Tri-Polish Challenge-June #4

Yay! We made it through another month of the Tri-Polish Challenge! For some reason, it seems that a number of people had inspiration issues this month. I decided after my second manicure that I didn't love the polishes that I chose, but I managed to get ideas anyway.

 (You are given colors and have to select a polish for each to use in four manis, and you can use black, white, gold, silver and glitter topcoats, too.)

All along I wanted to do a gradient, and Tuesday was filled with tape manis, so here we go with my combination of the two.

I had a couple of days of wear on my base colors of Llarowe's P38 over Zoya FeiFei, so it was nicely dry for the tape application. I then took a little torn piece of my makeup sponge, clicked it with the hemostat and dabbed on the purple, then the pink, and then the red. I then took the tape off and tossed on a coat of Seche Vite.

This is a more distinct gradient rather than a smooth one.

Pretty happy with this iteration of  these colors! This works for me-although I had envisioned over white, I couldn't pass up the black.

Thanks again Debbie Crumpet for setting up this challenge. Sometimes more challenging than others-I suppose, for me at least, I don't want to be a copycat, but there are so many gorgeous manicures that the Tarts come up with! So take a look at today's offerings by clicking on the Inlinkz below.

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Tri-Polish Challenge-June #3

I did some stamping! Glad I thought of it, I love how this manicure turned out.

That is two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls over OPI Nail Envy Matte, topped with a coat of Seche Vite, just in case I would have to remove a stamped image-it preserves the base color.

Then I tried a technique, new to me, but you have probably seen it before. Instead of one color polish being used, you put two colors on the plate and then scrape. I think it worked really well with my purple and pink!

I used another Vivid Lacquer plate, VL008-love the kitty!

This plate has a series of he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not images and then the one in the lower corner I used for most of my fingers. Under my fingers is the reverse image which I used on my accent nails. I love all her plates, and hint, hint, she's working on her next ones, watch for them here.

CritiqueCorner
Gee, since it tends to come up every time, should I actually make it a feature highlighting what I did wrong or what I think looks wrong? Two things this time-in the second photo you can see on my ring finger that I had to double stamp, somehow the original didn't go all the way down to the base of my nail, and in this last photo you can see it is darker along the edge? Well, I learned that you should always topcoat your stamped image before trying to clean up the edges. I took a very obvious wedge out of the image with my clean up tool. I corrected it by scraping up some of the polish that had been scraped off the plate and applying it to fill in the color. I suppose I should have just taken the whole thing off and restamped, but I guess I was just a bit too lazy.

Take a look at what the other Tarts have accomplished with this third manicure of June-how many ways can we all combine purple, pink and red? So many great ideas!

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Tri-Polish Challenge-June #2

Red, Purple, and Pink! Love all three of these color separately, and together, but I think I chose particularly "wintery" versions of each. Because that is what I love!

I tried to do that three dimensional look with dots, but it ended up just being "offset dots", mainly because I used the same dotting tool to do both colors, and I think that a smaller one should have been used for the second set, this time in pink.

Offset dots are cool, though, too!

I have no idea what I did to get a black background, LOL.
All three colors went together nicely, two coats of my purple-Orchid Express, and then dots with Isla and Rose Radiance, Seche Vite to topcoat.

Next mani, I think I need to stamp, because that is another reason why I chose these colors, all three stamp wonderfully!

I am pretty impressed with all the manicures other Tarts are putting out there, and I probably will copy at least one of them! Look at what they did for this month's second installment-

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Tri-Polish Challenge-June #1

Third Tuesday of June, so it is time for the first of this month's Tri-Polish Challenge manicures.
Basic Rules of this challenge:

• Three colors selected by and posted on The Crumpet's Facebook page.
• Select a polish to represent each of those colors.
• Do four manicures, at least one using all three colors, and all of them using at least two of the colors.
• You can also use black, white, silver, gold, and glitter topcoats.
• Post the manis on your blog or straight to the Nail Tarts FB page and link up using Inlinkz.
• Profit. 

OK, maybe not profit.

This month the colors are Red, Purple, and Pink. Here are my polishes:

 That there is Zoya Isla (my tip top favorite red!), Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Orchid Express, and Orly Rose Radiance.

 Full sunlight

Today, I am only using two, the purple and the red, along with my silver striper and tape as a tool. This is so simple and graphic, I love it!

Even fuller sunlight

This mani succumbed to my inability to stop when I am ahead.

I thought it would be cool to make pyramids on either side of the stripe, don't ask me why. But when it got this far, I realized I wouldn't be able to do that.

Inside, indirect sunlight

Oh, well. In other colors, this would have been a cool football or baseball or patchwork manicure.

Take a look at the other Tarts and their manicures-pretty much bound to be better than this. Better luck next time, Lizajane!

 

 

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Koi!

I received my plate order from Messy Mansion this week and I couldn't wait to use one of them (the other is a Christmas plate, so I can wait with that one.) Messy Mansion is an Australian company and one of their things is that they donate part of their profit to woman-centric charities. This month it went to Hamlin Fistula Hospital. Scroll down here to see what they have to say about the hospital.

I started out with my usual base coat of OPI Nail Envy Matte, then put down two coats of L'Oreal Mango Mamma. I Seche-d my ring fingers, and then stamped using the Koi images and Wet & Wild Ebony Hates Chris. People were right when they recommended that polish, so far it is my best black stamper, thanks! Reading up on this plate, someone recommended double scraping to get a bit more polish out, because the images are deeply engraved, so I did that and I am very happy with how they transferred.

I used my dotting tool and Zoya Ziv to give the Koi a few gold scales, and then topped it off with another coat of Mango Mamma (hate that spelling, btw. In my head I pronounce it like "Ma'am Ah.)

One more coat of the orange on the rest of the nails, some Seche Vite, and we were good to go (to bed).

I did these nails Tuesday night. Wednesday I worked at the desk, so clerical all day. Thursday I did my normal patient care job, Friday afternoon I said that I was very happy with how it was wearing. An hour later, I had a chip in it. Doncha just hate it when that happens?

I am very happy with both the polish and the plate.
I am excited to try out the other images on the plate-particularly the architecture one, I see Oz in its spires!
And the formula on this polish was very nice, stayed right where I put it. Very happy with this collection, and I think I have to go back and pick up the blue one-I skipped it because I have Revlon Royal, but this is a lighter blue and it doesn't become opaque in two coats like I find Royal does.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!
Adios!
~~Lizajane

Darling Diva Chandelle and L'Oreal Creme de Mint

I had fun coming up with this manicure!

Chandelle had been calling to me the past few days, but I didn't know what to pair it with. I knew I wanted to use the new L'Oreals but Julep Amber was looking very nice with it, too.
So I asked my hubby.
Super helpful guy that he is, he deferred at first saying that it would be like him asking me whether he should use 7 1/2 or 8 size shot in his reloads. Boy was he surprised when I came up with an answer with a real reason behind it! So he thought about it a few seconds  and said that since I don't much like gold, I should do the green. That's my guy! Even if I don't think he pays attention, after almost 30 years, some things have sunk in!

I put down two coats of Creme de Mint, then one of Chandelle. Then on all but the ring finger, I added one more of Creme de Mint-jelly sandwich!

The shrinkage tells you, even if I didn't, that I topped it all off with Seche Vite. Even on the accent fingers, that was enough to pretty much make it smooth.

In the indirect sunlight here, you can really tell the difference that last coat of Creme de Mint made. It toned everything down, almost hiding those tiny golden flecks.

Everything applied very nicely. I can't wait to play more with the L'Oreals. Such a fun collection-I picked up all but the pink and blue at Walgreens when they had a buy one-get one half off sale a few weeks ago. The red and orange are SO CLEAR and jelly like, the rest are just a bit milky or cloudy.

Adios!
~~Lizajane

Untried Polish Challenge-Glitter

Awww, it's the last installment of this challenge. This has been so much fun, and has gotten so many Untrieds into the Tried column.

I chose to use one of the new Hard Candy line, Sweet Tooth.

This is one coat over just my regular base of OPI Matte Nail Envy. It is a few colors of glitter, both matte and shiny, in a pale blue base.

The rest of my fingers, I put down two coats of OPI I Think In Pink before my one coat of Sweet Tooth. This really pulled out the pink glitter. I liked it better than the plain.

So, I put one coat of I Think In Pink over Sweet Tooth. The milky pink really worked well over this, like half a jelly sandwich.

You can tell the difference between the two layering methods in this picture.

The texture of the glitter didn't bother me, so I decided to forgo topcoat. 

Yeah, that was a mistake. I don't recall what I did, but three fingers on each hand got crunched up within an hour, and I didn't notice them, so they had dried enough that I couldn't flatten them, so off it came. Sad. (But I replaced it with Zoya Blaze, so not so sad after all!)

So, thank you Jo for inspiring us, leading us through this challenge. It has been fun to do and more importantly, fun to read what the others have been doing!

Jo at Just Add Polish 

Masha at Lost In Lacquer

Raine at Lacquer Lily
Amy at Fancy Side

Amanda at Designer Nail Accents
Sam at Polished Art 

 Blueberry Pie at Blueberry Nails
Kristina at Lacquer Fetish

Missy at Gnarly Gnails
Uni at Acetone Files
Isabel at Little Fairy

Raux at Raux Polish

Alison at UKNailRunner 

 

Adios!

~~Lizajane

Untried Polish Challenge-Most Expensive

Second to the last post for this challenge. It has been fun, and I wonder if I might do it again. I certainly haven't stopped buying polishes!
Strap On Your Moonboots by China Glaze in their Holographic collection.
Forgot my 15% off coupon, so I paid full price $9.99. The other two I got from this collection I remembered the coupon.

One coater. Stamped well over two coats of China Glaze White on White.

I was so excited when I bought this that I tossed a coat over what ever mani I had on, right there in the store. It didn't look like much inside, but when I headed to my car, the sunshine just made the rainbows appear, BOOM!

You can see why it was in the running for Prettiest, too!

So what are the others serving up for us today? Take a look:

Jo at Just Add Polish 

Masha at Lost In Lacquer

Raine at Lacquer Lily
Amy at Fancy Side

Amanda at Designer Nail Accents
Sam at Polished Art 

 Blueberry Pie at Blueberry Nails
Kristina at Lacquer Fetish

Missy at Gnarly Gnails
Uni at Acetone Files
Isabel at Little Fairy

Raux at Raux Polish

Alison at UKNailRunner 

Adios!

~~Lizajane