Steelers Throwback Nails

Because, Heather Miller:

AKA Glisten&Glow Great Balancing Act + hehe Hufflepuff stamping plate #029 with Twinkled T black stamping polish.

Everyone in Pittsburgh HATED those uniforms... But just look at him... How can you hate anything he wears?

Aaaaanyway, this was actually a huge fail. It started out with G&G GBA:

This pic is most color accurate:

This is a creamy, pigmented pollen yellow. I really dig the color (I love yellow polish).

Flash:

I did two coats plus one coat of Poshe quick dry topcoat. The weird thing with this Polish was, on the first coat, it laid down these weird lumps and chunks. I can only assume it was unmixed pigment? It looked like bit of my nail were peeling up under the polish (my nails have been in bad shape like that before). I was really worried but I'm glad I persisted because the second coat covered it up completely.

This applied great for a yellow! Two coats for a yellow gets the same status as one coater for any other color. First coat was streaky, but pigmented. Second coat evened everything out, but you do have to apply this in thick coats.

Then I thought, genius I am, how can I make this better? And what I should have asked was, why can't I leave well enough alone???

So, out came the stamping plates. 

Last time I wore yellow polish, I attempted horizontal stripes... get this... free hand. I'm a moron. It looked awful. Pretty sure I have a picture somewhere...

ZOMG! That's awful. It looks like a dyslexic monkey painted my nails. WTF was I thinking? And do you see that streaking??? UGH!

So this time, I decided to use a stamping plate for the same effect. It turned out only slightly better. First, I had major issues with the stamping plate. This was my first scrape attempt, using Cirque Memento Mori (WTF does that even mean?), a perfect one coat black. I didn't use stamping Polish for reasons I outlined in my last post.

Well, this is the mess that happened:

And again:

Then I decided to use a different scraper (even though the one above worked great on my Celtic plate with A England Polish). I used a credit card style scraper from Twinkled T (it came with my smaller clear stamper). And it worked! yay!

This is an XL semi squishy clear stamper from hehe.


It didn't pickup the damn image. grrrr.

Then I did the same thing, but used the Twinkled T black stamping polish and it worked! But... I made a mess on my finger. Now usually I can get this stamping polish off just by kind of picking at it with an orange stick because, as I said before, it's kind of rubbery or plasticky or something, but not this time. Of course not, that would be too easy!

I did the best I could, then got out the clean up brush. Big mistake. This shit is like ink... Acetone just smeared it around and adhered it to my skin even more! UGH!

You can even see what a mess it made on my mat and everything in the vicinity. I had to use a new cotton pad for every single stamp, because if I dipped it in the acetone after using it on the black polish, it turned the acetone black and would then deposit little black specks all over everything. It was almost like the acetone couldn't fully dissolve the pigments or whatever plastic crap they are suspended in. That meant that I used like 20 cotton pads, because sometimes the image didn't pick up properly and I had to clean it off and try again.

I then wised up and put condoms liquid latex on my fingers.

I thought this was pretty cool looking (the lint roller I use to clean my stamper).

Then I realized that, no matter how long you freaking let it dry, topcoat smears it. It's not just this topcoat either. I have tried SuperChic Marvel, Live Love Polish Quick Dry and Poshe. Same result every time.

So I decided to try applying the top coat really thick. And this happened:

But it did sorta work. It looked better than when I let the brush run over the black.

So yeah, it looks like shiz and I nicked the pointer nail. I hated this so much, I didn't bother with the other hand and I am totally taking it off tonight (yay peel off basecoat!!). Oh yeah, and that pink crap? Liquid Latex. oops. Better than black fingers. I really hope that shit comes off.

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.