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Of Life and Lacquer > Don't Violet Me Down

Stamping Saturdays #20

Posted on 24 May, 201424 May, 2014 by Cynthia

I am super proud of myself for not missing a single Saturday since we started Stamping Saturdays and today I am on my 20^th stamped mani for this series. Yay! This is definitely huge for me because I feel like such a quitter sometimes. I stayed up way too late to do this mani because I got wrapped up in watching a PBS documentary where actors discuss some Shakespearean plays. I nearly pissed myself when I watched the episode where David Tennant talks about Hamlet. My favorite Doctor and my favorite play? Ecstasy! Anyway, let me show you what I came up with because I could keep talking forever about the documentary.

For today’s mani, I used the MoYou London Back To The 70’s – 02 plate which I have used a few times before. It has some really groovy designs. Sadly, I think it has been discontinued because I can’t find it on their website.

I started out with 2 delicious coats of OPI A Grape Affair. This lovely polish is part of the new OPI Coca-Cola collection which will be on the blog next week. This polish is absolute crème perfection and it’s very opaque so it only needed two coats. It dried super shiny and gorgeous.

And here is the image I chose from plate MoYou London Back To The 70’s – 03. What kind of design is this? It made me think of computers or something. When I was finishing up my clean up, I posted a picture on Instagram and Rei suggested that I apply a sheer tint on top of this. Hmmm…? I was a little hesitant to try it but look what happened!

I applied 1 coat of OPI Don’t Violet Me Down over my whole mani and it just looks awesome. Rei is a genius for suggesting this.

So what do you think about this stamped mani? Since I like it, I’m sure people are going to think it’s blah. Haha My cherry blossom mani got so much attention, and I seriously thought it was kind of blah. Well, I hope that you like this jelly stamped mani. I know that I am going to try this with other polishes because it creates such a cool effect. Do you have any plans this weekend? I’m dying to go see the new X-Men movie so hopefully I’ll go watch it later today. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I will talk to you soon.

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The Lacquer Ring – Unicorns Unite!

Posted on 24 April, 201424 April, 2014 by Cynthia

I almost didn’t get this post done, which would have been unfortunate because this is the inaugural post of…

What is this Lacquer Ring I speak of? Well, it’s a group of crazy polish chicks who spend way too much time emailing each other all day long about polish, life, woes and more polish. While we haven’t all technically met in person (except for me and Lesley and Amy and Frosso), we are pretty good friends and hope that we can all meet one day. Unfortunately, the universe will end that day because that much awesomeness is not allowed all in one place. While you may already know the ladies who make up The Lacquer Ring, let me introduce them all:

Amanda from Mae’s Beauty

Amy from The Fancy Side

Frosso from Lacquer Me Silly

Jessica from Once Upon A Polish

Lesley from IG @MisfitLesley

Nicole from Polish Me, Please!

Siobhan from For The Love Of Nail Art

Now that you know who will be participating in The Lacquer Ring, let me tell you that we will be posting twice a month and each month, one of us will be determining the two challenges for the rest of the group. For our very first post, we will all be using a special polish that Nicole got as a gift for all of us: Candy Lacquer Unicorn Bubbles. Let me show you what I did with this awesome glitter topper!

I started with two creamy and delicious coats of Jessica Sharktooth (press sample). I’ve mentioned how much I love this polish many times because it is an amazing white polish.

I then used my OPI Sheer Tints (press sample) to create this watercolor design. Ever since I saw The Polish-Aholic’s post about this, I knew I had to do it. You can read more about it here. I should have used thinner coats of the Sheer Tints because I got some bubbling, but I decided to let it go since I was planning to put on a glitter topper anyway.

This is my very first Candy Lacquer, and I was quite happy with it. I love circle glitter so this is right up my alley. Like most glitter toppers, using the dabbing method will give you the best results. I ended up fishing the glitter out with a dotting tool because I was getting a lot of bubbling from the thick base. Although the base is clear, it does have some holographic micro glitter that kicks it up a notch.

Lately I have been obsessed with making everything matte, so I pulled out my OPI Matte Top Coat (press sample) and mattified my whole mani. I don’t know how you feel about the end result, but I absolutely love it. OPI’s Matte Top Coat has become my favorite amongst many others so I highly recommend it.

Currently I’m working through a lot of unpleasant stuff so excuse me if I’m not around as much. I had mentioned that I may not post as regularly for the time being, but I couldn’t miss out on the first post of The Lacquer Ring. Thank you so much for continuing to stop by despite my irregular posting. We were not very organized for our first post, so they will be trickling in as everyone gets a chance to publish. Some are already up, so make sure that you check them out below. Thank you so much for stopping by today, and I hope that you will join us for the next The Lacquer Ring post.

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OPI Sheer Tints – Review & Giveaway

Posted on 10 March, 20149 March, 2014 by Cynthia

Happy Monday? Uhm, yeah…not so much. I’m kind of hating life right now because of daylight saving time and the whole missing an hour of sleep thing. Yeah, 1 hour is a big deal especially when you have to be at work at 5 am. It’s going to take me at least a week to get used to this so I’m probably going to be a grouchster until then. In the meantime, I have a new product to share with you: the OPI Sheer Tints. When I first saw the press release, I had no idea what these were. I googled some similar products and I sort of got an idea of what you might be able to do with a sheer tinted top coat such as these, but I still wanted to try them out on their own to start with.

I am not too impressed with these when worn on their own. They are very sheer so I applied 3 coats to achieve the above results. The consistency of these top coats is also a little difficult to work with–they feel very jelly-esque and tend to dry really quickly so they were very easy to overwork. I started out applying thick coats but thin coats worked a lot better.

This isn’t the most creative use of the OPI Sheer Tints, but I like how this looks. I applied one coat of these tinted top coats over a white base and also used them to do a dot design. If you want to see some cool ideas, check out what Nory from Fierce Makeup and Nails did with them so go check out her post here. The gradient that she did is really fun!

Now for the fun part! I purchased a set of minis so one of you will be getting this set to try out! In order to enter, use the rafflecopter widget below. As always, the giveaway is open worldwide to those 18 years or older. Please don’t enter if your country has strict customs regulations as I will not be responsible for confiscated prizes.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Overall, I think that I need to play around with these some more to see what other ways they can be used. What do you think? Have you used a similar product? Thanks so much for stopping by today, and good luck if you decide to enter the giveaway!