Vivid Lacquer: Plate VL007 Stamping

Press Sample

When I saw this design at The Clockwise Nail Polish blog, I fell in love with it! I happened to be wearing a soft champagne gold holo from Ever After Polish called Creature of the Night so I found a Vivid Lacquer design that I thought would work great for this!




I like the original design from The Clockwise blog better than mine, but I am happy with my results.

What is your most recent design inspiration?

Stamped Stars mani

I hope everyone who celebrates it, had a wonderful holiday this July 4th!
Jas and I went to the city's fireworks display, which was excellent, on the night of the 3rd. But even more magical than that was the view from the place Jason goes to run. We had a nearly unobstructed 360 degree view of all the fireworks in the area, and we were the only ones there. We stood outside the car for nearly an hour and it was absolutely breathtaking.

Anywho - below is what I wore for the holiday. Albeit a little late, I thought I would share anyways. I used plate JQ4, MdU 1, and a GPS stamper to stamp the stars. The gradient was made with a base of Polish My Life Stripped and Essie Style Cartel. Which matched the gradient of my shirt perfectly! (linked shirt image is from cj banks catalog, not taken by me)




If you don't celebrate, I still hope your day was fantastic! Thanks for stopping by!

Creative Shop and Vivid Lacquer Stamping

Press Sample and purchased items

I recently purchased a behemoth of a stamper from Creative Shop after reading a review and watching a video over at http://pcontreras8nails.blogspot.com/. If you stamp or have tried it and gotten frustrated - you NEED to know about this stamper from Creative Shop. This is the first stamper that I've not had any trouble with right out of the box. No priming and no redoing my stamps. The clear plastic scraper is amazing too. It's a little thinner and much more accurate than a gift card. It's flexible and kind of hugs the plate leaving the perfect amount of polish down in the design.
I did the very first test stamp on paper and then did all my nails and every single stamp was perfect on the first try.

I got everything in this photo for $16.50 shipped. You can order in a facebook group for shipping to the USA.



For the first test stamp I used Black Cream from Wet N Wild.



For this look, I used a base color of Cupcake Polish Yule Be Missing Me stamped with MDU 49, the Creative Shop stamper and Vivid Lacquer Plate VL006 Snowflake pattern.




Vivid Lacquer is having a big sale right now too, prices are already marked down at her shop.

What is your favorite plate or stamper?

(MDU polish and Creative Shop items were purchased by me, the others were sent for review)

Profound Glass: Crushed Opal polish

One Purchased, One Press Sample

I recently stumbled on a shop called Profound Glass that makes lab created opals. They have some absolutely beautiful work - I enjoyed perusing their webpage and thought I'd share one of their creations with you first so you can see how beautiful it is when whole.



Nate, the artisan at the shop, thought it would be fun to crush the opal and make it into a nail polish. And he was right, as soon as I saw it, I bought it. Like...in less than 5 seconds. The bottle arrived, and what I hadn't realized was that it was a mini sized bottle (they now also offer full size). The listing where the bottle size was written was in a FAQ list that I didn't read before purchasing, so it was my own fault. I went ahead and wrote to Nate to let him know about my experience. His response was kind and showed that he really cared about his customers experience. He took steps to make sure the bottle size was more prominent in the listing. We emailed a few times and he offered to send a prototype that has larger opal shards in it which he is considering launching. I told him I'd love to try it out and I offered to do a review to compare them both, so this is it! :)

I wanted to show it over both black and white polish so I decided to stamp some water lillies from plate VL012 at an angle so that the nail was about half white and half black. I then layered the crushed opal over my index nail (1 coat) and ring finger (2 coats). I used the prototype on my middle finger (1 coat) and pinky (2 coats). I also took a few close ups and bottle shots for you to see and compare.



Indoor lighting doesn't really do these polishes justice, they need sunlight to really show off the fire in the opal pieces. I was able to catch a few in the photos. The sparkle shows over the white part of the nail but its not as noticeable as it is over black and nearly impossible to see in the photos.




I used extra top coat over the ring and pinky finger, and unfortunately the topcoat bubbled because I put it on too thick. woops!



In the photo above, the original crushed opal polish is on the top and the prototype is on the bottom.

Even though the prototype's shards are more noticeable on the nail, I prefer the original crushed opal polish to the prototype. The larger opal pieces in the prototype tend to sink in the base and require more layers of top coat to smooth.

The original crushed opal polish is available in both mini and full sized bottles at the Profound Glass online shop.

The prototype is still in the testing stages and Nate hasn't determined whether it will be launched.

Which one do you think you would like best?