Pastel Leadlighting Skittlette: May NCC #4

Leadlighting: if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a great technique to make beautiful multicolored nail designs with stamping as an alternative to the time-intensive stamping decal. As far as I know, the ladies at Messy Mansion were the first to do this (or name it leadlighting). You stamp over a light polish base, then use jelly polish to color in the negative space.

I actually only have one jelly polish, so I made my own! The lovely Jacqui at CraftyNail suggested this to me after I envied her leadlighting mani using OPI Sheer Tints. I basically mixed my existing creme polishes with a little bit of top coat to make the pastel jelly. I think I probably should’ve added more of the top coat since mine is still fairly opaque, but I think it came out alright!

April NCC #3: Don’t cross the streams!

Apologies for my brief hiatus – I was on vacation. Despite growing up in New York, I had never been to Niagara Falls… a travesty that I finally remedied. Unfortunately, it was still cold so most of the major attractions like Maid of the Mist were closed. But I shopped and wine tasted enough to make up for that 🙂

I finally edited pictures from a buttload (yes, that is a technical measurement… non-metric, obviously) of slightly older manicures, so I will have more posts coming up soon! First on the list is the 3rd Nail Challenge mani for April (theme: music, movies, tv).

As I’m sure you have gleaned from previous posts, I’m just slightly obsessed with the 80s – music, style, movies, the list goes on! One of my all-time favorite movies from the 80s is Ghostbusters. When I was a child, I did go through a phase of being terrified of the Stay Puft marshmallow man, but I never lost my love! Bill Murray is just pure sarcastic comedic gold! So of course, I had to do a Ghostbusters-themed mani for the challenge.

Lacquer by Lissa Spring Collection Review

I was lucky enough to be sent 3 brand new creations from a local nail polish creator, Melissa of Lacquer by Lissa. She’s an amazingly creative woman who is located right here in Pittsburgh. By day, she’s a chocolatier (ummm, can you say amazing job?!), and by night she’s a superhero! JK, she also uses her creativity to make beautiful nail polish.

She just released her Spring 2014 Collection, which is an array of gorgeousness. She also is now selling vinyl nail decals, which are supercute. Some adorable bunny decals were included in my package, which made my day happy.

Here’s the packaging:

How appropriate for spring, right? It was like an early Easter basket with nail polish instead of candy! So much better for you 🙂

And now for the polishes:

Orange Spotted Delft nails

I heart MoYou London. They’re probably my favorite image plates so far. I own some Konad, Messy Mansion, Bundle Monster, Gals, and Winstonia. MoYou London has such a wide variety of available images and they’re all very high quality. I got a few in the mail and love playing with them!

 

I layered Formula X White Matter (white, duh), then 1 coat of Formula X Firecracker (matte orange glitter topcoat). Then I used MoYou London Pro 06 image plate and stamped the flowery image using Zoya Sailor, a dark navy blue. I think it looks vaguely like Delft pottery, don’t you? Such a pretty intricate pattern that stamped so easily and I like that the orange added a super subtle touch of color.

 

 

On a side note, I just watched the 2nd episode of Sherlock’s 3rd season. Loved it – touching best man speech, seeing Sherlock & John drunk, and Sherlock teaching impressionable young minds about murder.

Earrings & Snowflake Nails

One of my go-to crafty presents is jewelry. It’s unfortunately been way too long since I’ve made any type of jewelry. My materials stayed packed away in a huge tupperware bin since I moved to Pittsburgh (about a year and a half!). But one of my good friends recently mentioned that she also makes jewelry, so we decided to have a crafty Sunday and complete a bunch of projects and gifts.

After making a bunch of pieces for gifts, it was obviously time to make myself a little something too. Why not reward myself with more jewelry? Treat yo self indeed 🙂