Hot Off The Stamping Press: Bunny Nails HD-C & HD-D Halloween Plates!

Hey polished prisoners,

There are so many HOT plates coming out right now it's really ridiculous!  Bundle Monster just realeased their new Make Your Own Set, Red Angel has a 2013 set, and waaay too many more to count.  I need to do a weekend round-up post just to keep up.  However today I've got some AMAZING ones! Let me tell you I have been a fan of Bunny Nails since waay back in the day essentially when I discovered her Angry Birds plate which was the first of its kind.  She has been slowly putting out holiday plates over the last 2 years.  This ridiculously cool HD small plates that were all Halloween themed and largely stole my heart.  Then she started with her larger HD Holiday plate series which encompassed most if not all of the major holidays including the 4th of July, Easter, New Years, Christmas and so on.  Well she's done it again releasing two more large HD plates entirely devoted to Halloween and Dios de Muertos!

Photo credit: Bunny Nails

The plates measure roughly 14.5 x 9.5cm while the full size images themselves measure approximately 2 x 2.5cm.

  Photo Credit: Bunny Nails

The images made me drool!  What are your favorites?  I'm in love with baby bat and dracula and the dancing skeleton.   Because of the time sensitivity of these I wanted to get the post out ASAP!  You can pre-order them now and the will ship out between 3-7 days depending when they land on her doorstep from the manufacturer.  The plates retail for $16.99 USD a plate with free world wide shipping.  Get them here at the ecrater store.  I've never been disappointed by her creations yet and I'm looking forward to these lovelies!  Thanks so much for reading and see you next post...

Protect The Tatas!!! Ahem I Mean Breast Cancer Awareness Mani Ahead...

Hello lovely ladies and possible gentlemen,

As you know in the lovely month of October we raise awareness to protecting ahem the tatas.  Ok so here's the deal-e-o.  I'm going to take this opportunity to educate because this is actually the arena that is a familiar domain for me in a professional sense.  So here we go!

Breast cancer, like prostate cancer for males, is the leading cause of death for women in the United States.  If you are a lady with lovely lady humps you owe it to yourself to regularly think about your breasts.  I rarely share this side of my world but I have a lot of experience with breast cancer patients.  I have scrubbed their mastectomies and the subsequent repairs.  I have held their hands while they have agonized with these decisions and unfortunately had a very close friend diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 25.  If you are a female aged 50 and over you need to have an annual mamogram.  If you are experiencing abnormal discharge from your nipples i.e. clear, greenish, blue, black, or brown you need to be evaluated.  Surprisingly bloody discharge is less likely to be a cancerous/malignant process.  If you feel a lump or mass that is NOT painful but constant and possibly growing over time you need to be evaluated.

What are things that increase your risk of breast cancer?  Earlier age of menarche (menses), age over 50, age at first childbirth (can offer protective benefit against breast cancer), personal history of abnormal biopsy such as ductal carcinoma in situ or lobar carcinoma in situ, first degree relatives (think mother, sister, brother, father) with breast cancer, breast density, estrogen and progesterone use, smoking, history of radiation to the chest (very pertinent for girls who had a childhood history of lymphoma or other types of cancer), post menopausal obesity and many more.  Let me say clearly these risk factors are completely inappropriate to gauge your possible future risk of developing breast cancer if you are a BRCA-1 or BRCA-2 gene mutation carrier.  African American ladies we are also at increased risk of developing breast cancer and having it detected at later stages with worse outcomes.  Be attentive!

Mani-louge

Basecoat/Topcoat:  CND Stickey/Poshe Fast Drying Top Coat

Base colors:  Essie French Affair and Fancy Gloss Barbie Girl

Stamping polish:  Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Fast Fuschia and Konad Special Polish in White

Stamping plates:  BM 315 & 321


 
 

Ok.  I'll stop there I don't want to turn this into a sermon, but this is a serious matter and should be taken as such.   My goal in life is proactivity not reactivity so there we have it.  Now interspersed through this little preaching session is my mani.  I wanted to step it up this year.  I went to my tried and true bundle monster plates and holographic polishes.  Thoughts?  I hope I didn't scare anyone here and if you want to know more information about breast cancer and your possible risks there are tables that can help you with risk stratification that you can check out this article here.  It's a bit science heavy but is one of the guidelines standard to current clinical practice!  If you want to skip all the jargon and just get to the meat and potatoes click here for a risk assessment tool provided by the national cancer institutes.

 I know I didn't talk much about this mani but.  The accent features an pink to white transition from Fancy Gloss.  It's opaque in 2 coats and has a very slight holographic shimmer than you can see faintly in the sunlight.  Despite my best attempts I couldn't really capture it.  You can find Barbie Girl by Fancy Gloss here.  In any event thanks so much for reading and protect the tatas!  See you next post

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!

Halloween 2013: Liquid Sky Lacquer Candy Corn Inspired Nail Art

Polished Prisoners,

It's that time of year again.  Yay for Halloween because it means I can go all out in my nail art!  I'm also looking forward to showing you all the awesome halloween inspired polish collections I got!  I don't know if a month is long enough!  I have so many amazing plates too.  It's really gonna be a push but let's try to do a lot shall we?  Today I have one of my favorite new brands to show you to kick things off Liquid Sky Lacquer which I spoke about in my floral appeal post.  I have a LOT of Carolyn's polishes.  I ended up going for the whole Halloween collection as well as it was seriously gorgeous.  To start things off I thought I show you some simple candy corn inspired nail art.

Mani-log

Base/Topcoat:  Glitter Removal Base (testing) & Poshe Fast Drying Topcoat

Base Color: Essie Bouncier It's Me

Glitter Topper:  Liquid Sky Lacquer Candy Corn

Accent:  Wet in Wild A Blank Canvas, China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, OPI A Good Mandarin Is Hard To Find

Candy Corn (the polish) is pretty much exactly what it sounds like matte white, yellow and orange hexes of varying sizes with yellow microglitter in a clear base.  It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to wear this and ultimately I found myself reaching for my tried and true brand - Essie.  Lol hardly surprising, but I chose one of the jellies from the summer collection, Bouncier It's Me because it provided a nice contrast for the glitter.

Bouncier It's Me! Perfect blue jelly.

I created a simple candy corn image across one nail as the accent and there you have it!  My first Halloween mani of the season.  I am not sure if Carolyn will be restocking the Halloween set again but the store reopens on October 8th so you can check it out to see if they will be available my guess is likely yes since she's very good about keeping her shop stocked.  I hope you enjoyed this simple mani cause it's only going to rev up from here!  Thanks for reading and see you next post!

Hot Off the Stamping Press: MoYou London Mother Earth Collection

‘Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.’

-Laurence J. Peter

Loyal Lacquer and Nail Art Enthusiasts,

I have some exciting news!  Lol I'm always excited about something especially when it comes to nail art. It's a bit pathetic but hey I'll take my joys where I can find them.  Anyway if you recall from my I'm Back! post I wrote about several new stamping plate makers who were up and coming.  One of those happened to be MoYou London.  If you don't know who this company is when you finish reading this post you surely will!   MoYou has created about 10 or 11 collections at this point inspired by a variety of themes including 80's, 70's, rockstars/music, japanese culture, nautical, travelling, hime/princesses, kittens/animals, and more.

I love everything this company does including something I have never in my life seen until they started releasing their special collection plates and that is full sized plate images!  I know you are wondering what I mean when I say that but I'll show you below.  Today I'm happy to announce the release of their newest collection inspired by Mother Earth, hence the quote above.  Anyway talk is cheap so let's get to the awe-inspiring pictures!

This is what I meant by the full-plate sized images.  It requires the skill of selecting out various elements from the image plate to create a cohesive mani.  Love this idea to DEATH!!!!

This one is my favorite! Peacocks <3 <3

How Garden of Eve!

OMG this one is adorbs - see the little Tanuki?!?

For some reason this one seems highly romantic to me.

Heidi-esque!

The idea behind this collection was actually suggested by a nail art enthusiast by the name of Joey Helland.  She actually wrote us an email  to MoYou suggesting the idea.  Pretty cool eh?  If you are interested in seeing a nail art idea or collection come to life don't be shy!  Email moyou at moyou at info@moyoumarketing dot com.  Sorry I didn't want them to get spammed so I separated it out so those little internet bots couldn't get a hold of the email.

Oh my so thoughts ladies?  Did your jaw just drop in amazement? I adore this company so very very much! The end result is that I own almost every single collection they are released so far!  Oh my greedy lol.  These plates retail for 4.99 euro's or roughly $7 USD. They will be releasing to pre-sale this Friday.  Are there any that you are interested in? Honestly this is such an innovative brand no matter what you choose you'll be pleased!  You can find the MoYou Store here or stalk them on Facebook here!  Happy shopping ladies ;) 

Floral Appeal feat Liquid Sky Lacquer Head To The Bahamas and Enchanted Forest

Hey lacquer ladies,

In the interim between my blogging I've discovered so many amazing brands.  One happens to be Liquid Sky Lacquer.  God I love this brand!  As a self admitted holo whore shopping on her site for me isa skin to Alice romping through wonderland.  She makes super holos and some of the most amazing holo transitional polishes I have encountered.  So today I have two of my favorites for you along with some lovely stamping featuring my new Winstonia plates.

Head To The Bahamas is a nude linear holo - be still my heart.  Absolutely flawless and self leveling.  Pictured here opaque in 2 coats.  Yum

Enchanted Forest is a deep evergreen linear holo.  It is rather intense,  but requires a great deal of build up about 3-4 coats since the polish is thin, but it's totally worth it.  I used it here to create a gradient.

The technique I used for the stamping is fairly advanced.  I used one of the newish square shaped plates W-04 to create the art.  Stamping first and then filling in the pattern with acrylic paint.  After that I stamped back over the filled in image and wha-lah!  Instant pretty.

Indoors shot.  True to color but less fabulously holo.

 So what do you think? I've advanced quite a bit with my stamping skills though I still feel I've got lots more to learn.  If you are interested in purchasing either of the LSL polishes click the link above.  Carolyn is restocking on October 8th.  For the plates you can check out either the link above or my page for stamping supplies.  Thanks so much for reading and I hope you liked it!  I'll see you next post! 

I'm Back!

Hello lacquer ladies,

Lol hopefully some of my lovely followers have remained.  I have been so freaking busy since my last post.  School ran in and took over my life there are been periods were I was literally working upwards of 36 hours at a time.  This was for overnight shifts.  So yeah I've kinda only been hanging on my the skin of my teeth so to speak and blogging fell by the wayside.  I have had lots of poor naked nails, but as usual I'm back.  It's hard to abandon a passion especially one that has seen me through so  much.   I hope you'll stick with me or if you left rejoin me or if you are new welcome!  Now let's start the chatting shall we?

I have so much to catch up on!  I did do my part though to stay mostly on top of the new plates that have been coming out.  I mean let's be honest here - I am a stamping whore so there is no way I couldn't at least keep my ear to the ground regarding these.  I have amassed a score of new plates in the interim from blogging including both Pueen sets, Wistonia store sets, updated my Apipila and Sugar Bubble plates, added Mundo de Unas and Fashion Disaster 101 to to the collection, grabbed up the Jumbo Cheeky set, continued my growing obsession with Messy Mansion and Vivid Lacquer, and added the new Bundle Monster set (which hit my doorstep yesterday!).  Yes I have been busy although these have come in exteremely slowly after all it's been a while since I've blogged.  Oh and I failed to mention a new brand that has taken my wallet by storm MoYou London stamping plates.

Luckily I also have a backlog of mani's to share with you from some of these plates!  So I'll be doing that and I also wanted to take the time to let you know I updated the Stamping Supplies & Frosting tab.  It now has all new info concerning most of the plate makers out there.  Of course there are new ones everyday did you know that Emily de Molly, indie polish goddess extraordinaire is now actually making plates?!?  Crazytown!  So rather than listing out all the dets here just check that tab and enjoy the shopping bonanza.  I have also been working on adding pages for stamping newbies as I keep getting a lot of questions on my Instagram.  So expect those to be up shortly along with a few posts regarding stampers and the like. 

Anyway I'm glad to be back!  I apologize there aren't any pics here for you to enjoy, but the good news is it's black and white plus Monday so stay tuned for some sparkly pretty later on today!

Toodles....