So I started out with the OPI Polish. I have a very hard time sometimes selecting what polish I want to wear. It's why I can never really pull off spontaneous nail art... I get a vague idea of what I want then go all over the place. I need a plan. This mani was unplanned, but I rather like it.
I started out going through the China Glaze drawer of my Michael's 3-drawer cube. This is where I keep my favorite polishes and new ones at my desk. The rest are in the basement in an Ikea Helmer (which I have cleared out now a couple of times, I refuse to have more than a single Helmer full of Polish).
Anyway, I was rummaging through, looking at the beautiful Polishes from the Metro collection and deciding, It's Fall Enough, Already!! We didn't have much of a summer and all my dreams of neon Polishes were basically squashed after the first week in July when we got back from the beach. I had a great tan and no where to wear it to. Not a single weekend was nice enough and/or hot enough for the pool. It's a breezy, low 70's September day in Pittsburgh and I am so ready for fall.
You're probably sick of me talking now, so I'll shut up. On to the Polish!!
I started out with just OPI Every Month is Oktoberfest, the color is so beautiful and intriguing in the bottle. It's a deep plum purple jelly base with a bronze shimmer running through it. The overall effect is a shimmery wine red. It's gorgeous.
On the nail, however, the shimmer doesn't translate quite as much. It ends up just looking like a blackened-red shimmer. Still pretty, but a bit disappointing, not gonna lie:
I kept thinking to myself, I could make this better. So I did! I was imagining something gold and fancy over top of it. But I don't own a single gold polish. I didn't want nail vinyls, so I started looking through my small stash of stamping plates and saw the Celtic one I ordered from Amazon about a week ago.
Now, I pretty much suck at stamping. I tried way back in the day with the original Konad set and never had any luck. Usually the stamper wouldn't even pick up the image. So when I renewed my interest in all things nails, I, of course, decided that I needed to reopen that old wound and buy some stamping crap.
After some reading, I discovered that there are all kinds of new stamping things out there. The most interesting of which to me were the Clear Stamper and the Squishy Stamper. I have SUPER curved nails and it looked to me like the Squishy Stamper might solve some problems for me. Turns out that the Squishy Stamper picks up images better and with no priming, because it's slightly sticky.
I used A England Katyusha, because it's basically an antique gold holo. It does have a slight green-blue shift, but the predominant color is soft white gold, which was perfect for what I wanted.
Here is the awesome plate that I used. I think I paid like $7 for it on Amazon. I just did a search for Celtic stamping plate. I realize that I should have a taken a pic before smearing it all up with acetone, sorry :-(
Did I mention that it's double sided! Super cool! I used this side:
And of course, I couldn't decide what design I wanted, so I used 3 of the designs at the bottom (the first, second and fourth) on my left hand.
On my right hand, I tried a couple of the full nail designs on my pointer and ring fingers. I think they all turned out great, aside from being a little bit off center. I wish I had used some liquid latex for the full nail ones, because I did end up getting a bunch on my fingers and the shimmer wouldn't really clean off all the way.
I had no issues using this Polish to stamp. I have black stamping Polish that I absolutely have to fight with. It doesn't pick up well or lay down clean. It ends up like dried rubbery stuff and kind of peels off. I'm not sure how to explain it. Katyusha was more like ink. It picked up perfectly and went where I put it (and stayed) there.
Anyway. I love this. I love Celtic knotwork and this color combo is perfect!I'm going to keep working on my stamping skills, because I just opened a package that I got from a place called "hehe" - Harry Potter and Super Hero Stamping Plates!!! Stay tuned.
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