Happy St Paddy’s Day!

Happy St Patrick’s Day!Did you have a great time out? Had many Stouts?

My St Patty’s Day was a quiet one where I was home all day just lazing in bed. Saturday was a very busy day for me having to bring my dog to the vet amid a cancer scare. The vet said she was OK but we will have to keeo an eye on her habits and come back to him if there are any big changes.

Let me push those grim news aside and on to the green!

I really wanted to incorporate a rainbow on my nails but after going through all my drawers I realised that I had no purple/violet creme polish :S

I quickly went through my drawers and was really happy that I had 2 green cremes which were quite contrasting! Ha! If I were to attempt this mani 3 months ago it would’ve been impossible cz at that time all I had was the apple green (OPI Green-wich Village) and a jelly green (Cult Nails Feeling Froggy)

I did the gradient with OPI Green-wich Village and China Glaze Exotic Encounters. I quite like how the gradient turned out even though it wasn’t super smooth.

And of course what is St Patrick’s Day with out a four leave clover!

I used A England’s Holy Grail (original) as the base on my ring finger and used a dotting too to create four little hearts. Let me say this – I was not all that in love with Holy Grail (original) as I thought it was a wee bit too yellow. But after using it, I have since fallen in love with it’s yellowish glow and butter smooth formula!

Here’s a close up of my ring finger.

I liked how something so simple looked so great!

Silver Dots

I grabbed a few polishes from A England during their last sale. The ones I grabbed were mostly from The Mythicals collection as I fell in love not only with their colors but with their names too! The Mythicals collection polishes seems like they were names after characters form the legend of King Arthur and Merlin. One of my favorite stories ever!

I wanted to try something new on my blog today took out my dotting tool and A England Excalibur. I first made a line through the middle of my nails with Excalibur and topped that with a thinner streak of China Glaze Exotic Encounters. I was thinking to add another stripe on to it but instead took my dotting tool and went to town! If anything went wrong I could always paint over the dots right? 😛

This is my first time ever using an A England polish and I can say I love Excalibur! It is a really nice silver foil and I think it may be a one coater! I shall have to try it on it’s own one day to find out.

I am looking at my mani and am thinking, Exotic Encounters is kinda like a dragon-y color and Excalibur was forged in the dragons breath – how apt! LOL.

China Glaze – Exotic Encounters

Exotic Encounters is from China Glaze Fall 2012 On Safari Collection. I got this polish off a blog sale for just $4! I was super happy to grab it at that price as I usually pay $8+ for just one China Glaze nail polish.

Exotic Encounters is a dusty green leaning teal creme. Application was awesome with only 2 coats to achieve opacity!

An awesome polish at an awesome price! Life’s good~

Day 6 – Gradient Nails

I done a few different types of gradient nails before. Let me see, I have done – glitter on creme gradients, glitter-glitter gradients and creme-creme gradients. Today I have something different from the gradients I have tried before, a metallic on creme gradient.

My choice of polishes for this challenge are Essie Mink Muffs and China Glaze Poetic.

I started off with 3 thin coats of Mink Muff and sealed it in with some Seche Vite top coat. After about 15minutes I picked up my make-up sponge and began sponging on Poetic. I kinda messed up my thumb but learnt from there and did the rest of my nails just nicely.

I did not use a top coat after sponging because I like the difference in the texture of the 2 polishes. I do not on any OPI Liquid Sands polishes but the gritty effect created by Poetic does resemble it a little. Or maybe it’s just me that is seeing it that way

Hmm…

Day 4 – Inspired by a Pattern

I am not so handy with a paint brush for nail art. Or with striping tape for that matter. So my next course of action for patterned nails – stamping!

When I first saw this design on nail blogs, it was love at first sight! I always wanted to get it but it seemed that no one was selling just a single plate with this design (BM212). After I found out that it was from Bundle Monster 2011 25piece collection I hesitated to get it. Stamping just ain’t my thing y’know.

After many months of trying to stamp and getting rather good results, I started to stalk Bundle Monster’s website and tried buying it a few times but my order got rejected more than once. Gah!

I stamped the image wiith China Glaze Passion and dotted the pattern with opposite colors. Somehow my dots weren’t as equal sized as they should be. I need more practice! I wanted to finish this manicure with a funky ala Fingers from Fingers Polish Mania but failed so bad I did not photograph it.