30th November - St Andrew's Day

30th November is St Andrews's Day - when I was little the 4 saint's days for England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales were drummed into us and we used to wear our Brownie uniforms to school to mark these special days.
This year I did a mani for each day. For St Andrew's Day I have done tartan, using Moyou London Hipster 05, A England Camelot and Hit the Bottle Snowed Under over a base of  Above the Curve Caty Periwinkle and 'Ard as Nails Dewy Morning.
This is the closest I could get to my family tartan - I am 1/4 Scottish, so I googled my maiden name and found that family name Clement is part of the Lamont clan - the Lamont tartan is blue and green stripes with white and black. There seem to be a variety of shades but I went with paler blue and green simply so the black would show up. There's probably a bit too much white but I do think they look rather wintery and very pretty!
The other saints are St David, St Patrick and St George, and I have linked this post to the originals in case you want to see them again.
I also did a quick collage of the 4.

Moyou London Hipster 05

Stamping! Born Pretty 02 with ATC Moon Dance

Today I have been stamping again. It didn't work out exactly as I'd planned but I am still quite happy with it. Although I've experimented before, I wanted to try stamping with 2 colours so I chose Above the Curve This One's for My Peeps and Caty Perry-winkle, a pink holo and a blue one, both quite pale colours and quite opaque so I thought they'd work well over Above the Curve Moon Dance that I was wearing from last night. I decided to try a very pretty lacy pattern on one of my Born Pretty Plates, BP02. These plates are really good value and despite the long wait for them to arrive I am really pleased I got them. 

The plan was to do half the image in pink and half in blue, and allow any merging of the colors to happen but although the polishes are opaque enough to stamp with, the colour has not really come through so the whole nail looks the same. Not the end of the world, the image stamped well and the design is pretty, so although I could see my plan had failed I kept going just in case the top coat helped the colours out. It didn't, but the stamps I did on paper worked so I think I was just a bit too optimistic stamping over such a dark colour. Note to self - things to try next - pale colours over white, not nearly black and stronger colours over a dark base.

The piece of paper where I wipe the scraper between scrapings looks really pretty with the pink and blue wipings :)

I could pretend that I'd just used one colour and that it all worked out perfectly but you never know - this might be a useful note to anyone else thinking about trying this. I still consider myself to be very new to stamping, still have heaps to learn and my blog is about what I did and why, so you get it all -successes and failures.

I don't consider this a failure, it is a lesson learned and luckily I still have a very pretty pattern stamped over last nights stunning glitter, the glitters still peeping out between the stamped image and I really like the end result!

As usual where I really like a mani, heaps of pictures. There was no sunshine today but I have a mix of daylight, LED and flash pics.

BP02 stapmed over Above the Curve Moon Dance

 

   

 

 

 

 

   

Stamping and Saran wrap! Messy Mansion 20 and some pretty pastel flowers

Earlier in the week I was wearing Above the Curve Cold Rain, but I was bursting to try Messy Mansion 20, which has a sort of reverse image on it, where you are effectively stamping a background, and leaving the flowers as the base colour. I also had an idea I wanted to try out for a more colourful base which I thought would look good under black stamping.
I have done a few saran wrap manis and love the finished marbley look you get with very little effort, so I wanted to try a sort of saran wrap gradient thing! I chose 2 colours that went well with Cold Rain. Staying with the same brand of polish I chose This One's for My Peeps, a pinky lilac shimmery holo and Caty Perry-winkle which is a lilacy blue shimmery holo. Both these polishes have great opacity so I was pretty certain they'd work for a saran wrap mani.
I used the pinky one to do the lower half of my nails and the blue one for the tips and allowed the colours just to meet in the middle. I think the combination of colours look lovely together and had I not been so keen to stamp, I would probably have worn the mani just like that for a day.
I took a couple of pics and then started stamping. I used A England Camelot to stamp with and I did have a bit of a problem picking up the whole image so the stamping is not perfect. I do seem to struggle a bit with images where you have to pick up a lot of polish and I am thinking I should try this plate with one of my Mentality polishes and see if it is a bit more successful.
To the naked eye they look fine and I am really pleased with the finished look but blown up on the laptop you can see all the bits that aren't black when they should be.
I really like the black stamping with the pastel coloured flowers showing through - imperfections apart, they turned out exactly as I'd hoped and I absolutely love them!!

Saran wrap with Above the Curve Cold Rain,
This One's for My Peeps and Caty Perry-winkle

stamping with Messy Mansion 20

 

  

 

 

 

 

Stamping! Above the Curve Caty Perry-winkle and The Silence

I just have a brief post for your now, as I wanted to try out a new stamping plate EDM03, now available from Rainbow Connection. The plate is by Emily de Molly, and I knew as soon as I saw it I wanted it. I have a particular love of Art Deco and the Arts and Crafts movement. I am not sure why but I saw this plate and I thought Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh - my 2 favourite architects. Something about the style of this plate just conjures up images of their work, most particularly their stunning interiors.
Anyway, I thought I'd try stamping the very pretty Above the Curve Caty Perry-winkle over The Silence. Caty Perry-winkle is a pale blue creme with a fine holographic shimmer. I've been wanting to try stamping a pale shade over a dark for a while. I was delighted to find Caty Perry-winkle is opaque enough for stamping, the combination is quite subtle but I like the end result.
The delicate periwinkle blue is very pretty against the blue black holo, and that midnight sky now has these wonderful geometric lines shooting across it.

Above the Curve Caty Perry-winkle
and The Silence