March Challenges - St Patrick's Day and the Luck of the Irish

A combination post:

St Patrick's inspired for #firedazedchallenge - I went Celtic again although I gather St Patrick banished Celts from Ireland - Messy Mansion Symetrika 03 and A England Saint George over Smitten Claddagh.

The Luck of the Irish for #wnac2016 - I used 4 leaf clovers from Pueen SE03A, stamped with a rainbow selection of Esmaltes da Kelly polishes (Wendy, Tuco, Bee, Chuoisco and Bruce) over the Messy Mansion stamping.

Smitten Claddagh

 

Messy Mansion Symetrika 03 and A England Saint George

Pueen SE03A and EDK polishes

 

March Challenge #clairestelle8march St Patrick's Day mani

Today is St Patrick's Day so, of course, I had to do a St Patrick's Day mani. I had already decided to do one with Above the Curve polishes Polyjuice Potion and Husbands Just Don't Understand, to enter an ATC competition but I missed the deadline on that. As I'd already planned it out I decide I'd stick with the polishes I'd chosen.
Claire also has St Patrick's Day as a prompt for today on her March Challenge so this is my contribution.
Above the Curve PolyJuice Potion from the Harry Potter Collection is a lovely vibrant green jelly polish with gold shimmer and tiny green glitters. It is quite a sheer polish and I only have a mini bottle so I started with a base of Ciate Mojito which is virtually the same shade of green to avoid using too much precious Polyjuice! It is such a pretty polish, I really love it and I am glad I didn't use too many coats so I still have plenty left :)
Husbands Just Don't Understand is a stunning dark teal green holo, and I have been waiting for so long to use it. It is just gorgeous and definitely needs to be worn again, very soon! I did a quick test to check it would stamp and decided it would go perfectly with Polyjuice Potion for my St Patrick's Day mani.
I searched through all my plates and found this shamrock design on Pueen SE03A which I thought would be suitable. I wasn't too sure which way to angle the stamping and in the end went for random! My fingers won't sit nicely in neat lines anyway.
I am really pleased with the finished mani, I love green for nails and I like putting different types of green together - anything goes with green, but here I can see the holo shimmer as well as the glitters from the Polyjuice. I like the bright green of the Polyjuice which is still very visible but slightly toned down by the teal stamping.

St Patrick's Day mani 
Above the Curve Polyjuice Potion 
and Husbands Just Don't Understand, Pueen SE03A

 

 

Stamping! Pueen SE03A over Avon Silver Crystals

So there was this lovely textured polish, the Avon Silver Crystals, really stunning but I just couldn't resist seeing if I could stamp over it. As it was so textured I wasn't sure how well it would take the stamp but I just had to find out. I chose one of the rose images from Pueen SE03A as I wanted to keep the stamping quite subtle. 

I used Essence Stampy 002 as that is my most opaque stamping black, and I was delighted to see it worked really well. Stampy 002 dries matte, so once I had topcoated it looked even better. The contrast is good enough to clearly see the image and to see that the image transferred completely despite the very textured surface.

I was so pleased with this mani, so pretty and very wearable, I would have worn it longer but tomorrow is A2Z day and I need to get myself sorted out for something multi-coloured! Watch this space for something very out of my comfort zone...

Pueen SE03A over Avon Silver Crystals