OMD 31 Day Challenge - Day 16 - Ruffian/Half Moon

Hi everyone! It's hump day of the challenge!! After today we're officially on the later half of the challenge...but the themes get more complicated :)

Today is Ruffian/Half Moon and I decided to go with a Half Moon manicure. I've never done one before and I quite like how it looks :) It won't be the last one I do!

I decided to go with a very geometric look. I started with one quick coat of Wet N Wild Black Creme and then I stamped it with Gals plate 17. Once that was dry I used page protectors and went over the top portion of my nails with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Just in Lime! which was opaque enough to cover both the black and the white. I really like the juxtaposition of the triangles peeking through the curve.

A side note about the Gals plates, with the curved cutout at the bottom they're too small for my nails unless they're filed to their absolute shortest and even then it's a very precise operation to get the designs to fit. It's super disappointing because I really love some of the designs. Half moons seem to be a decent way to utilize some of the designs though, it's a good way to make them work. The plates are really challenging my creativity to use them...which is good in a way but sad because I just want them to work as full nail designs like they're intended. If they didn't do the little curved cutout at the bottom they would be much better :(

Thanks for reading!!

Check out the other mani's here

OMD 31 Day Challenge - Day 13 - Stars

It's Saturday! Woohoo!

Today is Day 13 - Stars of the OMD 31 Day Challenge. But before we get to that I have a polish I'd like to give a little love to. China Glaze Midtown Magic is my favorite polish I have!! I've yet to feature it here on the blog so I thought I should give it a little bit of special mention! It's a blackened burgundy base with loads of gorgeous gold shimmer in it. The shimmer changes color to bronzy-red through the base. I love this polish!! It looks black but with some awesome dimension!

Yummy! Look at that shimmer!!

Anyways for the star day of the challenge I've used two coats of Midtown Magic as my base and stamped over it using Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Silver Sweep. I love these two as a stamping combination...I've used them together several times.

On my thumb and pinky I've stamped the evenly spaced star design from Cheeky 4. On my pointer and middle finger I've used the randomly spaced and sized star design from Cheeky 5. On my ring finger I used the tiny UFO's from Cheeky 4 and a few of the individual star designs and the diamond shaped stars from Bundle Monster 311.

Thanks for reading!

Be sure to check out the other fantastic star mani's here

OMD 31 Day Challenge - Day 3 - Purple

Oh my! I'm super late today, barely squeaking the challenge in!! Today is day three of the challenge and the prompt says today is purple!

I have a geometric skittle manicure in purple for today. It's a lot of information so I'm going to break it down finger by finger:

• Pointer: two coats of Pure Ice New Lilac, stamped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Co-Bolt Blue and  a Fauxnad plate of m65
• Middle: two coats of Pure Ice New Lilac, stamped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Co-Bolt Blue and Gals Plate 35
• Ring: two coats of Pure Ice New Lilac, three royal blue square rhinestones
• Pinky: one coat of Pure Ice New Lilac as undies, then four thick coats of Pure Ice Cheatin

Wow, that was a lot of writing about what's going on in this mani! I bought Pure Ice New Lilac as a potential stamping polish, I'm not sure how well it's going to work. I'll have to give it a try in the nearish future!

Thanks for reading!

You can check out the other participants mani's here

Turquoise Lightening

Today I have a charcoal and turquoise skittlette manicure with a little bit of glitter!

I started with two coats of Barielle Coalest Day of the Year on my pointer, middle and pinky fingers. Coalest Day of the Year is a dark charcoal with silver shimmer in it. It could have been a one coater had I been careful in my application, but alas, I was not, thus two coats. I added a glitter gradient to my pinky finger using Sinful Colors Kissy and Nubar Sky Sparkle. The teal and blue glitters sparkle much more in person.

On my thumb and ring finger I started with three coats of China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise. Then I stamped using Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Gone Grey using Bundle Monster plate 305. This was my first time stamping with Gone Grey and it was not as opaque as I had hoped. I think it worked out ok though, I like the sort of translucent quality that it has, it makes the stamping look subtle. I really love the lightening stamp, the whole time I wore this mani I kept staring at it and thinking ZAP! Well...when I wasn't staring at the glitter I thought that! :o

Then the next day, just to see what it would look like matte, I used NYC Matte Crazy. And I LOVED it matte. I wore it for another couple days this way. I especially loved how the glitter popped against the matte Coalest Day of the Year.

Which do you prefer? Matte or shiny?

Thanks for reading!

Sinful Colors Cinderella Stamped

I had read all around on the blogosphere about Sinful Colors Cinderella and it was a lemming of mine. It's a beautiful light sky blue with a pink shimmer, and I was ecstatic when I found it on holidays last year. Even though I had read complaints about the formula I still was psyched to get it. The formula does leave quite a bit to be desired, it's really sheer and streaky. Since I'm fairly impatient and don't like to do multiple coats I sloped on three pretty thick coats for this manicure. It was fairly thick feeling on my nails which bothers me so next time I think I use it I think I'll exercise a bit more patience and use thinner coats. I really like the color though so will likely suffer through it's application issues again!

I stamped over top of Cinderella on my middle and ring fingers using Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Slick Slate and Bundle Monster plate 313. I used the two flowery images on the plate, to me they sort of look like mature dandelions ready to disintegrate in the wind on a summers day.

Thanks for reading!