Black and White Blended Stamp on China Glaze Concrete Catwalk

Ooooh! I really love this one! 

Base: Seche Clear

Main Colour: China Glaze Concrete Catwalk

Stamp Colour: Claire's Black Hole, Billie Cosmetics French White

Image Plate: BM-221

All images should be click-able for a closer look! I hope you like it... 

Thanks for peeking!

♥

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

Halloween Skittles

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Thumb: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Whirlwind White with bat images from BM-213 and BM13 stamped using Gosh Nero. Dots are Sinful Colors Sugar Sugar.

Pointer: China Glaze Concrete Catwalk, stamped with BM-223 and SH Whirlwind White, dotted eyes with SC Sugar Sugar, and outlined with a black striper so that only a thin line of CG Concrete Catwalk is visible around the ghostie.

Middle: CG Concrete Catwalk stamped using BM-225 and SH Whirlwind White. Holo sparkles in the eyes taken from a mini bottle of Kleancolor 188 Black Out.

Ring: Essie Vermillionaire, stamped using BM-222 and Gosh Nero. Dotted Eyed With SH Insta-Dri Lightening.

Pinkie: CG Concrete Catwalk, stamped using BM13 and SH Whirlwind White. One large silver hex glitter for the abdomen.

Top Coat: Seche Vite!


Guys. My camera is falling apart. I am sorry for this grainy quality. A new camera is on my Christmas wishlist.


My son and I went nuts yesterday making cooOOOooooOOOkies. He's particularly pumped about the punkins.


I have been gone for so long! Things have seriously been CRAYZAY BIZZAY.
I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!

Cheers!

♥

JQ

Silver Glitz!

Hello0000ooo000ooo!


2 coats China Glaze Cheers to You and 1 coat of Wet n' Wild Party of Five Glitters, Seche Vite and voila! Space dinosaur disco nails! Silver gilded, jewel encrusted bling nails! Eye popping fun.


Thanks for stopping by!
♥
JQ

Black and Gold Chevron French Tips!

Guess what everybody!!

Today is the last day to enter my 200 follower giveaway! Quick! Get entered! :D


Here's the manicure I just finished up. Sorry it's a bit overcast today! But I still managed to catch the glimmer of my Cover Girl Pink Twinkle.


The tips are done with NYC Flat Iron Green (very very dark) and then the whole nail is gone over using Cover Girl Pink Twinkle. Then I used China Glaze Midnight Kiss (gold) and a fine paintbrush to accent the chevron tip, and then the same polish with my largest dotting tool for a dot at the tip of each chevron.


Then a smaller dot of Claire's Black Hole to give the chevron the look of jewelry or a curling ribbon, and my black Art Deco to delineate the chevron. One coat of Seche Vite and voila! Dressy nails. :P Now, where shall I go?

Thanks everyone and good luck in the giveaway! I hope to contact the lucky winner by Monday morning!

♥
JQ

Lavendar Fishnet Tips with Teal.

Greetings Jellybeans!

This was my manicure that I did yesterday afternoon, after I anxiously checked my mailbox for the new Bundle Monster plates. They still haven't arrived, but I have yet to do the final check of my mailbox today so there is still hope for the weekend. :P Seeing as I was so revved up to do stamping I decided I'd better sift through my Konad and older BM plates to see if I could get inspired.


Up until this time I haven't had much luck with applying the tip images STRAIGHT. Yesterday I lucked out, or else I have just done enough stamping and lining up full nail stamps that I am intuitively applying the tips better. Anyways I'm pretty happy with the turn out! I kind of finished this mani at the last minute so I slopped on some lotion, and ran outside to catch the last light in an already overcast day. I still managed to capture some of the shimmer, but due to my rushing I didn't actually do a brush clean up around the cuticles, and the lotion makes my hands look sooo shiny.


First I painted the tips on freehand, using a pale lavender franken, then painted the whole nail in two coats of Nicole by OPI Count On Me (teeny tiny pinkish blue flaky). After that was all dry I used Konad image plate #m45 and China Glaze Avalanche (a purple metallic), Then I used a fine brush and Revlon 340 Ocean for the definition line (that extended 3/4 of the way across each tip, leaving a small undefined section to the pinky side of each tip).


I also used Revlon 340 Ocean to stamp the flower (bm02) on the pinky side of each nail, sort of half on the tip. I did clean up the excess green that landed on my cuticles, but that's the extent of the clean up I did. I used a little nail glue to adhere a dark purple rhinestone to the center of each flower, before covering everything with a good coat of Seche Vite.

I just want to make it known that I am in LOVE with Nicole Count on Me. I just want to slap a coat of it over EVERYTHING. Also. I wish I could eat it.

Okay. I go now. :P

♥
JQ

Christmas Haul

Hi everybody,

This is just a big picture post of all the goodies I locked down by doing fun manicures for family and friends. I'm really excited to show it all off, but really this is just filler while I go about collecting photos from all my friends of their funky nail-dos so I can do a guest mani post. Sorry it's winding up being about a week between posts here. I think that's going to be the norm until April, as I am working on a tapestry submission for an upcoming touring exhibition.

Also I promise PROMISE I am working away at my first giveaway. I'm pretty excited about it. I put my little stash together and I've decided I want to add a few more polishes to the mix, so that will probably take until after my next payday. But it's in the works!

Okay here are the pics :P

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in: Lightening, Brisk Blue, Lickety-Split Lime, Whirlwind White

I found out that the white, and the yellow will work for stamping. the yellow one, of course only really works on some colors, but I look forward to trying out the blue and green as well. Hey, I can do some fun manicures on light backgrounds. :D You can see I've used quite a bit of the yellow and white already. :) I actually picked up another bottle of white and I have a slightly different yellow which hasn't got a name just the number 04.


Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in: Gray By Gray, Thinking of Blue, Wet Clay, and Commander in Chic. Drool. The Thinking of Blue I've actually used as a one coater under full nail stamps. I love one coaters. Also the bruses are really wide, and I found they worked for me, especially when painting other people's nails.

SH Xtreme Wear in: Black Out, Sun Kissed, Lime Lights, Emerald City, Blue It, White On, and three frankens using 3 bottles of White On and a few drops of more saturated colors. Sorry I can't remember which ones!

Left to Right: Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Diamonds and Brilliant Blush, Joe Moss, L'Oreal Luminescence and Party Hop, Revlon No Shrinking Violet, Minted, Totally Toffee.


Sally Hansen HD Hi-Def, Digital, and Resolution, Red Girl-dollar store finds by the hubby-Star (holo hearts and circles) and Illusions (holo bar glitters), Cover Girl Disco Dazzle, and Pink Twinkle.


OPI Top Coat and Drip Dry, China Glaze Cheers to You and Midnight Kiss.


My first OPI! Green-wich Village, Ski Teal We Drop, Pamplona Purple, Malaga Wine, Off With Her Red and My Private Jet (Fweeee! SOOO spoiled)


Gosh is my new best friend right now. All four of these stamp and stamp well. Left to right: Nero, Metallic Purple, Metallic Green, Metallic Blue. I went out and picked up a second bottle of Nero already because stamping black is a staple for me.

And the IsaDora!

Graffiti Nail Top in Subway Green--Which is this most amazing dark teal YUM. and Plain White for the base color.

OHHHH Boy that was a lot of spam. Sorry for the lame color quality!

Cheers and have a great week!
JQ

My First PHD Challenge...

This is my very first entry in a PHD challenge. The challenge theme is "Just the Tips!"


I used my Nailene French Tip white as the base so my colours would show up brighter. Once that was dry I painted pin striping using Revlon Top Speed in #730 Royal, and Icing's Grapetini. I also put a line of royal along the base of the french tip to make it cleaner. It was SO hard to do this on my right hand! Plus I'd only had two cups of coffee and nothing more this morning! SHAKES!


I finished off the mani with some rhinestones, mostly clear, but in purple and blue on the thumb nails. Then I painted on some China Glaze Denim and Diamonds' Diamond Diva (predominantly pink and blue sparkles) over the tips only. A splash of clear topcoat and I was done!

Thanks for stopping by!
JQ