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: