Revel and LynB Designs

Last week I did my manicure using Revel Nail gel polish and then I did some stamping over it. Well, it's been a week and of course, time to change the manicure. I took off the stamping art with some non acetone nail polish remover and here is what I was left with:

 

Still looks pretty good! There's a little wear at the tip but there are no chips and that gel shine we love is still there. However, since it's time for a new color or two, I decided to polish right over the gel. I couldn't see taking the time to remove it when it was still in pretty good shape. And what better polishes to use than some new polishes from Jennalyn at LynBDesigns. She recently had a sale and I couldn't resist. Here are two of the polishes I purchased, Nightmare Revisited and Blue Whale.

 

 

Blue Whale is one of those polishes I've been wanting since the launch of "They say of the Acropolis" collection and Nightmare Revisited is a beautiful holographic polish - need I say more. here is how they look over the Revel gel polish:

 

Not bad! Look at all the glitter in Blue Whale and that gorgeous holographic effect in Nightmare Revisited. Here's a closer look:

 

I know there isn't any nail art this time but I just couldn't put anything over these beauties. Let's see what next week brings!





A Manicure (& More!)

My new manicure was done using Revel Nail gel polish. Someone had posted about this polish on Facebook (sorry, I don't remember who) and said you could get a free sample from their site. Well, I headed on over to their site and it was true, well sort of. The free sample consisted of their base coat, top coat and a color for $10.99. Not exactly free but still an excellent deal when you consider that usually 1 bottle of gel polish alone can cost that much. In addition, these are .5 oz. bottles, not the tiny bottles you usually get. There was no choice in the color but I was very happy when I received my order. The color I received was called Hysteria, a beautiful purple shimmery polish.

 

The application of this polish was a breeze. The polish went on very smoothly and each coat only needed 30 seconds under an LED lamp to cure. I used my Sensationail lamp and it worked great. Here is how they look:

 

 

I love the shimmer in the polish, just enough to add a little extra shine. However, I had to make this manicure a little more interesting so I added some stamping art to it. I don't stamp very often and I only have a few stamping plates. I did order some new ones from the Born Pretty store but they haven't arrived yet. So I used my Konad plates along with some white Konad polish and here is the result:

 

I added a little silver glitter just to add some extra sparkle. I'm happy with the results. It took a few tries on some of the nails to get the stamping right but with gel polish as a base, it's easy to remove the failed stamping attempt and redo it without having to repolish the whole nail again.

 

One of the drawbacks to using gel polish though is how long it lasts on my nails. I have so many polishes that I want to use and when I use gel polish, I hate to take it off after only a few days because it still looks great and it's such a pain to get off. This polish is supposed to soak off in only 7 minutes (unless you use primer) so maybe it won't be so bad!

 

Now for the More part of this post.

 

Recently I've had the opportunity to take some fun acrylic painting classes. They were held in a local bar and were hosted by a wonderful woman, Tammy Hoey. I've never really painted before but she is so inspiring and encouraging that I decided I would try and create my own design. I bought the supplies and after seeing a picture in the newspaper of a beautiful sunset, I felt it was time to try my hand at painting on my own. This is what I got:

 

I think it came out pretty good for the first time on my own. I have some other ideas I'd like to try and I figure with practice, I should get better.