Born Pretty Store stamping plate review Qgirl-016

Hi everybody! My Born Pretty Store review samples are here!! As a blogger who hasn't really received many samples for review in the past, I am inordinately excited to show you what I received. I will show you one manicure I did with the samples I received today but I'll show you more as time goes on. I have so many ideas!! Here's a sneak peek at what I received in the mail. A couple of stamping plates and a couple of water decals. I have never tried water decals before so I'm excited to try them out!!

For today's look, I went for a simple stamped manicure. I used the plate Qgirl-016 which looks like this:

It comes with a blue film that you have to remove to start using the plate. I went with a full nail design using the flowers on the top left corner of the plate. The base for this manicure is another Born Pretty Store holographic polish #12. It is a dark green holographic polish with the slightest lean towards being a dark teal.

Both of the above pictures were taken in my lightbox. The pictures below are in direct sunlight.

You can see the holo flame a little better in sunlight. In the interest of time (baby crying), I will show you the polish separately in a different post. I liked using this plate quite a bit. I stamped using Konad white stamping polish and the stamper I used is the round squishy stamper with the black body. Any mistakes you see are probably my fault rather than the fault of the plate. The etching seemed deep enough and all of the designs on the plate look very usable.

You can buy this exact plate here. To see other stamping plates and other nail art items visit the Born Pretty Store website. You can use the code "PRK31" for a 10% discount on your order at checkout. The code is not applicable to items that are already discounted.

I hope you enjoyed this post and stay tuned for future reviews of the items I showed you at the beginning of the post!

*items in this post were provided to me for honest review*

Shimmer Trisha gradient over L.A. Colors Dark Brown

Hello, hello!!

I'm here with another post! I forgot how somewhat time consuming creation of posts can be, and time is a hot commodity these days! For those who care, my family and I are adjusting to life with two little boys fairly well. It's still too early to have have come up with a solid routine but there is a decent one we've settled into that works for now. It will all change again when I have to go back to work so we'll see what happens then.

My post for you today is a simple glitter gradient with a Shimmer polish glitter called Trisha over L.A. Colors Dark Brown. It looks more like a burnt orange color to me and Trisha has orange glitter in it along with a multitude of other colors so that worked out well. I love love love how complex the Shimmer glitters are. I wish I could afford to just get every bottle they have but I contended myself with three...for now. 

I thought I'd bring some extra visual interest (aka, I was bored), by adding some dotted flowers to the ring finger. I think I should have just left it alone now and done the whole nail with glitter or just stuck with the gradient. I love how the glitter pops over black so maybe next time, that's what I should do. 

Hope you enjoyed this mani and thanks for looking!!

Rimmel Marine Blue and Sally Hansen Fedora flowers

Hi folks!

Depending on what part of the world you live in, winter has come. And no, that is not a Game of Thrones reference. I tried reading that book and I had to stop after the third really bad thing happened to a good person. A child, no less! This was only a few chapters into the first book and I couldn't go on. I've heard stories about the television series and I don't think I can watch that either. I see bad stuff in real life all the time, in the news, at work. I don't need it in my free time/escape activity as well. I tend to gravitate towards things that are happy, cute, pretty, funny...etc. I guess that explains my love of nail polish :-)

Ok, mini digression over. What was I saying again? Oh yeah, winter is here. Boo :-( That is all. I suppose I'll start doing winter themed manis just to make it a little more bearable but for now, here are some flowers. 

I know I did a similar thing for my baby shower mani, but here we have different colors and stamp pattern. I didn't add the glitters either. The teal polish here is Rimmel Marine Blue. The beige is Sally Hansen SCM Fedora and the white is a Forever 21 Love and Beauty polish called Jasmine. It's says it's scented but I can't really tell. The image is from the Pueen plate 25.

Borghese Sonata Berry Franken with freehand acrylic flowers

Hi guys!
This is a big weekend for me. I had my Seemantham today, which is a religious function for expectant mothers with their first child. Tomorrow is going to be my baby shower! Of course this weekend needs two manis, one for each function, right? I'll show you what I ended up wearing today and if I manage to find the time to change my mani for tomorrow's shower, I'll show you that in my next post.

Once upon a time when holographic nail polish was still hard to get, I had heard about a pigment called spectraflair that gave the elusive beautiful holographic rainbows finish to any polish it was added to. I got myself a packet of it, back when it was more easily available and this is the first polish I made with it. It's Borghese Sonata Berry with a ton of spectraflair pigment in it. I had no idea how to do it right and I think that was evident with this polish. I didn't get as strong of a rainbow with this as I wanted so it sat in the drawer until now. Now I'm kicking myself for holding off. I actually love the subtlety of the polish. And I'm kicking myself for not taking advantage of the China Glaze Hologlams clearance at Sally's. It never ends.

Inside or cloudy weather, it looks like your standard burgundy. Under the lightbox, it has a lovely sheen to it, because of the spectraflair pigment. In the sunlight, the rainbows come out!!

What I really love about this mani are the flowers. With the recent brushstroke manis, I became a little more comfortable using the nail art brushes and thought I could do little ragged flowers. They are my first attempt at freehand acrylic painting and I think they came out pretty well! It took a lot less time than I thought it would too, probably because I just did one nail.

Here are some pictures of the frankened polish by itself.

For a spectraflair franken, it's not that impressive. I love the color though and I am in love with the flowers!!

Orly Its Up to Blue update with flower accent

Hi! So as many of you might be aware, Google Reader is getting phased out. That's a bummer but I tend to use Blogger to catch up on all my blogs, anyway. Hopefully that doesn't get affected. For those of you looking for an alternate way to keep track of my posts, I have been on Bloglovin for some time now, as well as Hello Cotton. If you look over to the right, you will see the other ways in which you can follow me including Instagram and Tumblr. It doesn't matter how you choose to follow your blogs, just remember to add mine to your list if you are transferring out of Reader!!

Today, I'm going to show you one of my favorite manis ever!! This is the update to the mani I posted in my last post, where I showed you Orly It's Up to Blue mattified. That shiny ring finger was begging for some kind of detail so I ventured into the realm of freehand nail art. I took my inspiration from this pinterest photo. (Uh, a lot of inspiration) I just thought it looked so simple and pretty!

I think I could have used a little more practice to make the line and dots look better but I was pretty happy with the way it turned out!

What do you all think? Should I continue my exploration of freehand art? I think so! I love the results!

Flowers For Audrey - Skittlette contest runner up #2

Hello everyone! I don't know what happened since I got back from vacation but my nail mojo is all gone. Bad nail breaks, brilliant ideas with horrible execution, bad application, bubbles, smudges, chips all happening so much more than they used to last year! Not to mention I've inexplicably developed nausea every time I paint or even think about painting my nails. Sometimes it's worse than other times and I power through but I really hope it goes away soon. Good thing I have some pictures stored away for you guys for a rainy day!

This is the second of the three runner ups for the skittlette contest entry.

For this polish I used China Glaze For Audrey, Sinful Colors Rich in Heart and on the accent nail, the leaves are a combination of Revlon Emerald City and L'Oreal Tea and Crumpets. I did the flowers and leaves with a toothpick. I'm really a fan of these tiny flowers now. I think I've improved on my skills on those flowers even since this mani.

I definitely think this one is simpler than the other two, but I really like the way it looks. I love the color combination for some reason.

Mint Fizz and Flowers

Hi everyone! I hope December has been treating everyone well so far! It's a Monday but I can't help but be happy that this week is here. It's my birthday at the end of this week and I am that much closer to my vacation at the end of this month!! I always tend to be a little bit down around my birthday but I'm not going to let that happen this year. Anyone else get like that? I can't really explain the phenomenon.

Oh, did you notice my new blog header? I've been wanting to do that forever but I had to wait till I had accumulated enough posts so that I had a few good manis to choose from. Anyway, I am now posting the update to my Ulta Whatever Floats Your Moat mani that I posted last time. I added a coat of Revlon Mint Fizz, a semi sheer electric blue mint scented polish with blue microflakes in it. It seemed to go with Whatever Float Your Moat so well! It toned down the power of the blue just a bit but added this amazing shimmer and sparkle to it!

Next I added some roses on the ring finger with Love and Beauty Aqua. I've featured this polish a few times before. I think I love it! The flowers were inspired by Raggio di Luna. She does so many freehand flower manis that I just finally had to try my own! I think she does hers with acrylic paints and a nail art brush but I did these by plopping a drop of polish on the nail and drawing into it with a toothpick to take away polish along those lines. Once I get some brushes, I plan on using those to expand my drawing repertoire. So, should I do more flowers in the future? I think I will.

I've been lately getting into taking pictures with my phone and using various programs on the phone to touch it up a bit. I have a separate Instagram account where I usually post those but I thought I'd post a few of them here and there on this blog for your viewing pleasure. This is a willow tree in front of my parent's house. Eerie, isn't it?

Dotty Blue Flowers

Whoo!! This post actually features a current NOTD! I figured I could use my old ones as fill in's if I didn't have a current one to post.