Zebropard.

Here's a new Jungle Jan-y mani!

I got this Konad plate a while ago, but this is the first time I've used it.  It has a lot of great images, but this one is the reason I bought the plate.

For this mani, I started out with Color Club Silver Lake, a pale blue-grey.  After two coats, I took Zoya Harley (a lavender-grey) and brushed just a bit, from the cuticle toward the tip, with an almost dry brush in a random pattern.  Then I topped the color off with a coat of INM Out the Door Northern Lights quick dry top coat.

I did all of that last night, and then let the color cure over night.  I've found that stamping works better on a well-cured base.  This morning I got out my stamp, plate and Wet n' Wild Black Creme - my favorite black polish for stamping - and went to town.

After stamping and cleaning up around the edges, I topped it off with another coat of INM Out the Door Northern Lights.  I started with my right hand and didn't put enough top coat on the brush for the first few nails.  You can see below how it smudged the design, especially on the middle finger.

But using plenty of top coat on the remaining nails solved that problem.  One thing I love about the INM top coat is that even if I use so much that it pools around my cuticles, once it's dry it all settles nicely into place and doesn't look like it's pooled.  I also love that it doesn't cause shrinkage like Seche Vite, and doesn't dry out when the bottle's half gone.  And of course, the speed:  with this top coat, I can literally paint my nails and be knitting 10 minutes later! 

I didn't do a whole lot of nail stamping or nail posts last year, and I'm hoping to do more this year.  Jungle January is giving me a good start, because a lot of my favorite stamps are animal print!

The Great Beyond

Color Club Beyond, from the second Halo Hues collection:

Incredible holographic shimmer.  This is two coats with Essie Good To Go topcoat.  Please excuse the dry cuticles - I like to oil them AFTER using the camera rather than before!

Blue Heaven, Blue Sky

It can be a little hard to concentrate when your nails look like this:

Let me reiterate:

Ahhhhh, so beautiful!  It's Color Club Blue Heaven - hat tip to Pam for turning me on to this collection!  I think I've found my new favorite holographic polishes:  so easy to apply, and works great with regular base- and topcoat!  I do have the aqua base coat, which I use with other holos, but I find it difficult to remove except with pure acetone.  And I'm trying to avoid that.

Here it is with some yarn:

The yarn is Blue Sky Alpacas Brushed Suri in the Agave colorway.  After I discovered this yarn a couple months or so ago, I went a little nuts and bought three balls from a fellow Raveler.  I'm using them to make my second Aura shawl (Kim Hargreaves):

I've also started another Kim Hargreaves project - a sweater - but that one will get a post of its own.  This one is my "side project."  However, it's requiring a little more attention that I'd expected:  because of all the fuzz and fluff, it's very easy to drop a stitch without knowing it, so I have to really look at what I'm doing.   Note that in my lexicon, "side project" translates as "project so simple I don't have to think about it and don't have to look at it while I'm knitting (making it easier for me to watch TV)."  So I think this has become an Actual Project.

Which means I'm not working on it all that much. 

Stamping Madness

I was feeling like I hadn't stamped my nails in a while, so last night I came up with a plan and set out to achieve it.  But I think my stamping mojo has been waylaid:

Essie Lion Around, Resort 2011
Color Club Revvvolution
Bundle Monster plate BM212

Note that this is my right hand - for some reason, when I'm trying to do a design that I want centered, I have much better luck stamping my right hand with my left. Go figure.

This was my first time using Lion Around.  It's not blowing me away, but there are times when I want a brown-toned soft pink, and this one went on nicely and was opaque in two coats.  It's just more subtle than I usually want to be.

But the stamping - ugh.  I only own four Color Club polishes - the so-called holos: Revvvolution, Worth the Risque, Wild at Heart and Fashion Addict.  I had seen someone do a pretty successful stamping with Revvvolution some time ago, but for me it was a struggle.  Half the time the polish wouldn't pick up on the stamper. The topcoat smeared it.  And this morning when the sun came out, I couldn't see even a hint of holo shimmer.  Big fail.  I don't know if the non-shimmer/holo colors are any better in this brand, but these four are going into the box where I keep my rejects to trade in (hopefully) next year for the Zoya Polish Exchange.  The colors don't live up to my expectations and I'm not a big fan of the formula; they dry kind of chalky, in my experience.

I just couldn't live with it.  So this morning I took it all off and put on China Glaze Something Sweet:

China Glaze Something Sweet
Up and Away Collection, Spring 2010

Ahhh . . . that's more like it.  Cheery.  I had some trouble with this too though; I was waiting for a phone call that was supposed to come sometime between 11:00 and 1:00, so I knew I might get interrupted.  So I tried to go very slowly and carefully.  But the more careful I tried to be, the messier I got!  I have this same experience when doing Vrksasana in yoga:  the more I concentrate on balancing, the less I'm able to balance!

But I got it applied, and then went on the the stamping:

Bundle Monster plate BM213
China Glaze Harmony
China Glaze Adore

Not horrible, but not a complete win either.  I was inspired by JQ's awesome multicolored stampings to try to be a little more creative, but I clearly need some practice.  Maybe I should just go back to knitting for the rest of the day.

Oh, and the phone call?  Still hasn't happened, as of 12:45.  Isn't that always the way?