December Challenges - Charming Tale Polishes and Snowflakes

I do like to try and support the UK Indie Makers, and last week I bought the Camelot Collection from Charming Tale. This is a collection of 5 lovely shimmery polishes and I have used two of them on today's mani.
I started with The Sword, a silvery white polish which applied really nicely and gave great coverage with 2 coats. It has tiny flakies in but I don't think I managed to catch any in the photos.
Then I did a gradient with The Sword and The Wizard. The Wizard is an intense bright blue shimmer although it looks very slightly tealy in some of my photos. There are little flakies in there too, which I hope you can see in some of the pics. The blue would obviously be more intense used as a polish rather than sponged on but I think these two made a great gradient.
Finally I added snowflakes for #wnac2015. I used QA86 that I bought from She Sells Seashells last year. This is a really pretty little plate and stamps beautifully. I used Avon Classic Fit and Hit The Bottle Snowed Under and lined them up as well as I could to stamp blue on white and vise versa.
I was really pleased with the outcome, the shimmer of the Charming Tale polishes was the perfect backdrop for the snowflakes, and I think you can see the little flakies in the zoomed in shot (not a proper macro as I wanted to catch 2 nails in the shot).
Loads of pics because I was so pleased with these :)

Charming Tale The Sword

 

Charming Tale The Sword and The Wizard

QA86 with Avon Classic Fit and
Hit the Bottle Snowed Under

 

 

May Challenges - Gradient

The challenge for 23rd May for #clairestelle8may was Gradient. Somewhat foolishly maybe I decided to ask my IG followers what colors I should do, otherwise I'd have gone green / purple :)
Anyway, the first two to comment said red, orange, yellow - oh great - my three least favourite colours, but that's what they said so that's what I did.
I went for China Glaze Red-y to Rave, China Glaze Daisy Know my Name, and Lady Manhattan Red.
I started with a white base, and then I did do a little cheat and painted roughly 1/3 of each nail with each of the colours, just to save a bit of time and mess! Then I did it properly with a sponge until it looked reasonable, banking on the fact that it always looks better after a top coat.
Not a fantastic effort (that in no way resembles a Rocket lolly) I know, but good enough to stamp over.
I stamped with Hit the Bottle Absinthe Minded and UberChic Beauty UC 3-02. The image I chose is a fantastically detailed mix of flowers, leaves, swirls and I think the green stamped really nicely over the three colours. I like the contrast and the way the green looks different against each shade, looking almost chinese I think.
Then later I added the final layer, and for me this is my clear favourite. I stamped with Avon Classic Fit and UberChic Beauty UC 3-01using one of those images which stamps a background, allowing the base colour to show through and I think the effect is pretty awesome! Classic Fit is just a regular polish, not fully opaque but I love the effect I get when I stamp with it. It is dark enough for a contrast against all shades of the gradient base but the yellow and green still show through so that it actually looks like dark green rather than blue adding to the gradient effect, and if you look closely you can still see the bright green stamping under the blue, particularly over the red at the tips.
Ok, so I've waffled for too long because I love it!!! I hope you like it too :)

China Glaze Red-y to Rave,
China Glaze Daisy Know my Name,
and Lady Manhattan Red

Hit the Bottle Absinthe Minded
 and UberChic Beauty UC 3-02 

Avon Classic Fit and UberChic Beauty UC 3-01

 

May Challenges - Nautical

The challenge for #clairestelle8may was Nautical, so I went with the first thing that came into my mind - blue sailor stripes and red anchors and ships wheels!
I love stripes, despite the fact that my mum always told me horizontal stripes will make you look fat! So, I started a white base of Barry M Cotton and added some nice fat blue stripes, with Avon Classic Fit and Lealac LLC-A.
They might be rather bright but I liked these and they reminded me of old fashioned milk jugs!
Then came the tricky part. I love stamping but placing individual images is hard! (the other hand is worse). I used A England Perceval and Apipila Super Plate A to add the anchors and wheels.
Not my best ever stamping but they do look quite cute.
Finally I had to add a bit of a matchy pic with my fishermans sweater.

Stripey nails

Nautical

April Challenges - Oldest and Houndstooth

Today I am combining two challenges, "oldest" for #30daysofcolourchallenge and "houndstooth" for #ukstampersapril.
I started with one of my oldest polishes, Avon Classic Fit. Even after all these years I still love this polish. It's such a gorgeous dark glossy blue, everything I would want in a polish and it still applies really nicely. I have also recently discovered that it stamps well too so it's an all round winner.
These pictures were taken without a top coat!
Then I stamped with one of my newest polishes. Rainbow Connection has recently started stocking Hit the Bottle, an Australian brand, so I bought one to give it a try. They have a huge range of colours to choose from and I really didn't know where to start so I went for Copper Haired Girls as it is least like any other polish I own, and WOW! It is amazing. I loved it from the moment I opened the package, it stamped beautifully and then when I top coated it, it sent shivers down my spine!
I used DRK-A to stamp the houndstooth pattern and I think the metallic copper shade works so well with the dark blue. It is manis like these that make me wish I wasn't doing so many challenges - I'd wear this for days!!

Avon Classic Fit
#30daysofcolourchallenge

Hit the Bottle Copper Haired Girl and DRK-A
#ukstampersapril

 

An InLinkz Link-up

A2Z Series - R is for Redo/Reboot/Recycle

So it is Thursday again and time for letter R in the A2Z challenge. I wasn't sure about what to do for this week until I was chatting with some friends about  mani I had done that I wasn't very happy with - of course this was the perfect opportunity to redo it.
The original mani was the negative space lacy nails, where the contrast was all wrong, the negative spaces too stained and the old stamper was not picking the images up clearly - plenty of reasons to redo.
I decided I ought to do justice to the Messy Mansion plate so I am using the same plate, MM44 and the same image.
This time around, no bare nails! I started with a base of Nails Inc Basil Street, a lovely warm nude, so the effect is the same but no stains! I chose to use a creme polish rather than a holo so that I had a really crisp image and having had some success with Avon Classic Fit a couple of weeks ago I decided I'd use that again.
And of course I now have my Creative Shop stamper, which picks up perfectly almost every time.
I have never worn a french mani, apart from the last time I did this, so the dark tips look very alien to me, but I wandered around just with the tips done for a while before stamping and the look was growing on me. Once completed I do think the tips still look very dark as the colour is obviously more intense than where it is stamped - maybe I should have tried to apply the polish more thinly, or even find a slightly lighter shade but on the whole I think this is a lot better than the time before.
I think the Avon Classic Fit denim shade goes really nicely with the nude base, so all in all I am pleased with this.

A2Z Series - R is for Redo 

Messy Mansion MM44, Avon Classic Fit 

and Nails Inc Basil Street

  

 

  

An InLinkz Link-up

Stamping! DRK XL Designer 2 with Avon Classic Fit and Leighton Denny Honey Trap

Well, I have been stamping again - I was all set to try a bit of lead lighting today, I'd done a base of Leighton Denny Honey Trap. I'd then painted TarasTalons Mardi Gras on my thumbs and 2 fingers of each hand. Mardigras is a delicate pale blue holo - very pretty. I had then added a touch of TarasTalons Ol' Blue Eyes - a lovely mid blue holo - with saran wrap. The intention was to stamp all the nails and then lead light the remaining 2 fingers on each hand with the same TarasTalons polishes, as they are quite sheer. It was to be a bit of an experiment, but then the postman came...
The postman delivered my DRK plates, so of course I had to try them and being rather impatient I decided I'd stick with the polishes I'd planned and stamp straight onto the ready prepared nails.
I'd been thinking to do something floral, so I quickly scanned the plates and found a very pretty image on DRK XL Designer 2 along the lines of what I'd had in mind and went for it!
I stamped with Avon Classic Fit, a lovely dark blue. I tested this earlier in the week and was delighted to see it stamped really well and was perfect for the look I was thinking of. In my mind were the images of blue Toile de Jouy, like the cup in the final picture.
The mani has ended up being a bit of a compromise as the blue base that would have been perfect for a lead lighting look is a little too close to the stamping colour so it's lost a bit of clarity. The 2 accent nails are much more successful, although my top coat blurred one of them - OK so I am really happy with the ring finger!! and the 2 accent nails on the other hand look lovely and crisp, the blue against the nude looks perfect!

DRK XL Designer 2 with Avon Classic Fit
and Leighton Denny Honey Trap

 

 

 

 

right hand - DRK XL Designer 2