Celtic Oktoberfest

AKA OPI Every Month is Oktoberfest with A England Katyusha Celtic stamping

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.

Painted by Color and Foiled Again!

Not sure where I came up with that one, but it sort of sounded clever. Maybe... A little? Anyway... I wanted to show you swatches of the Kat von D Painted Love & Foiled Lipstick Set.

Here's the pic in the package from: Sephora

 Here's the pic I showed you before:

Adora, Backstage Bambi, Whiskey Woman, Hellbent, Vestalula, Celebutard

Now onto the swatches!!

No flash:

Flash:

Left to right: Backstage Bambi, Vestalula, Whiskey Woman, Celebutard, Adora, Hellbent


Backstage Bambi: Yeah, pretty much. This is the lipstick that is left on um, the "shirt collars" of rockstars from the groupie chicks (bambis, if you will) that go back stage. Perfect. Anyway, it's a bright, hot pink. Maybe a little fuschia leaning. Looks way more muted in the tube than on the lip.

Vestula: Sephora calls it a "Medium brown". I say it's more of a pinky brown-red. I need to try this one on, not a color I would normally pick but it looks like it could be flattering.

Whiskey Woman: They call this one "Pinkish brown". I call it a muted magenta leaning red. Another one that I will have to take on a test drive.

Celebutard: Good name, because it makes me think of Kim Kardashian. I think the woman is gorgeous, but she's none too bright if you ask me. Or maybe she is, that wedding gave her a lot of publicity. Whatever, I digress. This is a peachy nude. It's wearable for me with a lip liner (my lips are pretty pigmented and light colors don;t work well as the red from my lips tends to show on the edges).

Adora: Beautiful foiled red. Candy apple red, metallic. Awesome. However, I have an even better metallic red to show you later ;-)

Hellbent: Deep burgundy red.

I haven't really test driven any of these yet to comment on wear. They do smell like lipstick, but not in a cheap, nasty way. I actually kind of like that smell sometimes. They are nicely pigmented and were a pain to get off my arm, so they should wear well. I'm not really one to wear lipstick, but I will update if I ever wear one.

I'm happy I got this. For $28, I get to sample lipsticks that I have been eyeing but would ever spend full price on because I never use an entire lipstick.

What Happens to Your Nails After the Zombie Apocalypse (Also Great for Vampires)

Ok, maybe not... But I got this idea from the lovely Scrangie and while thinking about my makeup for my Vaccinated/Fluoridated Zombie costume, I thought this would be the perfect way to still have well manicured nails (the thought of putting dirt or smudgy stuff on my nails just wasn't flying with me). Have a looksee:

Excuse the background, I actually snapped this with my Droid to send to my friend and my boyfriend and I was extremely impressed with how well it turned out.

Doesn't it look like my nails are sliding off of my fingers in a bloody trail?!?!

Slightly different lighting. Some of these turned out weird because of the damned mercury bulbs in this house. Oh well, just another cause of my Zombification, I suppose. Maybe I'll hang one of those bulbs around my neck as part of my costume. Of course, in my inevitable drunken stupor, I might break it causing all of the party guests to have to flee to the outdoors in the freezing cold and rain for fresh air so they don't get mercury poisoning. Yeah, maybe not...

Much messier than Scrangie's, but I think it adds to the whole "OMG my nails are sliding off of my fingers!!!" look. Besides, this was just a test run and I had about 3 very large cups of coffee. Not conducive to smooth-lined manis, yet something I often do before painting my nails, because being tired isn't conducive to nice nails either.

Mercury lighting.

I did this shot to show how thick the matte polish is. Normally, I find it to be quite a pain, but it works out really well for this look, adding depth to make it look the way I want it (like my nails are sliding off in a bloody trail).

What I used: One coat of NailTek Foundation II, 2 coats of Essie Limited Addiction, 1-2 coats of Orly Iron Butterfly.

Cost: Essie retails for $8 in drugstores, Giant Eagle and on their website, but I think you can still get them at transdesign.com for $4. I got this one as part of a 4 piece mini cube (Winter 2010, I believe) which cost me $17. I got the Orly at Sally Beauty on clearance. I don't know if they even make this color any more, but I do believe it's a dupe for ManGlaze Fuggen Ugly (what Scrangie used in her version). You could also probably use any black with small silver glitter and a matte topcoat just on that part.

Application: I love Essie Polish. Most of them apply beautifully, and this one is no exception. It went on beautifully in 2 coats. The matte Polish is a different story. Mattes dry REALLY fast so you have to work very quickly so as not to drag where you already put Polish. Hence the 1-2 coats for this. Some of them I screwed up and had to fill in a little. Plus, this one is really thick, which helped with only needing one coat, but made it a little harder to work with.

Dry time: Here's the tricky part... Essie isn't the fastest drying polish (it's not bad, just takes a little time) and again, the mattes "dry" really fast... EXCEPT, they're not really dry. I would recommend, since there are so many coats here, allowing the red to dry COMPLETELY before applying the matte. Then, you won't have tacky Polish under the matte which could cause you to really screw it up.

Musings: Limited Addiction is my ALL TIME FAVORITE red. It's a really beautiful blue/slightly brown based classic red almost jelly. Let me explain... Jelly Polishes have a nice semi-transparent, squishy feel. This one has that semi-transparent quality without the squishiness. It's almost like a semi-opaque stained glass. It looks great on my pale skin, but most reds I have tried look good on me; this one just looks REALLY good. It's also kind of a shape-shifter. In some lights, it's an almost vampy deep wine red, in other lights it's a bright, classic (but not pin-up) red. Really awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I bought a full-sized bottle, as my mini is over half gone, and that's with hundreds of other Polishes to choose from.

Oh, I guess I should also mention that this is called a "Ruffian Manicure"... I didn't know brutal people painted their nails... Or horses did. Hm...