NOTD: Gargoyle Elegance

Hello--

Today's prompt for the 31 Day Challenge is to do a mani with our favorite technique. Of course my favorite technique is stamping, but one of the things I currently love to do with stamping is a faux-half-moon technique, where I stamp a design in the place where a half-moon would be.

For this manicure I started with a base of Pretty Serious Gargoyle Ganache, a subtle purple-grey-green duochrome polish with a very cool name (from their Halloween collection). Then I stamped using Cheeky plate GA44, and Pure Ice Silver Mercedes. I finished off with a rhinestone at the center of the ring finger flourish and silver beads at the center on the other nails.

Check out that cool purple-green shift. How awesome is that??

I love this polish (if you haven't checked out Pretty Serious, you should), and I love the way the manicure turned out. Elegant and polished, no pun intended! :P

Thanks for looking, and don't forget to check out the manicures linked below. :)

Xoxox,
M.

Polish Days Before & After: Christmas Bling

Hello!!!

Today's manicure is for Polish Days, and the theme is 'Bling'

I started with a base of Pretty Serious VT100 (indie alert!), a rich green with gold glitter:

Pretty Serious VT100

Pretty Serious VT100

Then I sponged a bit of Orly Sashay My Way on the nail at the bottom, working up a bit. Over that I sponged some Fanchromatic Nails Fistful Of Latinum (double indie alert!) to add a bit of variety to the glitter. Finally, I added some red rhinestones to make it even more sparkly and festive:

We wish you a merry bling bling

And a blingy new year!

I really love how this came out! Glittery and fun but not too glittery. Perfect for any Christmas Party, and I think I'm going to wear this on Christmas day.

Thanks for looking, and please check out the other participants in Polish Days, linked below. :)

Xoxox,
M.

Lookit: Pretty Serious Christmas Without Snow 2012 Collection

Hello!

I don't know how my readers feel about press releases (please let me know if you want more!), and I don't post many of them--I only post looks at upcoming collections that I'm pretty excited about myself. This one I think is pretty darned cool.

Pretty Serious is an Australian Indie line, and I only have three of their polishes (so far!)--two from their Halloween collection, and one specialty release that went to benefit a charity. I've found them to be very pretty and of good quality so wanted to share with you this information I received about their Christmas collection:

Here is what they have to say about the collection:

"Christmas without snow? What a preposterous notion! For the rest of the world, maybe. But down here in Australia, we love to crack out the beer and boardshorts and soak up the sun at this very special time of year. We wanted to capture the spirit of an Aussie Christmas with our very first seasonal collection consisting of six amazing new nail shades to help you celebrate Christmas the Aussie way!

BLUE GUMS ON BOXING DAY - This rich green shines with a mesmerizing blue shimmer! Perfect for those post Christmas celebrations!
HOT SUMMER NIGHTS - Shining stars sparkle in the velvet sky. This inky blue jelly with silver micro glitter is a nightscape on your nails!
PARTY BY THE POOL - Splash about in this gorgeous peacock jelly, swimming with flecks of green and blue!
SANTA'S SUNBURN - It seems that Santa's Sunburn is the best type of sunburn! This jolly red foil sparkles with tiny flecks of silver.
SEASONAL SUNSET - Seasonal Sunset's rusty jelly base is packed to bursting with bright golden and copper microglitter particles and the result is simply breathtaking. It's a Christmas sunset on your nails!
TWINKLING LIGHTS - Like stars that sparkle in the sky, or Christmas lights twinkling in the night, Twinkling Lights will add something special to every manicure!

And to make things even cooler, our Christmas polishes will come in cute Christmas themed red holographic boxes with new artwork by our one and only Leigh Young! The perfect stocking stuffer! You won't even need to wrap them!

The CHRISTMAS WITHOUT SNOW collection is available for preorder NOW, with orders starting to ship this week! We are also running our amazing Golden Ticket promotion where ten lucky Christmas orders will receive our super secret limited edition GOLDEN TICKET polish! Only ten made and these will NEVER be sold on our site! Competition details can be found on here.

RRP is $9.95, with a 10% discount for buying all six shades! Pretty Serious Cosmetics also ships worldwide. Check out our site for more details.

Bottle volume is 11ml/0.37 fl.oz. Pretty Serious Cosmetics is 100% Vegan and Cruelty Free.

http://www.pretty-serious.com"

And here are the pictures of the polishes:

Blue Gums On Boxing Day

 This one is my favorite of the bunch...So pretty...so green...so ethereal...

Hot Summer Nights

 This one looks like it will be really pretty on, and I don't think I have anything like this...hmmm...

Party By The Pool

 Very pretty with the light sprinkling of glitter...

Santa's Sunburn

 ROFL, this name cracks me up, and I love the silver glitter in it. :)

Seasonal Sunset

 This is pretty, but I'm wondering how close it is to those pretty Jessica polishes that came out in their Fall collection?

Twinkling Lights

This is pretty for many things, but I wish I'd had it when I was doing my 'Festival Of Lights' manicure for my upcoming Christmas challenge...sigh...

And finally, here is how they come packaged:

I think this is a very pretty, non-traditional, but still a teeny bit traditional (the red, lol) collection. Also, I can tell you that when I ordered from them before, I got their polishes in a very reasonable amount of time, so don't be worried about ordering from Australia!

Thanks for looking!

Xoxox,
M.

Before & After: Thing!!

Hello!

Today I was playing around a bit with some new colors and plates I got and did a simple little Halloween mani. It all started with a base of Pretty Serious Emma Louise:

Emma Louise indirect light

Emma Louise in the sunlight

Emma Louise is a purple polish with silver glass flecks, with purple and green-teal glitter hexes. This is one of those polishes that doesn't live up to how beautiful it looks in the bottle; on the nail, the glitter doesn't show up often or much, and most of what you get is the glass-flecked finish. This isn't necessarily bad news, however, if you like a more subtle glitter look; now and again some pretty glitter catches the light and gives the polish a bit of extra bling. These pictures actually show more glitter visible than you actually see with the naked eye; this is two coats of the polish. 

After I'd worn this for about a day, a new set of plates arrived in the mail and I had to get a Halloween manicure out of them quickly, since 5 out of 6 of the plates were Halloween plates! I decided to do an accent nail featuring 'Thing', the disembodied hand from The Addams Family.

First I did a gradient to give the nails a more creepy, fun, Halloween-y feel; I started with Cult Nails Hypnotize Me about 1/3 of the way up the nail. Then I put a tiny bit of Pretty Serious VT100 along the very bottom to make it a bit more green. Then I stamped the hand with plate HD04, using Sally Hansen Lickety-Split Lime. I used a dotting tool to accent the fingers and the top of the arm:

This one shows the full 'Thing' design, but the gradient doesn't show as well

This one shows the gradient accurately :) This also shows more how much the glitter is actually visible.

This show the design in direct sunlight

Thing was always my favorite -ahem- thing on the show; I just thought it was soooo cool to have this hand running around taking care of stuff for you, and I'd just watch it, fascinated. Okay, so it wasn't green. But still. :P

Thanks for taking a look! Please check out the other CNT Halloween manicures below. :)

Xoxox,

M.