Color Club - Alter Ego: Reveal Your Mystery Collection

Thank you so much to everyone that stopped by this weekend to wish this blog a happy 1st birthday. It means so much to me!

Today I have for you swatches of half of Color Club Alter Ego collection. The collection consists of two sets of six colors. One half are the light colors in a set named Reveal Your Mystery. The other half are dark colors and the set is named Keep it Under Cover. I only own the Reveal Your Mystery set of the collection and it is what I'll be sharing with you today. The collection was released in Spring 2011 and just like all of the other Color Club collections that I own, I'm about a year behind in getting to play with them, but better late than never...

Wacky Laki Turns One!

It was exactly one year ago on April 20th that I wrote my first Wacky Laki post. I still remember trying to pick out a name for the blog and with my boyfriend's help we came up with Wacky Laki. In case you were wondering what the name means... Laki (лаки) means polishes in Russian and it just happens to rhyme with Wacky. So there you have it :)

(source)

piCture pOlish Tiffany Boxed Up

The last piCture pOlish in my collection is Tiffany. It carries the very appropriate and cute tag line of "diamonds with breakfast!" With a name like that, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that I wanted to put a ribbon and bow on this manicure.

Tutorial Tuesday: DIY Cutout Decals

As promised, I have a tutorial for the dress inspired manicure from last Friday. This is made with a technique that I have been playing with for a while and involves nothing more than some nail polish and a ziplock bag. I think the possibilities with this technique are endless. These cutout decals are just one example of what you can do...

Supplies

• Nail polish in two contrasting colors
  (used here Wet 'n Wild I Need a Refresh-Mint and French White Creme)
• Ziplock bag
• Scissors
• Cuticle Nipper

Steps

Insutrctions

1. Using white nail polish, paint a rectangle about 1.5x larger than your nail on the ziplock bag.
   - Apply a second coat if needed to reach full opacity.
   - Allow to dry completely (I usually let this dry overnight)
2. Peel the sheet of nail polish off the ziplock bag. Sometimes it helps to use tweezers to get it started, but it should peel off easily once a corner is lifted.
3. Using scissors, cut out the decals as shown above
4. The cutout decals should look approximately as shown in Step 4.
5. Apply desired number of base color coats.
6. When the polish is still slightly tacky, but not wet, apply the decals to the nail as shown above.
   - If you are starting out with an existing manicure that is already dry, apply a coat of clear polish and allow it to get tacky for decal application...
   (Please excuse the extra large decals I created... they certainly don't have to be this big :) )
7. Using cuticle nippers, clip the decals as close to the cuticles as possible
8. Clean up the edges as needed. If you didn't clip as perfectly as you wanted, take a look at the cleanup tutorial on how to get a clean line near the cuticle. Since the decals are made of nail polish, they should easily dissolve and clean up with acetone/nail polish remover...
9. Apply a top coat and enjoy :)

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! I would love to know what you think of it...

As always, if you try this or any of my other tutorials/manicures, I would love to see your creations :)

Thanks for looking!
Anutka :)

piCture pOlish Denim with Lace

Today I went with something simple and classic... denim and lace. Denim is a lovely piCture pOlish lacquer. It is really one of those polishes that I had to see in person to appreciate. The swatches online just can't capture the true complexity of this polish. To make it classy I added lace using Wet 'n Wild French White Creme and the Shany stamp SH21.

Sunday Stamping using Multiple Stamps Over a Gradient

After taking two weeks off from Sunday Stamping challenges, I am excited to once again participate. Every week the members of the group Adventures in Stamping vote on a challenge theme. For the first time this week there was a tie between choices, stamping over a gradient and stamping using multiple stamps. Since both won, I thought it would be fun to combine both challenges in the same manicure.

Fashion Friday: Wet 'n Wild I Need a Refresh-Mint... Dress

I have decided that my fashion inspired manicures will make their appearance on Fashion Fridays. It won't be a weekly feature since the pressure of that will kill the fun for me, but when I make something that fits the theme, I will post it on a Friday. To start out the feature I want to show you a manicure inspired by a little summer dress that I stumbled upon on StyleSalad.com via Pinterest.