Happy belated St. Patricksday!!

I haven't celebrated St. Paddys since I studied in England over 10 years ago. It was fun and since I love Irish beer it was a blast. So to remind myself of all the fun I had I decided to get in on this year's celebration - and here is what I did.

I started out with this basic mani and had it all planned out. At least I thought so. But when it came to stamping the pot'o'gold on my ring finger I suddenly remembered I had thought of painting one of my nails gold.

A lot of facepalms later I got myself together and started stamping. And then I got to the Claddagh and realised I still hadn't gotten it all together. So I topped the middle finger with Ninja Polish Shillelagh and was good to go.

Last year I bought some plates from Messy Mansion one of which was this St. Patricksday plate. It is very versatile and though I will only get to use it once a year I'm still happy I bought it :)

I used Camelot for the pot'o'gold and should probably have used my Black stamping polish though that one isn't always a guarantee for a clear transfer either.

And these were the polishes used for this mani:

Have you made a St. Patricksday mani and want to share it? Follow this link to add the inlinkz script to your blog post:

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Golden Oldie Thursday #7: Chevron Fail

If you're a regular reader of this blog you probably know about my tendency to share my nail fails on a fairly regular basis. This is one of those days...

My nails have a fairly deep c-curve which can make stamping a bit challenging at times - in particular if you don't have a squishy stamper and the design itself need to be very straight, like chevrons. At the moment I use an XL stamper that has a more firm silicone head which gives me slight problems to say the least. I didn't really realise how bad the problem was until this mani. But I'll return to that in a moment.

Most of my Illamasqua polishes are more than a year old because ever since that awful debacle with Royal Mail last year their shipping prices have gone up considerably so I've found myself only wanting to purchase when they have sales - and then I still only buy make-up AKA I haven't bought them in more than a year. So off I went and dug into my Illa polishes for this week's challenge.

Illamasqua Elope       Illamasqua Nomad     GOSH Forest Floor       BarryM Gold Foil

And since my freehand Chevrons sucks big time I decided to try stamping them instead - as if that would make any difference :D

The base for this mani is a "circle gradient" where I applied the polish in a circle like a layer cake diagram and then pressed it on the nails, making sure to get a smooth transistion by moving the sponge in all directions when I applied the polish.

As you can see the chevrons are all wobbly due to the c-curve. When I stamp I can't push the head down enough to get a perfect transfer so instead I have to roll the stamper, which results in these very much curved sides on the chevrons...a loose-loose situatuation.

Hopefully my next stamping session will go more smoothly - and my next GOT challenge for that matter ;)

Remember to check the other awesome manis:

Wednesday Polish Picture Spam

So I realised I had an enormous amount of polish pics floating around but never got around posting them. So this will be my new "regular" posting: Polish Spam on Wednesdays. They will be short and to the point with one or two pictures of each mani and without an elaborate discription. If you want to know anything specific about each mani you are more than welcome to ask away in the commentary thread ;)

Lacquistry Faux Fir, three layers, no undies.



Nostalgic Nail Lacquer Envy, underwear Illamasqua Elope



Nostalgic Nail Lacquer Lust, underwear a-england Iseult.

Nostalgic Nail Lacquer Gluttony, underwear a-england Excalibur