Holloween 2013: PolishTBH Dark & Difficult Times and Thestral Harry Potter Inspired Nail Art

"Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy."

~ Albus Dumbledore

Lovely lacqueristas ;)

I hope everyone is doing fabulously on this sunny Sunday afternoon!  It's been quite the weekend including some lost nail mail so I'm feeling a bit frustrated, but plodding along fairly steadily all things considered.  Today I've got some gooduns for you ;) I have discovered another great indie brand that takes my breath away - PolishTBH.  Chrissy owner/creator of the brand created a collection that had me from the word go.  The Diagon Alley Collection  is an entire collection inspired by the infamous shopping grounds from the Harry Potter series.  There are 6 delicious shades in the collection 2 of which I will be featuring today along with some kick ass nail art!

Dark and Difficult Times is blueish gray polish that contains a mix of holo black and charcoal glitters and red and green color shifting flakies inspired by the sky in the setting of Harry Potter  It is incredibly beautiful and one of the main reasons I fell in love with this collection!  Though it is known that I have a horrible weakness when it comes to gray polishes.  This little precious flashes fire every time I look down.  It's opaque in 3 careful thin coats.  Because the base is a bit thick thinner coats work best with this polish.

Thestral is a sheer black jelly with crammed with various sized and shaped black matte and holo glitter, lavender hexes and micro silver glitter.  Inspired by that noble race of creatures that could only be seen by those who have viewed death. This polish was actually created by the 7 year old son of PolishTBH and the proceeds will be going to his new Xbox.  How cute!  Cuteness aside this polish is gorgeous!  Opaque again in three thin careful coats.  What's crazy is how complex this polish is.  It changes from angle to angle and has a lot of hidden depth.  Way to go Mikey!

Mani-louge

Base/Topcoat: Glitter Base (testing)/Sally Hanson Diamond Flash

Base colors:  PolishTBH Thestral & Dark & Difficult Times

Stamping Colors:  Essie Blue Rhapsody, Konad Black & White, Color Club Beyond

Stamping Plates:  Apipila P.10, Nailways Darker Period Halloween, Konad Charming Nails Plate

 

For the nail art I chose to use one of my new sets of plates from the latest collection of Nailways plates called Darker Period - Halloween.  I will do a separate post to review these later.  I also chose to use my newer Apipila plate P.10 which has a several awesome images from Harry Potter.  This manicure literally fell together with ease as a result. I also used a bit of advanced stamping technique here to double stamp which you can see in the lightning bolt and the spider web.

So thoughts? I enjoyed creating Halloween inspired nail art while keeping in mind the nostalgia I love so much about this series of books.  Having done this mani makes me want to read them all over again, but ain't nobody got time for that ;)  You can find the complete Diagon Alley Collection here on the PolishTBH website.  If you buy the whole collection you get a bonus cuticle oil which on top of smelling amazing are phenomenal! Alrighty thanks for reading and see you next post!

Stormy Weather

Hello polished prisoners,

Happy Monday my lovely ladies!  I hope you had a great weekend and are looking forward to the upcoming holidays. I am but I also have quite a bit of work coming up so things are gonna be hectic.  Well it is the holidays so I expect that.  In any event did you know a storm is coming?  Lightening strikes, moonlit sprinkles, and sunshowers ahead so beware and tuck all friable parts out of sight!

Mani-louge

Base: China Glaze Pelican Gray & Sinful Colors Cinderella

Sponging: OPI I Have A Herring Problem, Sinful Colors In the Mist, Darling Diva Polish Space Beetle, China Glaze Haunting, and Wet N' Wild Black Creme; Barielle Slate of Affairs, and Zoya Feifei

Stamping polishes: Konad Special Polish in Yellow, White, and Pastel Blue, China Glaze Millenium

Stamping Plates: Konad UK Charming Nails Plate Q1, Konad M79, Bunny Nails BuNa 01, BM01, and SH08

One of my favorite instagramers Storms and Stars was having a little contest with the theme storms and stars ;)  Initially, I had so many ideas but I loved the concept of starry showers and lightening the most and decided to go with that theme.  This one was actually another mani that was quite a bit of work but for several reasons including base complexity, stamp placement, and overall effect.  I've been told now for the umteenth time that I'm OCD and today I'd finally have to agree.  I will admit I couldn't settle well on this one and it took me a while to figure out what I wanted, but I love the final picture.

What do you ladies think?  One thing that bugged me is that I realized I don't have any plates with an image of the sun except for my BM01 plate and I have a lot of plates!  I would think the sun would be a common kind of image to put on a plate but for some reason it's not prevalent at least not in my collection.  Maybe I should buy more plates ;) ;)  Lol trust me when I say that's not it at all!  I already have too many and more coming.  I need to finish my stamping catalog one of these days and get that page up so you all can check it out.  In any event thank you so much for reading stay tuned for more fun!  Toodles...

New Konad Plate Published!

If you don't follow Nail Artists United you should!  These ladies are very inventive when it comes to creating new images for stamping nail art and even posted about creating their own DIY stamper created from gelatin.  That's what I call insanity of the best kind!  These ladies have been working very hard to create image plates for stamping and recently hit a wall in getting their plates produced - namely patent licensing issues behind the Konad system.  As such they really haven't been able to get their plates off the ground.  However they have recently annouced that the Konad UK company will be releasing one of their designs - the Charming Nails Plate (see plate below).  How awesome it that!

 The plate as of now can be purchased from Cesarsshop for 10 euros - you can contact them via cesarsshop@welho.com.    Alternatively, the plate can be added to your order from Konad UK with a purchase of 50 euros or more.   If you want to know more information about the plate head on over to Nail Artists United. I for one am gunning to pick up one of these ASAP! How about you?

UPDATE
I wrote to Satu, the owner of Cesearsshop, inquiring about the plate and she said that it would be fine to order directly from the site without first emailing.  Simply click the UK flag and this will switch the language to english.  If you are ordering 1-3 plates select "Letter" shipping for only 1 euro and if you are ordering > 3 plates you will have to choose the "toimitus EU:n sisalli" method for 17.70 euros.  Either way the seller is super friendly and it will be relatively easy to purchase here.  Visa or Mastercard only payments.  Happy shopping!