Optical Chaos

I haven't stamped all my nails in a while! Trying to decide between designs today, I finally decided it was time for some stamping, using the Love at First Lavender I showcased earlier in my review of Sation polishes.

The plate is Red Angel RA-106 and I just used Black Creme from Wet n' Wild for the stamping. My middle finger got a little smudgy, so I apologize for that. Isn't it just optically chaotic though? There's just so much going on, but there's only two colors. Crazy!

Silky Stamp

This pattern and color combination reminds me of a tapestry I hung on my dorm room ceiling sophomore year in college. It was a bedspread I got from Urban Outfitters, and it's truly stunning. The damask pattern is silver, and the material is a sheer white. I hung it right below a light, so the light dimmed down and spread out throughout my entire room. Man that was a good room.

For the base of this, I used French White Creme (Wet n' Wild) and stamped with Passion (China Glaze). I realize I used that color last night, but the color was so striking I wanted to use it again. (I have a feeling it'll be one of those bottles I'll need 2 of.) The plate is RA-109, from the increasingly popular Red Angel line. I remember when I first bought the set in November, there was one or two reviews. Now there are 109 reviews, and I'd like to think I'm a part of that. I hadn't seen the set used on any of the blogs I followed, so I took a risk at $12.99 and wound up with one of the best sets out there. Have you bought your set yet?

Glitzy Grinch

Another short vacation post, but with some pretty gorgeous manicures.

The first is one I did to celebrate both my birthday and Christmas. I used RA stamp #119, China Glaze's Icicle as the base (which you can't really see), Color Club's Sugarplum Fairy for the amazing glitter, and Black on Black from Sinful Colors as the stamping color. Init purty?

The second I did today, and will probably stamp on top of later, but I just couldn't touch Beige Blast (Sally Hansen Insta-Dri) yet. It makes everyone's fingers look elegant, albeit after four coats. It reminded me of Nugget, my little kitten, so I attempted to get a shot with me holding her.

This is the best I could do, given her wiggly kitten nature.

Finally, here's a little exclusion-ing via Photoshop to highlight that beige beauty.

Fairy Mermaid

Last night I finally had enough down time to do, photograph, and edit my nail pictures. This weekend was swamped between skiing at Keystone, hiking, getting brunch, dinner with parents and traffic. I literally had bare nails all weekend. THE HORROR!

It feels so much better to have some polished paws. Even better than that, it feels good to have a manicure, complete with filing, cuticle cream and moisturizing lotion. Delicious, moisturizing lotion. I'm not sure if I've ever told my bloggers this, but my new favorite lotion is Burt's Bees Milk & Honey Body Lotion. It's nothing fancy, but a tiny drop of it goes a long way, and it works beautifully with their Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream. I just put on the cuticle cream first, then top it off with a dot of lotion the size of a pea for my whole hand. Drink it in ladies, your hands will thank you.

Today's another Pirates by OPI manicure, with a little fairy dust sprinkled over it. The teal is Mermaid Tears (OPI) and the flecks come from China Glaze's Fairy Dust. The design is from Red Angel plate 105, and the black used to stamp is Sinful Colors Black on Black.

What I'd really like to do for you guys tomorrow is a bunch of swatches of that Kleancolor set I mentioned here. I got it in the mail, and it's gorgeous!

I've never done swatches though, so I'm unclear about how long it will take and how ambitious you need to be to swatch 9 different polishes for one post. That's my goal though, so hopefully that's what we see in tomorrow's post!

Ringing in the Red...and Green...and Glitter

I don't usually reach for standard colors when I do a solid color manicure (but let's face it...when have I shown you all a solid colored manicure). However, after applying the base to today's manicure, I know which polish is a new favorite of mine.

May I present to you in all her glittering glory...Ring in the Red from China Glaze.

She's the color so nice, I'll show you twice. I mean come on! It was so damn sparkly I ran over to Andy absolutely tickled! His words: "It's so...shiny!" Yes it is my man, yes it is.

I couldn't leave well enough alone though, and pumped it up with some holiday glamor. I stamped using Cherish, also from China Glaze, and Sinful Color's Fashionista adorned the half-mooned cut off point. The plate is RA-110.

I should also mention that beneath Ring in the Red I used one layer of Essie's Limited Addiction, just so I wouldn't be glopping on layer upon layer of that gorgeous glitter to get full coverage.

Hawaiian Tropics

Temperatures here in Boulder finally reached above freezing. Naturally, girls were walking around in sun dresses and flip flops. Boys had on swim trunks, and there was a party to burn all our winter gear.

That's all entirely false, except for the above freezing moments of the day. Unfortunately, we've dropped back down to 30, but the veritable heat wave got me feeling a little frisky about my nails. I also drew some inspiration from The Illustrated Nail's Ankara Prints.

Tropical prints and the colors that come with it are too much fun not to play with.

The base layer is Pull Over from Sinful Colors. It's sponged with Flyin' High (China Glaze), then stamped with Hey Sailor, also from China Glaze. The plate's RA-109 (again). The outlining is Sinful Color's Bad Chick. I'm hoping for the holidays I find some nail art brushes in either my Christmas or birthday bags, because some of that outlining is hard to look at.

On a side note, starting with this post, I'm resizing my images to be the maximum width of my blog's text body. When Blogger resizes the photos for you, it loses color, and my hands end up looking more white and sad than they are in reality. Resizing outside of Blogger retains the color, and with the larger width of the body, the details aren't lost.

Damask Tapestry

I've been searching for an off-white color for a long time that I like, and can easily access. The bottle I truly long for is Illamasqua's Load, but in lieu of that, I got myself a little Insta-Dri from Sally Hansen that's a nice placeholder: Beige Blast. Under the right light, it looks like your run-of-the-mill white, but paired correctly, the muted, more natural beige appears.

Pairing it with Savina's Grape really brings it out, and makes me so happy! The design is from the Red Angel plates, #109. The combination reminds me of a fancy wallpaper. I see gold accents and orchids adorning the room. And there is probably a maid required to keep the place so spick and span.

Perhaps more approprietly, the manicure today matches my free beauty bag I ordered from Target. It was full of samples (body wash, shampoo, styling cream) when it arrived, but now it houses all of my nail tools (files, stampers, scrapers, clean up brushes).

Persian Rug

I love this design. It's so fun and makes everything look classy. It took me a long time to get the pattern mostly straight but that's my own damn fault. Pretty gold is the Sally Hansen Color Quick color pen Gold Chrome. Pretty blue is Savina's Caribbean. The plate is Red Angel's #120. It makes me think of a Persian rug.

The blue isn't quite as bold in real life. It appears much deeper, much more navy. Still gorgeous though!

Pirate Scales - A Tale of Woe

Before we begin, check out the new page at the top of my blog, Red Angel Plates, for images of all the Red Angel plates I recently got from Amazon. Links to posts using the designs, as well as a link to purchase them from Amazon are all provided.

Another gorgeous Red Angel plate design for you. This design took a LONG time for me to get done. Let me share my tale of woe with you.

I had been wanting to use my Planks a Lot from the OPI Pirates of the Caribbean collection for a while now. Since I had just purchased As Gold as it Gets from Essie's Luxe Effects collection, I thought I'd slap that on. It looked great!

It looks really similar to a manicure using Sally Hansen's Hidden Treasure or Nubar's 2010, but the flecks aren't as gold and don't change color quite as much. They stay more gold, rather than change to that iridescent, bubble/oil effect. I like it.

Since Red Angel plates have been requested by a few of you, I wanted to use one of them, and wound up deciding on plate 111. I tried the floral pattern on it first, but didn't like the way it looked with the flecks in the background. So wipe. I then tried the pattern I wound up using, but I used Awaken by China Glaze first. Didn't like that either...not enough contrast. So wipe. I chose to use old faithful, Black on Black from Sinful Colors instead.

By this time, my nails had started to dry out, so I tried putting some chapstick around my cuticles to moisten and make cleanup easier. I'd never tried it before, but it seemed like a great idea. For science, I only applied it to one of my hands, so I had a control group to test this new technique. Felt good. My cuticles were thirsty.

SO...after setting up the test groups, I got to work. On my left hand, I stamped the design on my thumb. Gorgeous. Loved it. So I moved onto my pointer. Not gorgeous. Didn't love it. Only about 1/4 of the design wound up on the nail. So wipe. Tried it again. Worked well. Great. Moved onto my middle finger. Same thing happened to my middle finger that happened to my pointer the first time. Come on! What is going on? I was getting fed up. It had been too long already, and I was just thinking about the cleanup that I still needed to do, so I took a break. I grabbed a handful of chips, and as I was licking the deliciousness off of my fingers, I thought to myself, "This tastes a lot like chapstick."

That's why the stamp wasn't working. So wipe...with soap.

After all the stamping was done, I realized I had rushed it, and the edges of my nails had bald spots. Uuuuuuugh. Cue tape and black polish, Black Creme from Wet n' Wild. Finally, you have the end result, which I'm mostly happy with. I'm upset it took so long to finish (sorry Bree!). I also should've just used a nail art brush for the black stripe, as I'm sure it would've taken less time and less cleanup, but I guess that's just a lesson to be learned.

Another lesson to be learned. DO NOT leave nail polish anywhere that curious kittens can conspire with mischievous pups. Nugget (the kitten), decided exposed polish bottles are great toys, since they roll around in unpredictable directions. Unfortunately, they sometimes roll off of edges, and land on the floor. This brings Riley (the puppy) running, to see if she can steal the toy from the cat. All the while, parents (Andy and I) lie in bed, oblivious to the sounds. They sound so much like the chewing of a bone, but alas, they're not. They're Planks a Lot, in the crushing jaws of a seven month old puppy.

The result?

 A chewed up bottle top...

and a guilty looking dog.

Tealy Dan

You wanted more manicures using the new Red Angel plates...you got em'! Seriously, these patterns rock. They're the perfect depth for picking up the pattern easily. The annoying problem some plates present of not being able to pick up every line (especially the more narrow fine lines) has to be one of the most frustrating parts of stamping. You wind up spending a frustrating amount of time swiping, stamping, erasing and repeating yourself. I almost want to take a needle to those designs, scratch them out, and save myself the torture of ever trying that again.

Of the two designs I've used, this has not been an issue with Red Angel. I'm pretty thrilled about that.

Silver Sweep from Sally Hansen Insta-Dri and The Real Teal from Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear equally share the spotlight with Red Angels RA-112 plate. The other designs on that plate were hard to ignore. I guess I'll just have to do more designs.

If I'm not cooking, I'll probably be contemplating new designs today.

New Image Plates

Konad started an insane trend in nail art with their revolutionary nail art stamping plates. Girls fawned over the designs and doled out handfuls of cash to procure the plates. Then we met Bundle Monster, who offered the same designs plus additional patterns for a much cheaper price. The nail blogs filled up with the popular patterns, and we all patiently awaited the dawn of a new nail era. Well, your wait is over. I've found, tried, and adored a new series of plates, brought to you by Red Angel.

I'll save the post of the image I used for tomorrow, but I wanted to whet your appetites and get you excited about these new designs. I did a search on Amazon for  "nail stamping plates" and after sifting through the Bundle Monsters, Konads and Mash plates, saw this lonely little ad for a 21 piece set.

The thumbnail picture you're shown in the search results doesn't exactly scream "Buy me!" with the pixelated, sharp contrast between hot pink and taxi cab yellow, but click further ladies, and marvel in the wonders of the designs. With 13 of the 21 plates sporting full nail designs, I knew right away this was something I wanted to investigate.

But no reviews? Not a single star given out for these? Well, I figured for $11.99 before shipping, I couldn't be too disappointed if they didn't meet my expectations.

The package arrived today during lunch, and I couldn't stop thinking about which pattern I wanted to try when I got home later after work. Even when I did arrive home, I was overwhelmed with choices I adored that finally picking one came down to a game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

I'll tell you this much...I'm thrilled. The designs aren't for everyone, and by no means can be called "classic." But their possibilities are endless, as you'll see tomorrow.

Sleep well ladies, and don't fret. Come tomorrow, you won't be disappointed.