New Year's!

Shocking! I didn't even post what holiday manicures I had done before I went out of town. Oh well! Onto this week's challenge that is about an hour away from being late.

The theme is New Year's and in my typical "wait til the last minute" fashion, I realized I didn't have a champagne glass stamp. I had to improvise with bubbles instead.

I fancied up my index and pinky finger with a smattering of glequins for good measure. The polish I used here was Champagne Kisses by China Glaze (which was super appropriate) with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Silver Sweep for the stamp.

China Glaze - Champagne Kisses

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri - Silver Sweep

NYC - Grand Central Station

Mash-50

Holly over Red

Today's challenge is "Over Red". Perfect opportunity to get in some holiday manicures that I've been slacking about. I'll be out of town over Christmas without my camera and nail stuff so I only have a couple of days to do some marathon holiday nail art.

I started off with Elmer's glue and a base of e.l.f. Smokin' Hot. China Glaze Pure Joy could be applied alone but didn't give clean edges. After several coats of NYC Grand Central Station to make the surface smooth, I stamped the holly with Wet n Wild French White Creme and painted green over the top with acrylic paint. The holly berries are glequins from the Born Pretty Store.

China Glaze - Pure Joy

e.l.f. - Smokin' Hot

Wet n Wild - French White Creme

NYC - Grand Central Station

Bundle Monster - BM14

Black and White Swan

This week is Metallic Madness. I've been trying a few different things with this plate for a while. This week's theme gave me the inspiration for something better!

I would say I took some liberties with the madness part of this challenge. I used China Glaze Stone Cold and Pure Ice Platinum. Stone Cold dries matte, but it ended up with a satin finish with a shiny topcoat. I had to use a different black for the black swan because the stamper couldn't fully pick up Stone Cold.

To get the swan facing the opposite direction, I stamped with my XL stamper and then onto my Salon Express stamper before my nail. This is definitely a trial and error method, but it eventually worked out well. I wasn't a fan of the asymmetrical wings on this plate, but it actually turned out better that way for me on this manicure. My pinky nail is way to small for the wing size on the left. I used the stamper transfer method on my right hand to get the wings on the correct fingers too.

China Glaze - Stone Cold

Pure Ice - Platinum

Wet n Wild - Black Creme

Orly - Top 2 Bottom

Shany - SH03

Stone Cold

There have been too many sales and bargains lately! I have so many untrieds to get to and I'm way behind on posting while the event is still ongoing. This one is a combo of the Sally's Beauty Supply half off clearance a while ago and this week's half off Sinful Colors Walgreen's sale.

The base color is China Glaze Stone Cold which I got for 50 cents. It doesn't even matter what the color looked like because I got it for 50 cents! When I tried it the other day I was pleasantly surprised it had a matte finish. I didn't actually leave it that way though because I liked the shinier finish with this manicure. The stamp is Bundle Monster with the Sinful Colors Hot Hot Heat from their new metallic collection. It's not quite metallic but it showed up decently over this dark gray.

China Glaze - Stone Cold

Sinful Colors - Hot Hot Heat

Orly - top 2 bottom

BM - 203

Butterfly Wing

Crisis averted! I had been brooding over the fact that I couldn't order the butterfly wing plate from Nailz Craze because my childlike nail beds are about half the size of her small wing image. Determined, I wondered how hard could it possibly be to paint some lines and dots on myself. It's not hard at all! It just takes patience. The most frustrating part is having to clean your brush after each nail in acetone to get rid of the goop that builds up from drying nail polish.

The lines could have been a little cleaner but this was a first try. I'll definitely be doing this again and trying different colors. I was trying to go for an iridescent wing look with China Glaze Rare & Radiant from their Bohemian collection. Again, I had issues capturing the duochrome on camera but from this angle you can see the blue around the edges.

China Glaze - Rare & Radiant

Wet n Wild - Black Creme

Wet n Wild - French White Creme

Pull Me Close

These may be more gray than blue but they're very acceptable for blue day at work! I mostly only use drugstore brands for the price, but I found some good deals in the clearance section at Sally's. I picked up another magnetic nail polish and a nail magnet. Both by China Glaze. I was really in love with the star effect. The first attempt was offset accidentally, but it worked out beautifully when the offsets matched up on side by side nails! This was a very easy manicure. Only 2 coats of Pull Me Close by China Glaze Magnetix with one round of magnets and a top coat of Seche Vite.

AND a macro shot because the first one really didn't do it justice!