No H8

Even though I'm not too popular in the nail art community, I still wanted to say something about this. 

I actually just read about this this morning, browsing some of the other blogs that I read daily. And I'm glad that I did. I actually wasn't too aware that things were this bad, that people were 

I'm glad that I had a purple mani in storage too. lol

I used Kleancolor here, it doesn't have a name though, as the base. 

And for the glitter top coat, Icing Written in the Stars.

Bullying is not funny. It is not cool. It is not right. And more importantly, it is not okay. 

Most of us are, thankfully, residents of countries that support tolerance and many of our families have settled in these places simply for that reason. Generations later, it is our responsibility to perpetuate that message of tolerance across our new social platforms, including the internet.

As members of the nail polish blogging community, we all share a love of beauty, color, and lacquer. Other than that, we are remarkably different: from our race to our religion to our hair color...even to our polish application techniques. To marginalize anyone because of those differences is completely unacceptable and today I take a stand against that. I refuse to allow other people's view of "normal" dictate how I behave, believe, and blog. 

In solidarity with a multitude of bloggers linked below, my purple manicure represents my proud commitment to the No H8 movement. Today, November 8, I dedicate my post to ending bullying of any kind and to encouraging diversity and imperfection among our colorful community.

Forget You!

I stopped by Icing the other day for the first time in forever and picked up a few polishes; they were having a buy 1 get 1 half off sale. 

I got my hands on this polish: Icing Forget You, among others. 

Forget You - a pretty purple with a prominent blue shimmer. I love this colors, but the formula was a little had to work with, which made it not so great. It was kind of runny, but still thick? Is that even possible, this polish managed. It was very streaky and tacky. But the second coat did manage to cover this up. However when the second coat when on it became somewhat congealed, I don't know, kind of gritty almost. It was very difficult to get smooth and even after the finish still felt a little gritty. 2 coats to full opacity, but some needed 3 coats to battle the weird formula. But it is a beautiful color so I'll try this one again. 

$4.50 at Icing, but it was buy one get one 50% off. 

Sally Hansen Posh Plum and Designs

I've had this color for awhile and kept passing it up, but now that I've put it on I can't imagine why! 

Posh Plum - this is a gorgeous purple color that has a little bit of a duochrome to it. In some lights it does look a bit more pink than purple, but mostly it gives off that wonderful bright purple color. Fuschia! This is the name that I was trying to come up with, I think this name aplies to this color quite accurately. It does have a bit of a shimmer to it, but it is very fine. 2 coats got this opague and to the color in the bottle. 

I did do a design over this as well. I did something simple because I wanted the plum to still show through really well. 

I used Sally Hansen's Golden-l for the designs. 

This has got to be my all time favorite gold as well! I have used quite a few, Milani Signature Gold, Essie Good as Gold... Nothing compares! And for the price, it is amazing for detailing, designing, or a while nail!

I got these both from Walgreens: buy 2 for $5 or 1 for $2.99

MASH 2012 Plates - Review and Pictures

These are actually my first plates, I decided on the MASH 2012 plates because they seemed to have the widest variety of designs and the the best reviews for the price. Also, most bloggers said that these would be the best plates for beginning stampers because they do have such a wide variety of designs and are easy to work with. 

These are MASH plates, numbers 26-50. They did come packaged well; they were indivually wrapped and had the protective blue cover, so they were not going to get scratched at all during shipping! 

They also have the paper backing so they don't have sharp edges, I didn't have a problem pulling off the cover at all; most people say they cut themselves, but with the backing it was super easy! 

Now to some images!

You do need to remove this cover from the plates or they will not work. 

Now on to viewing the plates!

Image 35, I could not get this one to photograph for the life of me!

These are all just such great images and patterns! I have so many ideas for them! 

I also like that they have a very wide variety of styles, like so many people say; from animals to floral, geometric, elemental, it really has it all! 

It even has full nail designs, tips, and small sigal images. I didn't even notice the tips before I bought it, I was just looking at all of those gorgeous full nail designs! 

I also bought one Konad plate along with this that I will be reviewing at a later time. 

But of course along with this wonderful pictures I've got to know how it stamps, right?

I bought a Konad Double Ended stamper to go along with this, because I've heard from like everyone that nothing really works except a Konad stamper. So I'll be using that to practice my stamping as well as show you guys how well these work. 

I'll start with my polishes I know will stamp, like Sinful Colors Black on Black, most of the Sally Hansen line, and more! 

(Actually SC Black on Black did not seem to stamp very well for me, it was not very pigmented.)

I used MASH-39 here, Pure Ice Taupe Drawer for base color and Sinful Colors Let's Talk for stamping. 

I didn't get the print exactly straight on my nails.. But I think it came out okay. This was my absolutely first time stamping on nails! 

I do really like stamping, it's really easy to get the designs out and you don't have to worry about doing them by hand with acrylic, which can be very time consuming. This took me about an hour because I kept messing up the stamp and taking it off; I used OoohShinies method of taking off the stamp while still leaving the base coat there (link below). 

It also took awhile to find a color that worked with Taupe Drawer and still stamped good... 

For help with my stamping, I looked at these very helpful posts: by Rebeccalikesnails and OoohShinies. They do have great tips in all aspects and make it very easy to just pick up my plates and begin, they wrote everything I need to know, from where to buy everything to what I'll need to what not to do.

I bought these plates online, off of Amazon, for $15.99 + free shipping, they were such a steal!

Wet n Wild - On a Trip and Designs AND Comments About this new brush shape

I came across a swatch of Wet n Wild's On a Trip online and fell in love, I just had to have it. So the next time I went to Walgreens I picked up a bottle. And let me just say, on my nails it is as beautiful as it was on that blog. 

On a Trip - a purple creme polish, though it is leaning toward the cool side. There isn't exactly a blue undertone, but it isn't completely purple either. A diifficult polish to name. 2 coats to full opacity and to get to the color in the bottle. These pictures are without topcoat.

Closest to color in real life

Now this is one of those polishes that has those "specially designed brushes", they are thicker brushes that have a bit of a curve to the end. You can see the sticker there on the bottle. Most people have complained about these brushes being too big and bulky, that they made a mess and that they were hard to work with. 

For me, it was the complete opposite! I found the curved end was the exact curve of my cuticles and thus, made it much easier to not make a complete mess all over there, and I actually managed to not paint all over my cuticles, which I usually do. Also, the wider brush allowed to paint my nails in fewer strokes. I made less of a mess with this brush than I usually do, even painting with my left hand. I really don't know what the problem is, and I can see more companies switching to this brush because IT WAS EASIER!!

I also did a bit of a design on top of this with one of the Color Club glitters that I got; unfortunately, these do not have names. I talked about them here however: Color Club Glitters

I used the one that has the pink and blue glitters. 

I got WetnWild for $1.99 from Walgreens and the Color Club I got in a pack of 7 for $7.99

Wet n Wild Purple and Blue

I just got these polishes the other day and absolutely fell in love! 

I was actually quite surprised to see such a developed, by this I mean the duo-chrome/color they had, polish for only 93 cents each! 

The polishes I got were Wet n Wild Wild Card and Wet n Wild Rain Check. 

Beautiful colors! And I almost passed them up too. 

I actually have quite a few polishes from Wet n Wild's Wild Shine Collection, all of these colors from this collection I would highly recomend because of the tendency to have that chrome finish for such an inexpensive polish. 

But anyway, back to THESE polishes! Love at first sight. 

Wild Card - This polish is so hard to describe, the name is so fitting here. The best I can say is that it is kind of a mauve-ish purple with a pink shimmer. It does look pink in some lighting, but for the most part it is that lavender/mauve/purple(? Most bloggers I've read say lavender). It did take three coats however to get full opacity, the first was barely visable. It did have a good formula though it wasn't too thick and it didn't dry too fast, becoming tacky. And! Amazing, it was not streaky, which I was expecting from this chrome-finish polish.

I also did a little design on top of this with the blue that I was talking about above:

Rain Check.

Rain Check is a beautiful blue with a heavy silver/grey undertone. There is also a bit of a purple tone in this polish. This one was only a two coater, but other than that it had the same formula and also did not have any streaks at all. 

For the silver here, I used silver acrylic paint and a striping brush. My first time ever doing free hand painting like this! That's why it looks so horrible. Lol. Except for my thumb, and that's why I had to show it off. 

With matte finish

I also put a matte finish over this in the end, and I must say that I love these colors matted! 

Though they do look great both ways. 

I used Hard Candy Matte-Ly In Love which I got from Wal-mart for $4.00 

What do you think?

Dotted Purple

I swear this is the last time that I'll do this! Probably not... 

But I haven't had much time on my hands to do an actually full manicure with school and work and stuff, that to keep posting at least on a kind of regular basis I've just been making designs over my swatches. 

This one I got kind of lazy on, I wanted to do dots, and I thought I might do a gradient, but when I looked at my purples I'm missing a color in between to make the colors look cohesive. 

So I just used two colors and did them in two different sized dots radomly. I also still haven't gotten my dotters, so this was done with a small paint brush. 

Colors used: Base - Sinful Colors Let's Talk 

Darker Dots - Revlon Grape Icy

Lighter Dots - Revlon Gum Drop

The Revlon nail polish is their scented line and I will do a review on this line, or at least these two nail polishes, a bit later. 

Sinful Colors - $.99 (On sale, Walgreens)

Revlon (Both) - $3.27 each (Wal-mart)