Spring Double Stamp

Hello!  I'm still here!  Just in the middle of gardening season and getting my perennial bed sorted out so I have dirty paws lately.  So I pulled a manicure from the not so distant past, that I created to celebrate the first days of spring.

In the spirit of all the lovely birdsong, bursting blooms and budding trees:

I forgot what combinations of polish I used for this manicure--pretty sure the base green is Barielle Mint Ice Cream Cone, and I put a light coat of Covergirl Boundless Color Pink Twinkle over every nail before sealing with my favorite topcoat Seche Vite. I used image plates: BM003 (flower), BM-204 (green, stamped twice), BM-410 (dragonfly), as well as one Cheeky XL plate.  The pink nail is a kind of pond manicure with a sheer pink jelly.

Do you have a favorite spring manicure?  Or a favorite colour nail polish this spring/summer?

Thanks for popping by!
♥
JQ

Franken Sheer Easter Manicure

Greetings Jellybeans!

How was your Easter?  I wore this eggtacular mani for the weekend.  Alas, it is chipped so I can't keep it much longer, but it was fun while it lasted!

 2 coats Billie Cosmetics white creme

Blobs of all five of my home made franken sheer goodies!

Stamped using Billie Cosmetics white creme and a formerly untried image from Cheeky XL A

Seche Vite to seal it all up!

What did you wear for Easter?  Go ahead, give me another lemming!  I definitely don't mind!

In other exciting news, my Gone So Long Giveaway has ended!  The winners have been notified via email from my fripperydigitsblog gmail address. Congratulations! Please email me back asap!  I realize now I never put a deadline for response in my Giveaway announcement post, but it's usually 48 hours.  I will give you until the end of Wednesday April 23 to respond. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you all for peeking!  Happy Polishing!

♥ ♥ ♥

JQ

Born Pretty Review - Nail Art Studs

Hello hello!

I have a fun review today of some Nail Art Studs from Born Pretty Store !

I chose some super cute metallic nail art studs that can be found here and here!

The studs arrived within the expected shipping time, and the wheel contents hadn't shifted.  I like these wheels because they are harder to turn and open than some other wheels I've had, so I don't get a big mess in my nail art drawer or when I go to move a wheel. One of the wheels had mostly larger studs in a variety of shapes and sizes and the other containes a variety of smaller ones.  I did 2 manicures that combine nail art stamping with an accent stud and one manicure with just an accent nail.  I have several more ideas for how to try these, but I thought I would share what I have with you now!

On to the nail art!

The first manicure was using Cheeky XL plate B and some medium sized gold square studs.  The base was Finger Paints Go Van Gogh.  Barielle Mint Ice Cream Cone for the stamp.

The second manicure used an image from XL plate using a base of LA Colors Rain Drops and sponge gradient China Glaze Avalanche and L'Oreal Luminescence.  Stamped using Sally Hansen Chrome Crystal and topped with a large silver coloured square stud.

The last manicure, and what I am currently sporting is 1 coat OPI Off with Her Red and 2 coats Pirate Polish Five by Five (AWESOME polish by an equally awesome brand--I'll be reviewing this very soon) and an accent nail that used one of the tiniest gold dots and a large gold grommet type stud as well as some red rhinestones from my stash. I really like how this addition dresses up the manicure.  It's just plain GOOD to have hot red on my nails but the little added bling makes me feel fancy!

 

I am really enjoying playing with these rhinestones and can't wait to try more!

I want to say thank you to Born Pretty Store for sending me these items to review, and thank all of you for popping by to take a peek!

If you go shopping at Born Pretty Store, remember you can get a 10% discount by entering the coupon code!

What would you do/have you done with studs? Leave a link! I'd love to check it out!  Please no spam.
Happy polishing!
♥
JQ

TGIF Rainbow Gradient

 OMGRAINBOWSPARKLYGOODNESS!!!!!

It is SO obvious that my cuticles just plain angry with me, and on top of that, the blue stained them, but I couldn't NOT post this manicure win. This one makes my heart go boom every time I look at it.  And the shimmer adds a real kick that I couldn't capture completely in the photos.  

DRIVING HAZARD. 

I wish I was more pro-star at the care and maintenance of my hands.  I have taken to using cuticle oil morning and night so see if that helps.  So far no flare ups with this Orly Argan Cuticle Oil!

Base: Revlon Quick Dry Base Coat

White underlay: 1 coat Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On.

Sponge (cuticle to tip): duri cosmetics Kinky Pleasures,SH Xtreme Wear Going Green, SH Insta-Dri Lightening, SH Xtreme Wear Sun Kissed, Essie Lacquered Up

Stamp:SH Hard as Nails Black Heart

Plate: Cheeky XL B

Sparkle: SH Diamond Strength  Diamonds

Top: Seche Vite

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope everybody has a fantastic weekend!  
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

JQ

Cheeky Rainbow Skittles

 

 Yes, I stayed up WAY past my bedtime.  For a rainbow XL stamping frenzy! Photos taken  in a hurry the morning after I did this because we were driving into the city and I had a feeling I would ding them up while we were gone.  And I DID.  Badly.  L.A. COLORS BASE/TOP, you make me sad.

 Base L.A. COLORS BASE/TOP

Colors: OPI Pamplona Purple, SH X-Treme Wear Sun Kissed, OPI Green-Wich Village, OPI Off With Her Red!, SH Complete Salon Manicure Thinking of Blue, Nina Ultra Pro Like Butta

Stamp: SH Hard as Nails Black Heart

Plates: Cheeky XL plates A, B, D

Top: Seche Vite.

 

I wanted to play with all the different images, and had done a similar manicure with BM plates on my friend Jenna a few Christmases back, because we couldn't decide on just one.  My favorite is the pebbles on my pointer finger on the above image.  That was my instinctive choice for a full mani, and now I know I could have gone with it. Personally, I think it is the most successful combo.

 Glad I took these before I left, even though I wish I'd been able to get better shots.  The first image (flash) is actually quite nice and gives a good idea of how it looked overall, but it really made me shiny.

I LOVE MY NEW PLATES!   

Happy painting y'all!

 ♥

JQ

Cheeky Image Plate Review

GUYS. I got some seriously CHEEKY mail a week and a half ago. ;p

I splurged and ordered these fabulous rectangular nail plates from Cheeky.  AND THEY ARE SO BADASS.

I am a Bundle Monster gal.  I have 6 Konad plates from when I first started and the rest are all BM. I LOVE THEM. 

But a good friend and fellow nail head let me in on the fact that you could get these other image plates through amazon.ca  And that they had pretty much a whole plate full of PAISLEY. I got 8 plates. The price has even gone down slightly from when I bought these, but my order averaged to less than 10$/plate, which I think is pretty reasonable.  I did the math, counting all the images over 8 Cheeky plates. There are 563.  In the 3 BM sets there are 440. I also took the average images per BM set.  (140, 150, 150) which is about 146.5.  Then divided the number of images in the Cheeky set by 145.5 to see how many BM sets it is the equivalent to. 3.84.  Anyways.  I'm not a math wiz by any stretch, but that was enough to tell me I got a pretty decent deal. SO. PICTURES.

The packaging was great.  Inside the bubble wrap lined envelope, each plate had a little sleeve of bubble wrap.  I got a cute little card congratulating me.  It's a party!  A nail art party! 

 

They all had that nice protective blue film that just peels away, and a really cool touch is that each plate is backed with pink plastic and it extends beyond the plate, so it gives a really nice finish, while keeping your paws, the table, and the other plates from getting scratched.

Shiney!

 

Another thing I really appreciate is the size of the full nail images.  They are nice and big! Big enough that I can select the area to paint and transfer to the nail. Every full nail image has one concave edge that makes them very versatile;  It eliminates the need to have separate images for french tips, and gives me the option for a moon manicure effect as well.I have decent sized fingernails, and I really dislike trying to double stamp.  It's so hard to get a good seam. 

For reference here is a picture of the large Cheeky images next to a larger BM image and the original BM full nail image:

I also like that a lot of the images have reflections so you can stamp the other paw, or mess around with mirroring.



Not only do they do reflections, but also a few different sizes of the same image.  So you can do that darn pinky finger the same as the others, or give the thumb a big one.  :)

 

 Thanks Cheeky!



I'm a fan!



Here are a few pics of the manicures I have done so far:

 

The very first one was the celtic image.  I absolutely HAD to find out what that looked like.

Base: China Glaze Concrete Catwalk 

Stamp: GOSH Metallic Green.  

Plate: Cheeky D

Top: Seche Vite



Manicure #2 kinda reminded me of circuit boards.
Base: Finger Paints Go Van Gogh
Stamp: Essie Good as Gold
Plate: Cheeky B
Top: SV



 Manicure #3 was subtle. I only got a quick shot in the evening, but irl it looked way prettier.
Base: Sally Hansen CSM: Wet Clay
Stamp: Billie Cosmetics Reign
Plate: Cheeky B
Top: SV



Currently!

Base: Sponge gradient OPI Off With Her Red, CR #89, Billie Cosmetics Orange
Stamp: Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Black Heart
Plate: Cheeky A
  Top: SV


Thank you so much for popping by!  Happy painting!

♥
JQ