Zig Zag Tape Manicure Tutorial

Here's another mani using U-Concrete-Me:

I created the zig zag pattern by using tape and included a step by step tutorial after the jump:

Continue Reading . . .

shades U-Concrete-Me with Ribbon Tip

For the look above, I used U-Concrete-Me from shades (Barielle).  It's a nice medium dark grey that dries a little darker than the color in the bottle.  For the black and white ribbon accent, I painted layers of overlapping black and white. This would have been a whole lot easier with striper polishes but I couldn't find mine at the time.  The black is Misbehaving Mistress from shades and the white is China Glaze White on White.  Here's a step by step wheel if you're interested in trying it out:

Hope that helps!  Feel free to let me know if you have any questions / comments.

China Glaze - First Dawn

The dark grey charcoal metallic above is China Glaze First Dawn.  It has tiny flecks of multi-colored glitter in it that don't show up very clearly but make for a nice overall shimmer.  As with most metallics I've tried, there is a little bit of streaking but I like the look of it.

Here's the polish before I started stamping:

I used flowers from GCOCL (fauxnad) plate F01.

If you don't have the GCOCL plates, there are very similar flowers on Konad plates m51 and m57:

Confetti - Purple Reigns

To continue with the Confetti swatches I started last week, here is Purple Reigns.  Compared to most purples I own, I think Purple Reigns has nice warm tone vs. the cool, blue-ish tones that are more typical.  I thought Purple Reigns might be close to OPI's Pamplona Purple based on the bottles:

But once I saw these in the sun I realized they aren't dupes:

Purple Reigns has a warmer tone and is a little bit darker than Pamplona Purple.