Hi Goddesses
Today I've got the final Literary Lacquers polish to show you ... for about a fortnight lol. Amy's new Magic & Mysteries Collection is already on my desk, and will be coming to the blog very soon.
A Thousand Christmas Trees is perfectly named. Yes, it's the colour of Christmas trees, a perfect medium-to-dark green, full of depth and Amy's trademark dazzle.
There's a wonderful lush intensity to this green - it's SO saturated - and I love how the holo only serves to make it warmer - like the sun warming the grass on a Spring day.
Nail art wise, you'd think I'd buried it, but it is in there somewhere lol.
This again features my favourite feathered bird pattern from Messy Mansion MM14, and this time the splodging was with Bondi Lady Liberty and OPI You're Such A Budapest.
I chose to stamp in bronze (Essie Penny Talk), just to try and do something different, and there is something about the clash of the warm copper against the cold splodges and dark background that works in a really unusual way.
As always, you can donate your money in exchange for Literary Lacquers polish HERE. These polishes were sent to me for an honest review.
Hi Goddesses
Earlier today I showed you the autumnal glory that is The Arcanist by Darling Diva - pure autumn in a bottle.
So, when you wear this polish, what is the obvious thing that's going to happen? That's right, autumn leaf nail art.
Wearing this polish, all I could see was New England autumns, with piles of red leaves, some of them turning other colours, so I decided to replicate this mound of crunchy autumn using KIKO 619, Essie Penny Talk and my orange Konad.
Like a complete plonker I forgot to write down which plate I used, but I liked that it had the maple leaf shape to match the colours.
This multi-toned stamping is really easy to achieve and SO effective on the nail. When you place your polish on your stamping plate, place it in small dots - a few blobs of one colour here, a few blobs of another colour there - and then as you scrape it off, they will blur. They don't merge totally, so don't worry, but I love this mix n match effect they create.
Hi Goddesses
I want to explain a little bit today about how my whole "vault" situation arose, as this mani is a perfect example.
Pretty much, for the last 2 years, I've been obsessed with building a vault of manis I could fall back on, if for any reason I couldn't post for a month. Often, this meant doing a swatch, and then arting over it, so that 2 posts were created every time I did my nails. Also, as some of you know, I paint both hands differently each day, so that could often make 4 manis in each "round" of painting. And some days, I could get 6 rounds done. Yes, maths you do now mmmm.
As you can imagine, this resulted in a lot of quantity, but not so high on the quality. When you challenge yourself to "quickly plop some stamping on top", you're never going to end up with a nuanced or imaginative mani.
So for 2 years, this is how the vault grew. It also meant that most things inside it stagnated. They weren't sensational enough to be dragged out to play, so often they could languish there for months (and some even managed a year!)
Also, the pressure of the vault meant that new manis were never posted as quickly as I wanted, and I ended up in this horrible twilight between the 2. So ultimately my salvation became a prison, and in an act of rebellion and spontaneity, that's why it's being emptied, so I am only tied to the now and the future.
And today's mani is LOVELY. I really really liked it, and it hasn't deserved to sit in the Vault since 16th August lol. This has ILNP Grape Taffy on base, with this brilliant stamp from Cheeky 33 on top, courtesy of Essie Penny Talk, and a lick of matte top coat.
