Tuesdays NOTD!

Quick and dirty post for today ie, iphone pics cos I being lazy on holidays, hehe...I felt like putting on some brighter colors now that the sun seems to be coming out more, thank goodness. What's brighter than China Glaze Japanese Koi? Not much! I felt like my nails matched the workmens high-vis vests or witches hats (traffic cones)..what do you think? I did an accent nail with Inglot 205 which was kinda like fish food flakies and I love it! Going to gradient and stamp it tonight..can't wait :)

China Glaze Japanese Koi..4 coats!

Bottle pics, without and with flash..the flash shows the neon-ness!

 Dark neon orange in this light

 Traffic cone neon!

 Lighter neon orange in this light!

 Even with 4 coats you can see a bit of visible nail line. The coats did dry very quickly though!

 What I got in the mail yesterday!

Loving the neon orange more than I thought I would as I was going to stamp over it immediately but glad I didn't! The inglot flakie worked perfectly to look like glowey fish food flake, LOL.

The last pic is my Cheeky stamping plates which came in the mail yesterday. I can't wait to try out some of the larger plate designs tonight! 

Do you like the neon orange? Have you got your Cheeky Stamping plates yet??

Tropical stamping with Bahamian Escape!

So, as a tribute to my holidays I decided to do a post about China Glaze's Bahamian Escape! Sounds so lovely doesn't it? This a beautiful blue that I thought would stamp so well, so I tried it. My base color for this mani is China Glaze Towel Boy Toy (which wouldn't photograph color true!) There is a bit of color difference in the pics depending on the light as Towel Boyd had very neon-like shimmeryness.

 China Glaze Bahamian Escape

Bahamian Escape over Towel Boy Toy. I used a mix of Mash and Cheeky plates.

Who doesn't like Ninja Stars? :)

 Thumb has a dotty gradient :)

 Ninja Stars!

Flaming blue stamp!

 Unchain my fingernail :)

 All flowered up :)

As you can see, no theme here! LOL

Bahamian Escape was actually really easy to stamp with, I was very impressed. I had no particular theme (as often happens with my stamping), I just chose plates that interested me :) I really like all the stamps so there is no point trying to pick one out. If you had a gun to my head I would say the blue flame stamp had a slight edge to the others!

Hope you like the blue on blue combo! :)

Essie Dive Bar- Gradient and Stamping :)

As promised this is where the mani went after I applied Essie Dive Bar. I admired her for a day, then decided I would do a gradient. I was going to make her firey red at the tips but then thought I would go more subtle by piling on the blue. So, for the gradient I used Essie Dive Bar as the base, Dive Bar at the top of the gradient, China Glaze Rodeo Fanatic in the middle and OPI Swimsuit, Nailed it! at the tips. 

L-R Essie Dive Bar, China Glaze Rodeo Fanatic and OPI Swimsuit, Nailed It!

 Gorgeous Blue Gradient!

 Just love how the graduation looks here :)

Without Flash

With Flash! 

Now for the stamping portion of this program! For the stamping I used China Glaze Millennium and a mixture of Cheeky, Bundlemonster and Mash plates. I applied China Glaze Wireless Holographic top coat to 2 of my fingers for a bit of changeup.

Left Hand- Love!

Left Thumb

Right Hand

Right Thumb

Dark Blue in this light

Lighter Blue in this light

Gradient with Flash!

I am super in love with how this turned out! The blue gradient was really pretty and whilst the stamping was a bit OTT, I LOVED it. Haven't stamped up a storm in ages. My girlfriend said her fav finger was the stars one in the pic above but I loved the overall look of my left hand in the very first pic. I love how you can create a mani that is just so different depending on how you look at it. Makes it hard to just go back to a single polish!

Hope you liked the gradient/stamping! Now I am off to work to save lives....or something, LOL.

Zoya Marina and Cheeky Plates!

Zoya Marina, what can I say! One of the 50 shades of grey and she is oh so pretty with her dark greyness with blue shimmer! Zoya Marina I bought from a blog sale and after my bubble nightmare with Kelly I was a bit trepidatious with Marina. Luckily Marina applied lovely and bubble free. These few Zoyas have really given me a taste for their polishes and I will be picking up some more colors in the near future. Onto Marina!

 Zoya Marina without and with flash. Grey with blue shimmer!

 Steel Grey

Grey and slight blue shimmer :)

Grey with shimmer tips :) Pretty and misty looking to me here.

Blue Shimmer!

Marina is a lovely grey with beautiful blue shimmer and she is a welcome chick in my polish collection, LOL. I have been lusting after Sooki, Zuzu and FeiFei recently so watch out girls..I will hunt you down!

On another note, Cheeky Summer 2012 plates were released today, finally! I have put in my order as I lurve my stamping nail art. It compensates for my natural no talent at anything artistic although I do really great stick men. Since polish is color based, I do pretty well as I love colors and combining them and stamping appeals to me sense of order and neatness :) Here is a pic of the Cheeky Plates!

I may have also slipped Jumbo Nail Plate 12 in as well due to free shipping, woot! Very excited to have the flame stamp design and the cheats chevron :)

You can see and buy the new Summer 2012 and Jumbo plates here so check them out if you are into your nail stamping!

That's it for tonight, hope you liked Marina and if you ordered your Cheeky plates, look forward to them as much as I do! :)

Cheeky Plates and Kleancolor Military Green

I managed to go a whole day with plain (duochromey) nails with OPI's Just Spotted the Lizard before sitting down and trying to decide on how to glamorize them just that bit more :) Lo and behold when I came home very late from my shift last night the stars had aligned and my Cheeky Plates had arrived! 
The Cheeky Plates 2012 are the second version of their stamping plates, until now there has been no international shipping. I ordered a set as soon as I heard they were available and the expidited shipping was only a $1more. They arrived within 2 weeks and I was very excited to get them.

 The package from Hong Kong, via Canadian ordering :)

Plates with the Blue Plastic

The plate designs closer from the amazon.ca website

The plates themselves look exactly like the Bundle Monster plates when you remove the blue plastic. The interesting thing about these plates is that they are non consecutively number after 17! It jumps to 20 and then continues until it skipps28 and ends in 29. So strange. I thought I was missing plates initially :/ So, how do they print? Pretty darned well. There is a slight technique difference in these plates, less firm scraping and a bit more light handed. The designs are awesome and I was excited to try a few :)

Anyways, on to the application of a few of the designs. I couldn't decide so I did 14 different ones! LOL. To stamp I used Kleancolor Military Green (105) and did some accent glitter with China Glaze Jade-d Crackle Glitter.  No I didn't use it as a crackle but it worked just as well as plain 'ole glitter and the color match was great. Top coat was Seche Vite.

Left Hand with Jade-d on Ring finger

Left Thumb, the bow tip is the Cheeky design, the other is from an OB plate, Jade-d accents

Left hand with Flash.

Right Hand using Cheeky Plates, Jade-d on Ring Finger, ring finger looks a little bald but it was just the light!

 Right Thumb, Jade-d accents

With Flash (and cleaned up a bit more!)

The photos don't do this justice, it was pretty late and they reflectiveness of the polish gets in the way of great pics :( I was really happy with how the Kleancolor complimented the Gold-Green shift and the Jade-d gave it a bit more bling. I can't wait to perfect the Cheeky designs and use them again.