Stamping over gel with MM20

So the new MM20 image plate is here!!   And here is the first mani I put together with it.

I used Runway Professional Krewe Blue for the base (this is a SOG polish) then 1 coat of Nfu-Oh flakie on top, followed by stamping with Ulta3 "Hollywood".

I'm finding that this is becoming one of my "go to" plates along with MM06.  And I only just got it!

So what do you think?  Favorite image?

Beetle nails with MM17!

These were such fun to do... I painted half my nail with China Glaze "No Plain Jane" and the other half with China glaze "Unpredictable" and then stamped down the middle with image plate MM17.

The colours worked so well that it almost looks like they are painted just the one seriously duochrome polish!

Haulage! Loki's Lacquer and Femme Fatale orders arrived...

I picked up two parcels at the post office today... POLISH!

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.. I'm so excited about this haul, I don't even know where to start.

So first up... I should have just bought all Lokis Lacquer Game of Thrones collection when they came out.  Instead of one by one.  Still, only two to go!  This time around I bought "Lord of Winterfell" which is a really pretty cream.  I don't know why I didn't buy this in the first place because I like creams.  It has a gold shimmer in real life which is hard to see in the photos.

Here it is with all the ones I bought before, it's third from the left...

Lokis lacquer can be purchased from Etsy.

Also from Lokis Lacquer is the Rainbow collection.  I really can't wait to get playing with these.  They are all jellies of different colours.  I love jellies because I can paint them over stamping without having to do do stamping decals.

Aren't they purdy?

Next.. my order from Femme Fatale arrived.  I went a bits nuts at Sophies sale.   Oopppss.  As I was unpacking the box, I caught a glimpse of the bottom.  Kind of a sad feeling because that meant that I was at the end of revealing all the new pretties.   But still... NEW PRETTIES!

And pretty they are.

First off... more My Ten Friends.  I love MTF.  "Dirtball" is my all time favorite polish.

These are the ones I already have...

And these are the new guys..

Look!  More new guys I forgot to get in the picture...

And what would an indie haul be without some Hare and a Crow Toes?

And last but not least....  Femme fatale and an Emily De molly!!!

If I have time later on, I'll go back and fill in all the names.  Right now I just want to go and play...  ;)

Etude Icecreams.

So I've heard good things about the Etude icecream polishes, they are such lovely cremes and are getting good reviews, and as I'm going through a pastel phase right now (I keep buying them.. but not wearing them?!  sheesh!) Anyway, I just had to have them.  The cheapest place I could find them was KollectionK.com.  Unfortunately they didn't have the blue in stock and had to refund me for that, but otherwise they arrived fast and well packed.

Anyway... here they are!

Too cute, eh?

Hopefully I'll get some time to do some swatches of them soon.  After I've packed all the orders, loaded all the new products, made a video on making stamping images smaller, and.. and.. and....  LOL.  

More plates are on their way!

So I think it's pretty safe to say that I suck at blogging.  I really wanted a place where I could document my manis, but I keep forgetting to do it.  Doh.  I think I need to connect with other bloggers, be part of a community rather than just feeling like I'm blogging in a box on my own.  LOL

Anyway, more plates are coming, and my friend Anna has designed some as well.. they are just gorgeous and a couple are in production already!  Woo!  Her plates are quite different to mine, they remind me of the Lesly, Betina and Dashica plates a little.

Here's a sneak preview of the first one:

So what do you think?  I can't wait to get my hands on the lace at the bottom!!

So MM20 and MM16 are the new plates on their way.  I did have a sample of them both and have been playing around with them a little bit..  Here is MM16 over a gel french mani:

It's a tad bridal for me for everyday wear, but I love it anyway.  :)

So that's the news from me for now.  I'm going to spend the next few day watching the DHL site as my new batch of plates make their way from the manufacturers to here.  Can't hit that refresh button often enough.  LOL

So the new plates are here! MM14, MM17 and MM19.

Finally they arrived. 14kg of image plates!

As well as MM14, MM17 and MM19, I received samples of MM20 and MM16.  I threw together a couple of manis with a few of them just to play around...  (both are done over my french gel mani.)  So excited to try some more images out!

OMD Challenge Day 8 - Celtic Matte

Ok so this one is a bit out of order, but I love it.  It's Ulta3 midnight stamped with MM04 - St Patricks Day plate, and Rimmel matte topcoat.  I love how it turned out!

8. Matte :

OMD Challenge - Day 4, Fleur-De-Lis

For day 4, I took a bit of license with the them and used a polish with rainbow holo bits in it.  This one is Orly Glam FX "Sunglasses at night" over China Glaze Liquid Leather.  I did these while we were at some good friends watching the state of origin football match.  I only watch 3 football matches a year, and this was one of them.  I figured I might as well make the most of the time and do my nails.  :p

I couldn't take my eyes off these all day!

The white is Sinful Colors "Snow me white" stamped with SC "Black on Black".  Image plate is MM06 French Girl Plate. 

4. Black & White : 

OMD Challenge Day 3 - Purple nails.. cornflowers!

I had a bit of fun with these... got to pull the flakies out again! This one uses the cornflower images off MM07 (The Roses plate.)

The purple is Ulta3 "orchid"... a totally gorgeous purple and well worth the $2 price tag. Actually I'm really enjoying all of the Ulta3s I've bought.. nice to not have to pay expensive prices for China Glaze, O.P.I and still get a wonderful colour. In other news, I applied my first acrylic tip to my thumb nail. My thumb nails twist and so I can't get them to grow very long before they go wobbly looking and snap. It's not all that long, but longer than I would have been able to grow on my own. I'll get a photo tomorrow, I'm really pleased with the result. :)

3. Purple :

OMD Challenge, Day 2 - Blue Jeans

So last week I invested in a gel manicure lamp and some polishes. Part of my problem is changing manis.. and often if I'm swatching a new image plate, I'll only do 4 or 5 nails on one hand. My nails look a mess after all of this testing, and for someone in the nail art business, this is pretty uncool! So.. I bought the gel kit so that I could wear the gel underneath and then swatch on top without having to go right back to a clean slate after each swatch.

And it's working beautifully!

 I can do my mani over the top in regular polish (even glitter if I apply it right) and then take it off.. leaving the perfect gel manicure on day after day to strengthen my nails (because they come in for a ton of punishment) and give me something to walk out the door in that isn't completely trashed. Anyway, on to today's mani. First up is my blue manicure, I loved the blue glitter and the Essie I wore as a base color.. but I took this off pretty quickly as I wasn't that happy with the stamping. It got washed out and I didn't have time to do it again. :( and then there is my gel polish job, which emerged untouched after I removed the blue.

I love having the gel underneath!

2. Blue:

31 Day July Challenge... Day 1!

So I'm going to have another crack at a challenge.  Hopefully I'll do better this time around than I did in January when things petered out pretty quickly and life took over for me,  :(  Having said that, I'm not exactly off to a good start!!  It's 5th July and I haven't posted any manis yet!  I hope I'm forgiven.. I had to attend an out-of-town funeral on Tuesday and that has thrown things out quite a bit.  I guess better late than never!  Anyhow, the challenge is being run by three wonderful bloggers, craftynail.com, eeeeknailpolish.com and brigitsdigits.net.  There are prizes but I'm not really interested in them, no polish for us Aussie girls and I have 10 tons of nail art stuff already.  Lovely stuff, just not what I need right now. :)

So, heres the list of challenges day by day... I'll need to post a couple a day for a few days to catch up.

 The first challenge is pink.  I had lots of fun creating this mani!  I finally got to use my Pueen plates on the accent nail, and some of my Moon Candy flakies from Revlon.

The little dots and hearts are from image plate OB37.. such a cute plate!

The base colour is Sinful Colors Easy Going.  Hope you like it! Check out what the other folks are doing... there is some inspiring work there! 1. Pink:

Birds on a Wire - Image plate MM14

So the manufacturer sent me samples of the new upcoming birdie plate.  I love this plate!  (And I have misplaced this plate.  I've torn the house apart looking for it... maybe one of the kids used it as a coaster or something.  Grr!)

Anyway... this was the image I was really desperate to try out.. I used the same gradient as I used in the 2 wise men mani for the accent nail.  I though about doing the birds on the wire on all of the nails, but thought it might be a bit overwhelming so I only did it on 2 nails on each hand.

Pretty happy with how it turned out!  :)

3 new stamping plates are off to the manufacturers!

I've been busy over the last few weeks designing a few new stamping plates.  3 to be exact!  And today I'm going to introduce you t my new babies.  These should be available in the store in 6 - 8 weeks time... hopefully sooner!! 

Firstly we have "William Morris and friends".  William Morris was a fabric/wallpaper designer in the 1800s.  His designs are classic and beautiful and I just had to have them on my nails!  Here is the plate I have created in his honour:

The lines are very fine on this one, although my manufacturer assures me that they will work out OK, I have ordered a sample to make sure it is AOK before we take it to a full production run.

The next two are a pair, "In the Garden" and "in the forest".  It's winter here, (and we live in a cold part of the country!) I miss the outdoors and thought at least I could bring a little bit of the outside in, even if only on my nails!

Here is "In the Garden"

And last not least is "In the Forest"

I hope you like them!

(I will be releasing them for reservation once I know that they have been successfully manufactured :)  )

PINK nails for the ANM Challenge.

So this week the challenge was pink... better late than never I guess! I did these and they were a little bit overwhelming in real life, so I added the green thumbnail just to go all-out.  :p

Not sure what's going on with the colour adjustment, the first one is about right!

All of the polishes are from the current Savvy line, available from Priceline in Australia for $3.. not bad and there are some pretty colours there!

The image plate is Messy Mansion MM07.

Coffee Time! My Coffee themed nail art

So I've decided to try my hand at blogging again!  Today's nails use the following polishes:

1 x Duri
2 x OPI Wooden shoe like to know
Accent = 2 x Crows Toes "Horsesh!t"
Stamped with Konad black
Image plate MM10
2 x Seche Vite as a topcoat

Love this so much, I don't want to take it off.. but I have a ton to swatch.. bummr dude. :(

31 day Challenge - Day 4 - Pink!

I had so much fun with this one!

Pink always makes me feel a little girly.  The first time I ever got tipsy, it was on pink champagne.  So here's to you, Uncle Larry and your amazing bar!!

This is ChG "Strawberry fields" with Color Club "Cloud 9" sponged onto the tips, and stamped with MM02 for the bubbles in ChG Admire for the stamping.

31 Day Challenge - Day 3 - Gold!

I love gold.  Most of my manis have gold in them somewhere, but I must confess, this one looked much better in my head than it did on the nail!  I think the texture of the flakie doesn't work too well with the stamping.  It DID look better in real life than the photo.. small consolation, I guess.

This is ChG "Champagne Bubbles" with ChG "Midnight kisses sponged on the tips, all layered over with ChG "Lush and Luxe".  Stamped with M62.

31 Day Challenge - Day 2 - Silver!

Eep eep! Silver does suit me either, but I really liked how this one turned out. I was a bit naughty and added some red rhinestones.

It's ChG "Cheers to you" with tips sponged with ChG "Tinsel Town" and stamped with ChG "Awaken". Lots of SV and then the rhinestones.

I think they look a bit like Vampire Nails.