The Lacquer Legion: Adoration

Hello all,

The Lacquer Legion's challenge for this month had the theme of Adoration. I had a tough decision to make: do I use my favourite brand of nail polish (OPI) or do I use my favourite technique? Then, when I received my new MoYou London plates in the mail, I knew that the technique that first ignited my love of nail art had won: stamping!

I decided to use designs from MoYou's Tourist 07 XL plate to create my design for this month. Here's the result:

I've been adoring these nails since I finished them! In order to complete this design I painted my thumb white with Wet 'n' Wild's White Cream and stamped with Konad's Black Pearl. I painted every other nail (except for my ring finger) one coat of Essie's Nothing Else Metals and stamped again with the Black Pearl. For my ring finger, I painted one coat of Wet 'n' Wild's Black Cream and stamped with Nothing Else Metals. I sealed it all in with a quick drying top coat.

I can't wait to use these plates again! I'm especially loving the design on my index and pinkie fingers. MoYou has made my love of stamping even greater, if that's possible.

What do you think? Thanks for stopping by!

Coral and Gold Glitter Manicure

Hello all,

I was waiting for my MoYou plates to show up this week, so I didn't want to do anything elaborate until I received them. I wanted to try out my mom's China Glaze polish: Blonde Bombshell, which is a beautiful gold glitter polish. I wanted a nice cheery colour to go with this, so I chose OPI's I Eat Mainely Lobster.

I applied 3 coats of Blonde Bombshell to my ring fingers and 2 coats of I Eat Mainely Lobster to the rest of my nails and sealed everything with a quick-dry top coat. Today, I received the plates in the mail, yay! I wanted to try them out asap, so I decided to use ORLY's Luxe polish and stamped the heart-shaped rose design from the Pro 08 plate. Here's the result:

The images on these plates are just the right depth to transfer a flawless design to nails. It was hard for me to get a good image of what the stamp actually looks like on my nails for some reason today. Overall, I'm really impressed with my first attempt with these plates and will be sure to complete another manicure with them soon!

What do you think? Thanks for stopping by!

Valentine's Day Manicure

Hello and Happy Valentine's Day!

This year, I wanted to complete a manicure with my lovely pink and red OPI polishes and decided on 3: In My Santa Suit, And This Little Piggy, and Pedal Faster Suzi!. I used Pedal Faster Suzi! on every nail except for the ring finger (2 coats) where I used And This Little Piggy (3 coats). Once this was dry, I free-handed the outlines of the hearts and half-hearts and filled them in with In My Santa Suit. I wanted to add something extra to the ring finger so I added x's and o's with a black striper. Here's the result:

If I had my time back, I would probably have skipped adding the x's and o's with the striper and would have done a different design. The polish kept dripping off of the striping brush and messing up the design, so it is not as crisp as I would like. Otherwise, I think this design is really cute :).

What do you think? Thanks for stopping by!

Peachy Valentine's Manicure with Nailz Craze Stamping

Hello all,

I wanted to try a Valentine's manicure that was a little bit different than the traditional pink and red, so I decided to try Color Club's East Austin as my base for this manicure. Once I had two coats of this polish on my fingers, it was so bright that I needed to stamp over it to calm the brightness down a little. I looked through my plate collection and came across my Nailz Craze NC01 which has many subtle heart designs. Here is the result:

I stamped these designs with Konad's Special Polish in Black Pearl. The design on my ring finger is supposed to be a peacock feather, but my nails aren't long enough to get the image to fit well. Unfortunately, when I added top coat, my ring finger and pinky designs were smudged :(. This picture doesn't do this base colour justice with how bright it truly is, my camera couldn't capture it. Even with the smudges, I love this design and hope that it turns out perfectly next time.

Thank you for stopping by! 

Playing with Texture in Silver and Blue

Hello all, 

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a very pretty navy blue shade from Layla with the colour code CE 33. I thought this would look beautiful with my silver texture polish, OPI's It's Frosty Outside. I wasn't too happy with the bland look of just the two polishes with no designs, so I added a matte topcoat to the blue polish and then added a regular topcoat with a dotting tool to create a polkadot effect. 

Here's the manicure without the regular topcoat accents.

The finished product.

Overall I like this manicure, but I realized recently that the blue does stain my nails :(.

Thanks for stopping by!