Guest Post Series, with Luv My Lacquer. Gradient and Stamping.

Are you a nail art or stamping lover? Then I am sure have visited Jess over at LUV MY LACQUER. If not, then you definitely need to check her out. Her posts are always interesting and detailed.

Thank you Jess for providing us with two of my favourite things- gradients and stamping.

Ok, on with the pretty!!

♥Pam♥

 

Hello Lacquer Luvers! My name is Jessica & I'm absolutely honored to be here with you guys today. I met Mrs. Girly Bits in a polish group on Facebook a few years ago and am so excited she asked me to guest post for her! For those of you who don't know, I'm the nail blogger over at luvmylacquer.blogspot.com and I LOVE nail art. It's sort of my "thing." While I enjoy swatching, I always feel the urge to put something fun, pretty, or wild on my nails. Today I exercised my nail art skills and came up with a mani that incorporates two of my favorite kinds of nail art: stamping and gradients. So let's get to it, shall we?
 

 
When I first sat down to do this manicure I had a ridiculous amount of supplies and polishes in front of me. This is pretty much how I get going. Some days I have a plan but for the most part I just wing it. So after a good while of looking at various nail stamping plates, striping tape, dotting tools, my water marble cup, makeup sponges, studs, and a colorful array of color in bottles it came to me!
 

 
My manicure began with a base coat and two coats of my base color, Essie Marshmallow. Using my makeup sponge, I created a gradient using Essie Marshmallow, Bottle Service & DJ Play That Song. I added some extra pretty on top of that with the help of a dazzling scattered holographic glitter polish by Orly called Prisma Gloss Silver.
 

 
For the stamping part of my manicure I went for my signature stamp. I've used this plate so many times! M72 image plate comes in a set from BornPrettyStore and has a floral image that comes in three sizes. Using my Konad white stamping polish, I alternated the size of the flowers on all of my nails. My look was complete with a shiny coat of HKGirl topcoat.

 

 
I am so happy with how this turned out! I have been working on my gradients lately and although this one isn't perfect, I think it's a really pretty combination of colors. I would love to know what you all think of my manicure and what your favorite type of nail art is! If you are interested in seeing more of my work feel free to come over and visit me at luvmylacquer.blogspot.com or find me on Instagram (@luvmylacquer). I hope you all enjoyed this post and thank you Pam for inviting me to guest post for your site!
 
xo,
Jessica

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Guest Post Series; with Maggie's Manicures

 Today I am very excited to share with you, a post by Maggie, of MAGGIE'S MANICURES. I came upon Maggie's lovely swatches, and wonderful colour pairings on her INSTAGRAM FEED

She has also recently started a blog, and it's totally worth checking out.

Thank you Maggie, for the guest post today!

♥Pam♥ 

Hey everyone! I'm excited to be doing my very first guest post on Pam's blog! Today I have a really fun skittle mani for you.

I started off painting my base colors. I used OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls on my index and ring fingers, Essie Bikini So Teeny on my middle finger, Zoya Shelby on my pinkie and China Glaze Tart-y For The Party on my thumb. I used two coats of each polish for the pictures below.

On my index and ring fingers I created a gradient by blending Bikini So Teeny, Tart-y For The Party and Shelby onto my nails using a makeup sponge. On my middle finger, I used the Saran Wrap technique to dab on Tart-y For The Party over the blue.

Starting with the index finger, I applied one coat of Hard Candy Black Tie Optional, a black and white glitter with multiple shapes and sizes.

On my middle finger, I made roses. Using a large dotting tool, I put big dots of Shelby on my nail. Then, I took my smallest dotting tool and made white swirls around the pink dots with My Boyfriend Scales Walls. Finally, I used the same small dotting tool to make the green leaves with Essie The More The Merrier.

On my ring finger I did leopard print. I used a medium dotting tool and put pink dots (I should say blobs instead of dots, the leopard print looks more realistic if the dots aren't perfectly circular) over the blue parts of the gradient and blue dots over the pink part of the gradient. Then, I took my smallest dotting tool and painted black brackets over the dots using Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris. I also filled in the spaces in between with more black spots and brackets.

On my pinkie I used a medium dotting tool, Bikini So Teeny and Tart-y For The Party to create alternating rows of polka dots.

Finally, I used my Kiss striper polish in white to create the lines on my thumb.

I finished off the manicure with one coat of Out The Door Topcoat. I had so much fun creating this look! I hope you guys like it, too.

Thanks everyone!

Maggie, from Maggie's Manicures

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Essie Tart Deco

Hope everyone had a great weekend! It is hot hot HOT here, and humid. No complaints though after a late start to summer this year. Going with the orange trend lately, I decided to show you Tart Deco by Essie. It's a beautiful orangey peach shade, with great application. There have been some reports of people having issues with top coat changing the colour of the polish. I personally have not had this issue, but it might depend on which top coat you are using. So what I have done is taken photos of it without top coat, and with top coat on just two fingers, and then also with a different top coat on the other two fingers.

So first up is indoors, with no top coat on any of them.

Now due to my lack of professional lighting,  the ring and pinky fingers appear to be darker even with out topcoat. In reality they are all the same.

This is outdoors (in case you thought I planted petunias inside teehee) with no top coat on any of them. Thanks to Mr, Sun there is more consistency in the colour here.

Here I have Color Club Vivid top coat on the pinky and ring fingers only. There really isn't any difference even though in this pic the index finger appears to be lighter. It real life it was not. The index and middle finger both are with out top coat.

This photo is indoors.

This is outside with top coat on the pinky and ring fingers only.

This one is indoors with top coat on all fingers. Color Club Vivid on pinky and ring, 

and OPI DS top coat on middle and index.

No difference at all.

And just for fun, because I love nail art, I added some little daisies.

Hope this comparison helps.

thanks for looking.

♥Pam♥

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OPI I Lily Love You, over Essie Muchi Muchi

I have been playing around with my new OPI I Lily Love You, from the Nice Stems Collection, 2011 for the past few days. It's amazing how different it looks over different base coats. This alone makes it worth the money.
Today I put it over Essie Muchi, Muchi. ILLY tends to be a bit thick and goopy so I have thinned it already and I can see needing to thin it regularly. It's actually a little difficult to get a very thin application. More thinner required.

**You can find my other swatches of I Lily Love You over China Glaze Up All Night by clicking here.
 or over Avon Vivid Violet by clicking here.


So first up, here are some swatches of Muchi, Muchi by herself. It's a lovely soft baby pink creme. Not usually my polish of choice, but this is actually a nice colour. Especially for 'colour cleansing' for me because I am a purple/green/blue hoor.
The application was streaky on the first coat, and it required 3 coats total to smooth out. But I am happy with the end result so it gets a thumbs up from me.

Here she is in the shade.

~and in the full sun. This is with out top coat.

Essie Muchi, Muchi topped with OPI I lily love you. In the shade.

I was surprised how much I liked this, not really being a glitter girl.

~and here she is in the sun. Sooo pretty!

This is two thick coats of ILLY. I was going to only do one, but I ended up with a thick coat on one of my fingers, so I did two on all of them to keep it consistent. I think I will add some more thinner and try a thin coat next time.

I almost forgot that I wanted to add a matte top coat, and I started taking off the polish to move on to the next swatch. So all you get here is one finger, my pinky. Could be worse- could be a different finger. haha

This is with China Glaze Matte Magic, in the shade.

~and in the sun.

I really like the matte combo!

Thanks for looking!

~Pam

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I love layering experiments...

I was playing around with different layering combinations, and while this isn't out of the ordinary, it really does make OPI Magic pop.
It's OPI Designer Series Magic over Essie Aruba blue. It's metallic and sparkley, and fairly shimmery or maybe glass fleck? It also looks great over a purple base. It's a bit duo-chrome in the bottle but I can't see it on the nail at all. There are a few dupes that I know of for this polish, two being Orly Lunar Eclipse, and Sally Hansen Laser. I have all three, and I like DS Magic the best with Orly a close second. SH Laser is really pretty but is really sheer.

 

And below is what Essie Aruba Blue looks like on it's own.

Thanks for looking!

♥Pam♥

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