Who Needs Stamping...

...with polish this unique!!

No stamping on today's mani.....I was the lucky recipient of Lynnderella Connect the Dots, thanks to a swap recently. This is the mani I came up with.



Lynnderella polishes were created by the uber talented Lynnderella (Lynn) and have been seen on blogs fairly often recently as they are pretty awesome polishes, but oh, so elusive. Until recently, unless you were in the inner circle of Lynnderella and fortunate enough to be the recipient of one of her custom made polishes, you were pretty much out of luck in obtaining any of these creative, gorgeous, super unique polishes. However, recently she started selling them online and you can buy the polishes via her blog. Unfortunately, her e-store is only available for very brief periods of time until she closes her doors until the next sale....on top of this, delivery is not available outside of USA. Unless you are lucky enough to swap like me, or be part of a group order organized by a gal in US, unfortunately, these aren't that readily available for international sales. (There's also a five bottle minimum order).



This is Sally Hansen The Real Teal with a coat of Connect the Dots on top. I can't really say its a 'coat' of CtD as I had to kinda blob on the glitter ....there is a little bit of learning curve to applying the polish and I'm not sure if I've mastered it yet or not! But I absolutely adore this polish.....it is truly unique and there is nothing like it that I know of in my little part of the world. Every finger is different and little pieces of art...so cool!

Here is Sally Hansen The Real Teal. This is gorgeous all on its own. Click to enlarge to see the beautiful shimmer.



The first couple of times that Lynnderella opened her estore, I missed out on any part of a group order or anything. Then I was lucky enough to swap for a bottle and it arrived last week. About a week or so ago, her estore opened briefly and I was able to jump on part of a grouporder so I have a few more of these beautiful polishes on the way. Lucky for us international girls, there is now an etailer, Llarowe, who does ship worldwide that will be selling Lynnderella polishes starting December 2011. I hope to order a few more then, along with some other polishes not that readily available to me like Hits, A-England, etc.

I haven't seen a mani that I personally didn't like with Connect the Dots. It looks fantastic over top of pastels, skittles, neons...I've even seen it used as a gradient/kinda french tips and it was awesome as well. It is truly unique and I feel fortunate to own it!

Do you have any Lynnderella polishes? What's your favourite? I'd love to know your thoughts for when I (hope to) order in December!

Thanks for looking!

Vacation Nails-Part Three!

This post is a whole lot more than vacation nails....its experimenting with layering again, a fantastic swap, vacation pix, matte polish and frustration all bunched into one! Let me explain....

While I was on vacation, there were tons of lilies in bloom along the many lakes we seen. Most of the lily pads weren't visible as they were about 30 feet from shore. On one of my last days of vacation, I finally found a lake that had some close enough to the waters edge to took a few pix of the lilies close up. This was the mani that I came up with inspired by the lily pad pix I took.



I wanted a base colour to represent the darkness of the waters that the lily pads sit on...not too great of an intpretation if I have to spell it out, is it? lol! This was one coat of Bloom Mena topped with one coat of Sinful Nail Junkie.




Here's mani in progress:

One coat of Bloom Mena that I received from Kaz over at Pretty Random. I've been a follower of hers for a while as she has some really interesting posts about hard to finds, etc. When I stumbled upon a polish she was looking for at the supply place time forgot, I fired off an email offering up a swap if she was interested. In exchange, one of my lemmings was attained with Bloom Mena. While I had seen pix of it that showed holographic sparkle, it was barely visible and I had a hard time capturing it with my camera....maybe in the sun, it would be more visible, but when I'm taking my pix in the wee hours of the morning, the moon is out, so not the best pix...maybe another time, I'll be able to capture it. I was also surprised that this dried kinda matte; I'm sure it would be more spectacular with a shiny topcoat, but I knew I was going to be layering and stamping it so just left with no topcoat.



Then added a coat of Sinful Nail Junkie that I picked up on vacation in Haliburton. Taking pix of this mani frustrated me beyond belief! For the life of me, I could not accurately capture the colour/flecks, etc. of the layering in the pix. Then stamped with Konad IP m66, using Konad white special polish. I purposely only stamped the one finger as I wanted to take some pix in the morning to see if I could get more accurate shots so put on a coat of SV and off to bed I went. Unfortunately, when I woke up, discovered I had some shrinkage. Took another pix in the morning; this pix is a little bit more accurate.




Just before I took off the polish, I matted it for fun. The effect of the layering is a little bit more visible when it was matted. This was pretty cool...if not for the shrinkage.



Here's thumb comparison...excuse the hangnails!



And pix of lilies that were the inspiration. I so wanted to get better pix of this area as there were both yellow and white lilies, but couldn't get close enough as the shoreline was all boggy.



These were the pix I got at another area closer to shore....do you see the dragonfly in the pix?



One last pix...



Thx for looking!!

My 'Fuggen Ugly' Valentine's Mani

This is Manglaze Fuggen Ugly converted into yet another Valentine's manicure in my quest to stay away from the more traditional pinks and reds for all my Valentine's Day mani's....but I'm sure a pink or red will squeak in over the next few days!



Stamped using Sally Hansen Black Pearl Chrome and Tourmaline Chrome using fauxnad IP T22 and Konad M80. I guess I'm used to stamping right away with manis topcoated with SV cause when I stamped this, it wrinkled my middle finger a bit plus my french tip stamping skills went AWOL...no worries tho as its just a good reason to change my mani tonight!!

This gray matte was chosen as my mani colour as I really wanted to use more of my Sally Hansen chrome polishes after using Royal Purple Chrome in my last mani. I wanted a colour that would look cool with Black Pearl (which isn't really black but gray) and Tourmaline Chrome (which is the closest I have to a red chrome), as these old chrome polishes are great for stamping!

Here's mani with SV...




Here's the mani turned upside down so you can see the stamping a little better....


And Fuggen Ugly all by itself...I actually thought this polish applied better then the OPI matte, but maybe I was more careful applying it cause I knew mattes are so unforgiving!



Manglaze unfortunately isn't availabe in Canada (at least no place I've been in) but I was fortunte enough to swap for it. I'd love to swap for the other Manglaze mattes if anyone is interested!!

Thanks for looking!

My Very First Swap! China Glaze Shaken Not Stirred...

A lovely board member from The Netherlands and I recently exchanged some polishes and one of my lemmings was fulfilled...China Glaze Shaken Not Shirred. This shimmery polish is perfect for summer. I used a coat of white polish underneath as a base to hopefully make the colour pop-as I've never used the polish before, don't know if the results did it or not?

(Feel free to click on image for larger image-view cuticles at your own risk!)

After a couple of pictures, I topped with one thin coat of OPI ds Shimmer-holy smokeys-the sparkle is soooo cool! No manicure is complete until stamped-at least in my world! I didn't want to use a stamp that would cover the fantasticness (is that a word?) of this layering and sparkle, and was eyeing this stamp and design for a while but chicken to try it would as I would think it would not be forgiving if slightly not just so...and I was right. This is Amisy fauxnad D02.

(this was taken in full sun)

(Cause the sparkles made it difficult for the camera to focus, I took a pix in the shade just to capture the stamping a little better.)

Now I've had plenty of nail fails with stamping and those who do it knows it takes a bit of practise to line up and place the stamp where you want up. I nailed the first stamp -perfectly centered and straight in thumb...but ....it went downhill from there. Thank goodness you can use hand santizer immediately after swatching to remove stamp with no ill affect to the polish underneath! (A couple of nails I removed stamp a couple of times until it was just so and lined up decently. Priceless information for anyone not doing this already!) Stamped using Konad special polish in Royal Purple. I was happy with the end result of the stamping with them lining up pretty good and centered on the nail.

All in all, I was thrilled with how this sparkly mani turned out! Loved using ds shimmer for sparkly topcat-which was the first time -and am sure there will be many more mani's using it!

Thanks for looking!