Lumene- Make Impact

I realized last night that while I showed you how to apply water decals, I didn't tell anyone what that lovely polish was. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to send some love to Scandalously Polished, who happened to have a Twitter contest one night. I won, and was excited. I mean, hey, who doesn't love winning things, right?

She sent a phenomenal package of goodies, including this sweet polish by Lumene. I'm not sure where it's from, but it's absolutely lovely. It looks holo in some lights, and you can see it in the single-nail test I did. Really you can...

... can't you? Am I imagining it? *laughs* Who knows...but it certainly is beautiful. I'm not a big pinks person, but I wore this one for several days without complaint. I even got compliments from my mom on it!

Then again, she's more of a traditional-type polish person. I think purple's about as weird as she's gonna go. My rainbow nails tend to make her raise her eyebrows, and when I wear black, she says, "Blech!"

I enjoyed wearing this polish, and applied the water decals when the polish had been on for two or three days. You can see there was just a hint of tipwear, no chipping or anything. Overall, I like it a lot, and I can see me wearing this again when I have to act like a normal grown-up, instead of the overgrown fashion-addict I am on the inside!

So what do you think? Does pink suit me, or am I more of a lime green, rainbows and kooky colors sort of girl?

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Oh dear... That didn't work out like I hoped it would.

I told you yesterday I'd share the Konadicure I did on top of H&M's Goddess On Stage. I didn't say it would be pretty, unfortunately...

I had the best intentions, as usual. I wanted to brighten up the deep tones of the purple base coat, and I thought that gorgeous new pink holographic polish I won from Scandalously Polished would be perfect for the task. Pink goes with purple, I thought to myself, and I like holographic polishes. This should be GREAT!

I had such high hopes. I pulled out my stamping set and flipped through the plates, trying to decide what look to go for. I'm not a floral person, but my plates have an absolute TON of flowers. I'm starting to figure out ways to use them that I like, though that's a totally different blog post. For this one, though, I settled on the Hot Topic fauxnad plate with the stars. I thought they'd be cute in pink.

I then grabbed my Lumene Natural Code Nail Styler in 11 Make Impact. Instead of going for a straight-across look with the stars, placing them in the same place on each nail, I decided to place them "randomly" on my nails, trying to make everything look cute depending on the amount of space available on the individual nails. This wasn't a bad idea, exactly, but it just didn't look right. Somehow, it didn't look like there was a finished design on my nails. Instead, it looked like I had random crap stamped onto them.

Key word there? Random.

 What to do? I decided maybe dots would help fill in some of the space, and make things look more... I don't know. More like a cohesive design, instead of just random crap on my nails, I guess.

See, I have a problem. I'm a bit of a perfectionist. While I see other people's stamped nails and think they're adorable, I can't help but see every tiny flaw in my own stamped designs. I end up hating almost every stamped design I do.

So I pulled out my new dotting tools and set to work. I applied some big dots first to fill in the negative space, but that didn't help. Instead, I had pale stars surrounded by bright freakin' pink dots. Oh yea, that's attractive.

So I added some smaller dots. I did some randomly, others in small curved trails around the stars. And the more I added, the busier it got, and the uglier it got. I couldn't figure out what else to do with it, so I said to heck with it, added topcoat, and called it a day. Then I went on Twitter and complained that I think Konad just isn't for me. :D

Now, looking at the photos, it doesn't look as bad. But trust me on this one... somehow, the photos don't capture the not-quite-rightness of this one. I was very, very happy to take my polish off and try another manicure. Of course, that one made me cuss too, but in the end I was happy with things...

... but that's a story for another day!