*Nothing to Disclose*

     We are up to the eighth week of the Untried A-Z challenge and that brings up to the letter H. What is the Untried A-Z challenge? Well, it's simple really, every other week we share a polish that corresponds with the appropriate letter. You can go be the brand name or polish name, share one polish or more. Really it's just a laid-back way to work through your untried polish and have a little fun doing it. I opted to go in alphabetical order as a way to help narrow down which untried polish to use since I often have a hard time picking out which polish I want to wear. This challenge is open to anyone who wants to participate, and you can do as many or as few prompts as you'd like. Now let's get letter H week started. 

     Once again I'm switching things up and sharing more than one polish with you today, in fact, I've got 3 polishes from Milani and two nail art looks for today's post! 

Hot Orchid

     

*Nothing to Disclose*

     I'm posting outside of my regular schedule for a special reason today. The members of The Stamping Shop group on Facebook have gotten together for a fun little collab for Groundhogs day and I thought it was a fun idea. Everyone who participated did a manicure with what they thought Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction would be. If they thought he would predict 6 more weeks of winter you did a winter themed manicure, if you thought he would predict an early spring you did a spring themed manicure. I am desperately hoping for an early spring. I've got the urge to go camping already and am over the cold temps of my Minnesota winter. It's been a mild one for snow but the temps have been brutally cold. And I'm cheating a little bit because I did this manicure back in early November but didn't have an appropriate time to share it until now. Hence the lush green grass for my background and beautiful sunlight to capture the shimmer. Oh, spring....hurry up and get here, I miss you!

     For this manicure, I started with a base of Black Cherry from the Orly Velvet Dreams Collection. This deep rich color was the inspiration for my entire manicure and has started a slight obsession of polishes similar to this. You might remember I recently shared with you Con Artist from Nvr Enuff another polish in this color family. Plus I may have ordered a few more recently that will be on the blog soon.

*Nothing to Disclose*

     It's time for another look from the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Challenge! I don't know if you know this but I am actually really enjoying this challenge. Normally I get stressed during a challenge and struggle to get my looks done. But not this time! And you want to know why? This challenge is set up a bit differently than most. For starters there is the option to do weekly manicures with one week dedicated to themes, and one to colors. Or you can do every other week and stick with themes only or colors only. For the color portion of the challenge each person is also assigned a pattern. The end result is 40 different looks all done in the same colors. As most of you know I opted to do the color challenge and you can see my previous looks using Teal, Orange, Purple and Green, Black and White, Grey, Glitter toppers, Pale Blue and 3 shades of Purple.  This posting every other week is just my speed and helps keep me relaxed and stress free for the challenge. 

     This week the color theme is Aqua or Turquoise  and my pattern prompt is water color. The water color technique is one that I love but have been afraid to attempt until now. And to be completely honest this is one look that I didn't nail, but now I have a little more confidence and look forward to trying again. After I watch a few more YouTube videos on how's it's done of course. 

*Nothing to Disclose*

     It's time once again for the monthly link up presented by the Facebook group Hobby Polish Bloggers. This months theme is fall colors.  I don't know about you but I absolutely love fall colors. The colder temperatures and the fact that winter is approaching I can do without, but the trees look so pretty. I look forward to the changing leaves, especially since we have a tree in our yard that naturally does a gradient of red, orange, yellow and green. Add to that they form an almost perfect ball shape and you can't help but marvel at its beauty.  I knew right away I wanted to incorporate my love for this tree and the changing leaves in my manicure. 

*Nothing to Disclose*

     Every month the members of Hobby Polish Bloggers or HPB for short pick a theme and do a link up. This months theme is Neons and we were allowed complete creativity for these manicures. As soon as I heard the theme I knew I wanted to do a take on the nail art I did over Fickle Fairy Potions Hopelessly Devoted. Unfortunately the longer I had to think about the idea the less confident I became. So I took to my Facebook page to ask for opinions. 

     I originally wanted a black base for this manicure but I knew that the neon would pop better over white. After putting it to a vote on Facebook, a white base had won and I went with it. But I still wanted to know how it would look over black and had to include it on one nail. This is what I came up with. 

*Nothing to Disclose*

       I wanted to end this weekly dedication to 4th if July nail art with a bang. And what better way to do that than with Fireworks! Sadly this ended up as my least favorite manicure of the bunch and that's mainly due to the issues I had while creating it. 

     Let me tell you if something could go wrong it did, right down to me spilling my first bottle of nail polish all over my floor. Of course, it had to be a blue bottle of polish. Thankfully it was hardwood and not carpet so the sugar trick worked for cleaning it up, but I had to race upstairs with wet polish on my hands to get the sugar and that ended up looking like a comedy routine. I'm happy to report that the bottle didn't break and nothing ended up stained. But let's get to the manicure, shall we...

*Nothing to Disclose*

     On Monday I showed you my failed attempt at making my own decal and the feedback and suggestions I got was so great that I decided to try it again. I figured the Hobby Polish Bloggers May link up would be the perfect time since the theme is May Flowers.

     Now this is not my original idea but I loved the look and knew I needed to try it myself. The original manicure was done by  Nailartstampingmania. <----( click here for the original post.)  Here is my version.

     What a difference the top coat makes! What I once thought was a difficult technique is now so easy! I can see myself doing this over and over again. Of course I'll need to pick up a few more stampers so the process goes a bit quicker. But man o man am I impressed with my results. Now as much as I want you all to sit here and admire my work, it's time to check out what everyone else has come up with. Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing!

*Nothing to Disclose*

     On Monday I showed you my failed attempt at making my own decal and the feedback and suggestions I got were so great that I decided to try it again. I figured the Hobby Polish Bloggers May link up would be a perfect time since the theme is May Flowers.

     Now, this is not my original idea but I loved the look and knew I needed to try it myself. The original manicure was done by  Nailartstampingmania. <----( click here for the original post.)  Here is my version.

     What a difference the top coat makes! What I once thought was a difficult technique is now so easy! I can see myself doing this over and over again. Of course, I'll need to pick up a few more stampers so the process goes a bit quicker. But man o man am I impressed with my results. Now as much as I want you all to sit here and admire my work, it's time to check out what everyone else has come up with. Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing!

*Press Sample*

     Last week I brought you the press release for the new Color AMP'D collection from Orly. Today I'm sharing my experience with this new 2 part color system with you.  I figured being gone on vacation was the perfect chance to test the wear time and I was not disappointed. I was sent Surfer Girl and the Flexible Sealcoat for this review.

     

     Surfer Girl is a bright neon pink with flashes of purple micro shimmer. Application was a little tricky compared to your typical nail polish but not so much that it was unusable. It just took a little getting used to. The first coat I applied a thin layer, which seemed to end up a little patchy. The second coat I used a bit more polish and it seemed to even out for the most part. But I still had some spots where you could tell the polish was uneven.  A thin 3rd layer evened everything out nicely. I think if I had started with a slightly thicker first coat I would have avoided most of the hassle.

     I topped everything off with a layer of the flexible seal coat and waited for it to dry. The sealcoat is not a quick dry top coat so I had to wait a bit longer for my nails to dry. After 3 minutes my nails were dry enough to handle a light touch. That wasn't long enough to wait to stamp over the nail however and I ended up with some wrinkles in my polish. But you'd never know that by looking at my pictures. When Orly said this has smudge proof technology they weren't kidding! I added another layer of the flexible sealcoat over my image and everything evened out. Right then and there I was impressed.  But I still needed to test the wear time.

     Over the last week I put my hands through some pretty rough conditions. I was in Northern Minnesota where my kids and I went hiking, collected rocks, skipped rocks into Lake Superior, and spent a lot of time outside in the cold. Not to mention I still had regular things to do like washing dishes, cooking, and giving baths. Oh and before we even left 8 inches of snow fell and I had to shovel my way out on top of scraping the ice off my car. It was the ice scraping that caused my first casualty and I tore the nail on my pointer finger causing a small chip in the polish. 

  

    This is day 4 of my wear test and you can see the small chip on my pointer finger. Other than that I still have a glossy finish on my nails and there is no sign of tip wear. My hands however are starting to show the effects of the cold weather. 

     After 6 days my manicure was starting to show definite signs on wear. After having to trim down the nail on my pointer finger the polish really started to chip. (I know if I hand't broken that nail this picture would have looked a lot different.) You can just start to see the signs of tip wear on my middle and ring fingers. But I still have a glossy shine. Oh and did I mention that I didn't wrap my tips during application? 6 days before showing tip wear without wrapped tips! I say the problems I had with application are more than worth it for 6 days on wear time. What do you think? 

     Orly Color AMP'D polishes are available exclusively at Target in 36 long lasting shades for $9.99 each. Or you can pick up a launch kit containing 1 flexible color and 1 Sealcoat for $14.99. Have you seen these popping up in your local Target yet?  Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing!

   

*Nothing to Disclose*

      How is everyone week going so far? I've got a quick post to share with you today. With spring fever hitting me hard this year I wanted something bright and cheery on my tips. I decided to try a neon gradient with a little stamping.  While this didn't turn out exactly like I had hoped I still though it looked pretty cool.

     I started with a white base and sponged on Orly Tropical Pop (yellow) Saturated (purple) Milani Pink Hottie and Fresh Teal. No matter what I did Saturated wanted to photograph blue and after about 100 photos I gave up on getting a color accurate picture. It really is this great intense purple color. While it's a great purple I think it is what went wrong with this manicure. Saturated ended up being too dark for the stamping to show up very well against.

*Nothing to Disclose*

     I hope everyone had a great weekend. The weather was so nice here that some friends and I got together for a BBQ and outside games. I might have even gotten a slight tan! I love the warmer weather and everything that it brings. For today's post I'm doing a comparison of white nail polishes and how well they stamp. You might remember my previous post about black nail polishes or you might not it was quite a few months ago. I sort of got sidetracked when it came to making this a series. oops! 

     For this comparison I used Konad stamping white, Sinful Colors Snow me White, Milani White on the Spot and Finger Paints Paper Mache and image plate SH213 from Shandy. Just like last time I wanted a design that had a lot of detail to it to really see just how well the polishes would work.  Let's take a look at my results. For this test I used Sally Girl Curfew as my base color. 

     As you can see there are a few patchy spot in the Konad design. This is due mainly to user error. I scraped a little too hard and removed a lot of polish. I didn't notice it until after the image was already on my nail.  Not the most accurate for testing I know but I think you can still get a good idea of how it works so I decided to not re-do it. 

     All 4 polishes stamp well but they have different opacity to them. Surprisingly the Milani has the most opaque image even though it was the thinnest when applying it on the stamp. Sinful colors did the next best job as far as a crisp clear image goes.  The Konad and Finger Paints seem to be equal in opacity.

    

   Over all based off of this experience Id have to say that Milani White on the Spot is the best nail polish for stamping out of these 4. Even beating out the stamping specific polish from Konad. Impressive considering it's also the oldest of the 4. I've had this bottle for almost 3 years now. What so you think of these results? Are you surprised at which one's stamped the best?  Do you have a favorite white polish to stamp with? Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing! 

*Nothing to Disclose*

     Good morning everyone. I'm posting a little later than normal today, the whole day light savings thing has really messed with my internal clock and has thrown everything off for me. Anyone else feeling it's effects? 

     Today I have a review of the Proclaim hair glue that people have been using  in nail art lately. Hair glue for nail art? No I'm not crazy, it works as a mask around your nails to help with clean up. The product  was first brought to my attention by Amanda of Amanda Loves Polish when she posted a quick video and I immediately knew I wanted to try it.  After all anything that can make clean up easier is my kind of product!

     I picked this bottle up at Sally's for about $1.37. It's available in 2 colors light and dark and is a much cheaper alternative than liquid palisade. I went with the dark version so I could make sure I would be able to see it on my skin. 

     Application was a bit tricky and I ended up making a bit of a mess. I posted a picture on IG and Facebook with it on my fingers and received a lot of comments about decanting it into an empty polish bottle. Unfortunately I don't have any empty bottles laying around so I had to improvise. I started with a base of Milani White on the Spot and applied the glue once that was dry. 

*Affiliate Link*

     
     Monday brings us to the 8th day of the 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art challenge, with the theme being Christmas Ornaments. This year I went a totally different direction than last year's ornament theme with some water decals from Born Pretty Store. I would have loved to try my hand at free hand ornaments but my nails are kind of short right now and I didn't think I would have enough space to paint them.

     For this manicure, I started out with one coat of Milani White on the Spot as a base for my gradient. I then sponged on Sinful Colors Sugar Rush and Sally Hansen Silver Sweep to create my gradient. When that dried I added a quick coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust for added Sparkle. Christmas Ornaments have to sparkle after all!