Sunday Stamping: The Great Thanksgiving Heist...

Is seems like ages since the last time I participated in a Sunday Stamping challenge for the group Adventures in Stamping. With the holidays quickly approaching, this week's theme is Thanksgiving or Winter nails. I chose to go with the Thanksgiving theme and I'm happy to present my manicure to you. I have affectionately been referring to it as "The Great Thanksgiving Heist"...

The manicure started out with a base of Nicole by OPI Who Red My Journal??? stamped with Essie Good as Gold using Messy Mansion plate MM19. I recently purchased the Essie Mirror Metallics collection (all except for the silver) for stamping and they all work perfectly! Essie Good as Gold is just slightly lighter, more of a champagne gold, than my favorite Maybelline Bold Gold, but works just as well...

I created stamped decals for the rest of the images. The woodland creatures are from the same Messy Mansion MM19 plate. I stamped with SinfulColors Black on Black and then colored them in using acrylic paints. The pumpkin is also stamped with Black on Black using Bundle Monster plate BM-H11 and colored in using acrylic paint. To give the creatures a bit of a base to stand on, I added gold tips using Good as Gold...

I imagine the little fox sneaking in to steal the pumpkin for a big Thanksgiving celebration in the forest. The two hedgies are standing guard while the theft takes place. The perfect heist, although looks like the hedgie on my pinkie nail is asleep on the job. This is because I used a stamper to stamper technique to flip him and he got distorted in the processes, but I think it turned out even better that way...

Let me know what you think of this manicure!

Thanks for looking!
Anutka :)

** Polishes were provided to me for review by the manufacturer or their PR. **

** For more information please see the disclosure policy **

Dazzle Dry Dragonfly...

Hi Everyone! Hope you had a wonderful weekend! Today I would like to show you some quick nail art that I created while swatching the Dazzle Dry Blogger's Mystery collection. I really love this dragonfly image on one of the Messy Mansion plates and I have been looking for an excuse to use it again. As soon as I saw this Dazzle Dry lacquer named Dragonfly, I knew that I had found my excuse...

The manicure started out with a base of Dazzle Dry Dragonfly. I stamped the image from Messy Mansion plate MM17 using Pure Ice Silver Mercedes. I love the length of this stamping image. It allows me to choose a different section to stamp on each nail so no two nails are the same.

Thanks for looking and commenting!
Anutka :)

** Dazzle Dry polish and stamping plate were provided to me for review by the manufacturer or their PR. **

** For more information please see the disclosure policy **

31DC2013 Day 6 - Violet

It is time for Day 6 of the 31 Day Nail Art Challege and the theme today is a violet manicure. I just had to play with my most recent favorite PixieDust violet, Zoya Carter. It seemed to be just the type of color that pretty little gold dragonflies would be drawn too...

The base of this manicure is Zoya Carter from The PixieDust Fall collection. I stamped it using Maybelline Bold Gold and Messy Mansion plate MM17. This is from the same 'bugs' plate as the ladybug manicure a few days ago. This particular image is double wide allowing you to pick different sections of it for a continuous or slightly different design on each nail. So much fun!

I added a some baby blue rhinestones to the dragonfly bodies on my ring finger. I'm not quite sure what I think of this, but they seemed to want rhinestone accents. Maybe a different color would have been better. In any case, there are three different sizes of rhinestones there to correspond to the different sized dragonflies, all purchased on ebay...

Let me know what you think of this manicure!

Thanks for looking!
Anutka :)

** Polishes were provided to me for review by the manufacturer or their PR. **

** For more information please see the disclosure policy **

Messy Mansion Ladybugs...

Today I have a fun ladybug manicure to share with you. This design comes from another beautiful Messy Mansion stamping plate, the bugs plate. I decided to go with some tradition ladybug colors, but I would definitely love to recreate this with yellow or orange. I think it would look pretty cute with colorful ladybugs as well... hmm...

For this manicure, I used Zoya Livingston and stamped over it using Essence Stamp Me! Black and Messy Mansion plate MM17. The accent nail is stamped using a few individual ladybug images placed randomly on the nail, while the rest of the nails are stamped with one of the full patterns from the plate. Two little black studs completed the look for me...

As with the other Messy Mansion plates, this comes with a blue protective cover which must be removed prior to first use. The back of the plate has no cover. The plate itself is larger than the the 'standard' plate size. It measures 7cm in diameter. It is made of sturdy metal that does not easily bend...

The plate is packed full of fun images to use including the ladybugs that I used today, some gorgeous dragonflies and two images to make your nail look like a beetle or a lady bug. There is even little eyes at the bottom of the plate that you can use for your bugs. I really love that these plates use every little bit of available space....

My plastic scraper (old credit card) kept scraping too much off of the larger empty areas, if I pressed too hard, so I found that a really light scrape is much more effective at getting a good image with the full sized patterns. All the patterns stamp very well...

The full size images are large! They are 17 x 22.5mm. I don't have to worry about the images not being wide enough for my thumbs or too short for my nails. Great size overall!

You can find this and other Messy Mansion plates at http://www.messymansion.com.au/.
Shipping for plate only order is just $2.50
Also, check out Messy Mansion on Facebook...

What do you think? :)

Thanks for looking!
Anutka :)

** Polishes were provided to me for review by the manufacturer or their PR. **

** For more information please see the disclosure policy **

Wild Birds...

I recently had the pleasure of doing an impromptu nail polish swap with the lovely Mari of muxe.net. A few of the El Corazon Eggs of Wild Birds polishes were on my lemming/wish list and I had mentioned this to her. They are not readily available in her area so I didn't expect her to ever find them, but she happened to come across them and snatched them up for me. A huge thanks to Mari for squashing one of my big lemmings. If you have not visited Mari's her blog yet, you are missing out on gorgeous swatches and nail art, so go check her out!

For today's manicure, I thought these pretty little birds would feel right at home on a polish inspired by bird eggs...

To create this manicure, I started out with the base of El Corazon N423/95. I then stamped the birdcages using Messy Mansion plate MM14 and Essence Stamp Me! Black stampy polish. To complete the look I added bird decals which I made a day ahead using the same MM14 plate, Stamp Me! Black and acrylic paint....

I just love how soft and delicate this manicure turned out. I had envisioned these two pretty birds escaping their cages and flying to be together. You can't cage love...

Messy Mansion plates have incredible detail in every image and they pick up and stamp so well! Please pardon the tear in my stamper, it is my favorite one despite the tear. I've tried buying many other stampers and have not found one that works as well, so I use this torn one that is long overdue for retirement...

El Corazon N423/95 is a milky lilac base with black hex and micro glitter. It is part of the Eggs of Wild Birds collection. The application is good, although I did have to chase a few of the hex glitters around to keep them from following the brush right off the nail. It is fully opaque in three coats. The only thing that I'm sad about is that it contains formaldehyde which I personally try to avoid. I hadn't realized that until sitting down to write this post and trying to read the teeny print on the back of the bottle. I am so bummed because I absolutely love this color!...

Swatch Details
	Brand: El Corazon Collection: Eggs of Wild Birds Color Name/Number: N423/95 Number of coats: 3 Top Coat: Yes Contains Formaldehyde; Free from Camphor, Toluene, DBP

I'd love to know what you think of this mani!

Thanks for looking!
Anutka :)

Dotty Trees with Messy Mansion...

Yesterday I showed you a fun dotted manicure and promised to show you how I took it a step further. I wanted to pair the dots of the manicure with the dotty trees on the Messy Mansion "in the forest" plate. I imagine that if there was a cotton candy tree, this is how it would look at night...

I started out with my dotted manicure from yesterday. For detail on the colors used, please refer to this post. For the stamping I used Essence Stamp Me! Black and the Messy Mansion plate MM19. I found it was best to scrape very lightly over the full sized tree image to avoid removing too much of the black on the empty spaces. The images turned out very crisp and clean...

If you look closely at the black area on the index finger, you can see some of the dots showing through the black. The plate stamped well, the polish just wasn't opaque enough to overpower the bright dots. Sadly this is the best stamping black that I have at the moment. I ended up going over some of the black areas on my middle and pinkie fingers with acrylic paint so the dots peeking through wouldn't detract from the pattern...

I love these happy little dotty trees so much!

The plate comes with a protective blue cover. Don't forget to remove this if you want to actually stamp something! The back is just metal with no protective covering which makes the edges a bit on the sharper side...

What I absolutely love about the Messy Mansion plates is that every little bit of space on the plate that can be used for a stamping image is used! There is no wasted space here. And seriously, how adorable are all the little critters! The birch trees make me sentimental for my childhood. I really just need more hands to try all the manicures floating around in my head right now...

The full size images are large! They are 17 x 22.5mm. Great for long nails and wide thumbs! No double stamping with these for me...

You can find this and other Messy Mansion plates at http://www.messymansion.com.au/.
Shipping for plate only order is just $2.50
Also, check out Messy Mansion on Facebook...

What do you think? Do you like my dotty trees? :)

Thanks for looking!
Anutka :)

** Polishes and stamping plate were provided to me for review by the manufacturer or their PR. **

** For more information please see the disclosure policy **

Messy Mansion Feathers...

Today I'm excited to show you a manicure that I created with the new birds plate from Messy Mansion. I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to review three Messy Mansion stamping plates and I plan to show each of them separately, one manicure at a time. Starting out with the bird plate, I was immediately drawn to the feather pattern and knew that I had to pair it with a real feather...

For this manicure I started out with a base of Zoya Flynn from the Cashmere collection for this Fall. I stamped using Messy Mansion plate MM14 with Zoya Louise from the same Cashmere collection. For the accent nail I used a real feather from one of my mom's hens. Have no fear, no hens were harmed in the process. To complete the look, I matted the manicure with Essie Matte About You...

The beauty of the real feather didn't come across well in the photos. It doesn't even look real in these photos, but I'll try to get over it and stop pouting. It wasn't quite so dark in real life...

A better look at the feather...

And a closer look at the plate. Messy Mansion plates come with a protective blue cover that needs to be removed prior to stamping. The back of the plate does not have any backing so the edges are a bit sharp to the touch. It measures 7cm in diameter which is much larger than a standard plate size and this allows for much larger full size images as well. The metal is sturdy and does not easily bend. They are very well made and etched...

As you can see, the theme of this plate is birds. Everything from bird feathers to cute bird cages. Beautiful crisp images that stamp very well.

The full size images are a whoping 22.5mm by 17mm. Perfect for longer nails and no need to double stamp the thumbs! I think that deserves a thumbs up. And, I'm not even going to point out that the width of the full size image is more than the length of some other brands...

You can find this and other Messy Mansion plates at http://www.messymansion.com.au/
Shipping for plate only order is just $2.50

P.S. Check out Messy Mansion on Facebook... they just might be having a giveaway for this plate ;)

I've already got a few more manis planned with this plate so stay tuned...

Thanks for looking!
Anutka :)

** Polishes & plate were provided to me for review by the manufacturer or their PR. **

** For more information please see the disclosure policy **