Too special to wear: Color Club Miss Bliss and Sunday Stamping

Hi guys! Look at me, I'm on a roll here. Another post and it's only been a couple of days??

So, before I launch into the polish itself, let me tell you a little bit about me. I think there are two kinds of people in the world. When given a bunch of different items, there are those that will dive into the most interesting, the best loved items first and then move on to the less interesting ones later, if at all. Then there are those that will convince themselves that by plodding through the less interesting, less tasty stuff first, they can truly enjoy the best ones at the end. I'm part of the second group. I've always saved the best for last and when it comes to my nail polish collection, that means that I save all the "special" polish for a special time. As time has gone by, I've realized that I have a lot of shades that I haven't even tried because they are "too special to use just now". I've decided that I want to stop that. I have too many cool shades just sitting in my collection waiting for me to decide that now is the right time. So, now I'm going to bring them out and put them in a series of stuff I thought was too special to wear. I think you guys will be surprised by some of the polishes I put off for this reason.

The first one is Color Club Miss Bliss. I have a pretty decent collection of holographic polishes now but you guys haven't seen any of them because I kept thinking I didn't have a good enough reason to wear them yet. I had to have a cool design planned, a special occasion, it just wasn't sunny enough. Well, Miss Bliss is going to be the first representative of my holographic collection. This shade is from the Holographic Hues spring 2013 collection. I didn't have any plans for any designs when I first wore it, and that was kind of liberating!

The picture above is in sunlight. The picture below is in shade. I did end up putting a little something on the ring finger with striping tape and Color Club Eternal Bliss which you can see much better when it isn't in full sun.

And then....it just so happened that I had just enough time to use this mani as the base for the Sunday Stamping Challenge over at Adventures in Stamping Facebook group. The challenge was simple: use a plate that ends with the number 8. So, I did this...

This is a gradient stamping using three colors. Petites CQ Raspberry Ice, Petites CQ Black Diamond, SH Insta-Dri Pronto Purple. The plate is a Cheeky plate CH48.

This is the first time I've tried gradient stamping. I really liked it and it wasn't too hard! You may be able to see the gradient better here.

What do you guys think?

Sinful Colors Neptune Baby Shower mani and I'm on Facebook!!!

Hi everyone! Another long week where the days just flew by! So much so that I am only now finding the time to post this mani. 

First and foremost, I'm on Facebook!! You can find the link to my page in the row of buttons on the right side of this page ----->. If you like to be on Facebook, please "like" my page and you can follow along with the posts through that as well.

As promised, I am showing you guys the mani I wore for my baby shower. The main colors used are Sinful Colors Neptune and Orly Powder Puff. I've used the Orly in other manis before when I just want a slightly off white base. It works well to wear in two to three coats. Dries in a decent time and with careful application, doesn't have any annoying bald spots. 

The accent nails are done with a combination of stamping, dots and glitter...oh my! After stamping, I added little colored dots with SC Neptune and Revlon Wind Fall. The glitters were hand placed after fishing them out of the different glitter polishes listed below. Sounds more time consuming than it actually was! The glitter pieces looked like little flat jewels on my nails.

A sunlight picture.

The colors I used for these are:

         Sinful Colors Neptune

         Orly Powder Puff

         Revlon Wind Fall

         WnW Black for stamping

         Glitters from:

                  Jordana Cosmic

                  Love & Beauty Crystal/Multi

                  Love & Beauty Dark Blue

Stamping Plate Cheeky XL B

My invitation was the inspiration for the mani.

Hubby rating: 10/10. He loved it :-)

Orly Torrid Anniversary Mani

Hello folks. Last weekend my husband and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary. Can't believe it's been two years already! But a lot has happened in that time as well. Since it fell on a weekday, we didn't do any thing until Saturday when I we went out to a pretty sedate date night with a movie and dinner, in that order. We like to pretend we're old folks and catch matinee movies if possible. Plus with my pregnancy hunger pangs, it's better to have dinner earlier than later, anyway!

Of course, I had to have a mani for the occasion so I decided to borrow inspiration from our wedding invitations and try to recreate a portion of it. I used Orly Torrid for the look. For the accent nail, I used China Glaze Passion and one of the paisley images from the large Cheeky plate I. It had a few to choose from.

Here you can see the portion of the invitation that I wanted to mimic. I recently fell in love with the way the new Sinful Colors Matte top coat looks. It gives it a nice soft, glowy, satiny finish so I used that to mattify the finish of Torrid. This is not the first time I've used this top coat and I'll have to show you guys that look soon.

Below is the mani without any topcoat on it.

And here is Torrid, all by itself. 

I have so many reds like this now but I loved using Orly Torrid still. The formula was wonderful and this was two easy coats for full coverage. What do you guys think? Did I stick to the invitation look pretty well? I love the way it looks with the matte top coat.

Sinful Colors Athens Update

Hi everyone! So yesterday I showed you guys a mani with Sinful Colors Athens and a gradient tip with Zoya Ivanka. I said that I must have been channeling spring when I created it and you'll see why now.

I used China Glaze Passion for the stamping and the image came from the Cheeky plate CH33. Now, with the leaves, I really want spring to come already!!!

The first day I wore this mani out, I matched it with a pair of earrings that seemed to fit the color scheme perfectly. I tried to channel Marta's fabulous ability to create such gorgeous photos with jewelry on Chit Chat Nails but I feel like I just look awkward.

I don't know. What do you guys think? Maybe photographing with jewelry is not my thing or am I just being too critical?