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.