-56S plate is available here via Chocolate Vanity's Etsy shop.  Please note that 12-56 has larger images than the 12-56S. (I have the 12-56 plate too; most of the images are too large to fit entirely on a nail, I guess unless you have terribly large/wide or long nails, which I don't!).  The 12-56S plate is slightly different; a lot of the images are the same but smaller in size but some of the images are different from the 12-56 plate.  Some of the images on my 12-56 plate don't stamp 100%, I seem to think there was a couple on the 12-56S plate that didn't stamp clearly, but the quality was better than the original 12-56.  I have read mixed results on FB groups of the quality on these plates; I can say mine are generally OK, recognizing that all don't stamp well on the 12-56 plus there is the size issue, but not everyone has received stampable plates.  I did contact the owner of the Etsy shop and worked out an agreeable arrangement regarding the 12-56 plate.

When I received my 12-56S plate, I did some sample testing on scrap paper (I've edited some of the words, phone numbers, etc. on the paper), which is below.

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

A Couple Fails

I'm sure we all have them; nail fails....these are a couple of mani's that just didn't float my boat but thought I would share anyway. 

DS Shimmer should fix everything...and while it saved this mani somewhat, it still was a fail to me.  Started with a base of two coats of Quo by Orly Social Butterfly.  This is two coats; no topcoat.  I was disappointed from the get go with this polish; I was sooo hoping that the beautiful shimmer in the bottle would show up on my nails, but it never.  If you click on the pix, you can see the shimmer in the bottle and that was really what I was hoping to see on my nails, but nope.

Then it dried matte-like....and while I'm generally a fan of matte, I wasn't into this AT ALL.  Maybe because I was still missing the shimmer....

The failures continue....stamped using Konad special polish in royal purple using an image from DRK-A which would have been OK except my stamping *skill* (and I say that loosely!), alluded me and had a mis-stamp of some sort on most fingers.  Look quickly and then look away!

The thumb was particularly bad but my strategic camera pix placement hid most of it! I tried to save the mani with OPI DS Shimmer (which is the first pix), because, let's face it, DS Shimmer makes everything awesome.  It helped a little, but still, fail to me.

Another mani I had high hopes for, but was less than thrilled with the results.  Boring, mis-stamped...*sigh*

Started with a base of two coats of NYX Girls Muted Lavender; no top coat.

I've seen lots of mani's stamped successfully with Color Club Wild at Heart, so I thought I'd try it myself; but no holo shimmer in the stamping and stamping fail on several fingers again.  The plate used was Pueen 18. 

Finished with SV which is the first pix shown.  Let's say it all together now.....F A I  L.

Well, I guess they can't all be winners...and don't I know it.  The only good thing about fails, is that it's just polish...easily removed and there's a new canvass for the next mani...which hopefully isn't a fail!

Have a great weekend!

Edit:  I thought I'd share this too....for those of you who are like me and don't have access to Color Club nail polishes and were looking for the 2013 Halo Hues, Nail Polish Canada now has them in stock!  While I was able to get the 2012 collex at a local retail store, Designer Cosmetics, I've called them umpteen times since they've been released, so often I'm sure they were sick of hearing from me and they have never been in stock (not to mention that this would only help out those in the GTA anyway)....but they are now available at Nail Polish Canada!

 



WingDustCollections Ocean Tears

A couple months ago, I was browsing a FB group I belong to and there was a thread were someone had asked for known Canadian indie polish makers.  There were several suggestions and as I read through them, some of them I knew and had already been buying their polishes, but there was one I hadn't heard of, WingDustCollections.  So I wandered over to the WingDustCollections Etsy page and bought a few to try out, including this one, Ocean Tears. 

Started with a base of two coats of WingDust Ocean Tears, no topcoat. 

A bottle pix of Ocean Tears.

This was a mani I was wearing just before Valentine's Day but didn't get around to posting until now so these are V-Day images....plates used were DRK A (pinky and index), MM03 (thumb), BM 311 (middle) and Apipilia P.04 (ring) using Konad white special polish.

Topped with SV.

WingDustCollections is based out of Toronto Ontario; while I had bought these polishes from the Etsy store here; soon after my polishes arrived, llarowe had announced that she was stocking this line as well! 

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