plaid – stamping

This is the manicure I wore this weekend on my trip to Napa. My husband’s team at work was being well rewarded for hitting a hard deadline, and we got a little getaway. It was a very lovely little trip, and I was very appreciative. Keep reading for more details on the mani.

This one started with a base of three coats of KBShimmer – Let’s Sleigh Together, from their Winter 2014 collection. It’s a lovely pale grey crelly with hex glitter in navy, green, and pale mint, circle glitter in “blueberry,” and micro holographic glitters. I wore that for a day before getting the time to stamp it, and I enjoyed holding my hand in the sun and shifting my hand back and forth in the light.

I had planned for a while to do something flannel inspired, and found a grey and teal flannel shirt that I liked the look of, so I stamped with MoYou London – Hipster 05 in Sally Hansen Insta-Dri – Mint Sprint. I like that most of the Insta-Dri polishes I’ve tried for stamping work very well. I have a purple one that is terrible, but a lot of others work really well.

Messing around with a pose inspired by Karen of BeautyGeeks, whose swatches I like very much, and who inspired my free-hand pumpkin nail art back in October.

This turned out almost exactly the way I wanted it to, and I was rather pleased with the fairly high rate of straight lines. They’re not perfect, but they are better than good enough for me.

I took a few pictures of my right hand too, but the only ones that turned out non-blurry were these two. I think I actually stamped this one better than the left because I had learned a few things on placement by the time I got to the right hand.

I like all the visisble green glitter on this hand too. You can see there’s lots of variety, and you can even see some of the micro holo glitter peeking out.

This manicure has been wearing like iron since Thursday, and there’s just the teeniest bit of tip wear on one nail. The almond-ish shape I’m growing out is brutal for tip wear, and I can usually see it within hours on these nails, but once I sealed in the stamping with a combination of Poshe base coat and top coat, everything has been staying put very nicely.

So how do you like it? Have you picked up anything from the KBShimmer winter collection (I may have gone a little crazy when I bought mine)? What colours would you choose for a cozy flannel mani? Let me know in the comments.