Summertime garden - KADS Flower 015

By -
Now that we're at the first of the summer, and the sun finally came out for more than a brief peek, I was feeling some bright summertime color explosion.  But not neon, because that just isn't my jam.

KADS Flower 015 + Enchanted Polish March 2014
outdoor, bright sunlight
Enchanted Polish March 2014 is as close to neon as I usually wear, a cheerfully bright chartreuse green holo.  I'm wearing two coats here, after which I applied decals stamped in black and filled in with Emily de Molly & Esmaltes da Kelly crèmes.  Images are from KADS Flower 015, a stamping plate that was an instant must-buy the moment I saw it.

KADS Flower 015

KADS is a budget plate maker that's usually shipped from China.  I've seen them offered on Ali Express, but I always prefer to buy Chinese goods from ebay - seller communication and shipping times end up much better for me.  KADS Flower 015 is an utterly gorgeous set of 9 images that are an insect or butterfly on the left half, metamorphosing to sprays of flowers on the right.  Each of the insects and each of the flowers are thoroughly different, and each half of the design is enough to occupy my medium-length nails.  The bonus 5 smaller butterflies across the bottom of the plate are sized perfectly to entirely fit on one nail (which I did on my not pictured right hand).

KADS Flower 015 + Enchanted Polish March 2014
outdoor, bright sunlight
Though this plate was very inexpensive (about $2.50 at the time I got it, likely even cheaper now that it's been out for a while), I had zero issues with it.  It's well etched and really nicely detailed.  It'd be easy to create many different floral or butterfly looks, and the addition of less frequently seen insects like the bee and luna moth (my fave!!) open a lot of other possibilities.  One of the other 2 moths appears to be a death's head, so Halloween or Silence of the Lambs themed nails could be done with this plate, too.

KADS Flowers 015 + Enchanted Polish March 2014

Happy summer solstice!

~Michelle

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ILNP Masquerade & Comparison

By -
Image
Every time I Love Nail Polish releases another batch of their multichromes, my wallet is going to take a little hit.  Their formula is always great, but the colors .  OMG, I die with these super shifters.  From the most recent release, my first pick was Masquerade.  Ginormously pic-heavy post in 3...2...1... Masquerade is a very sheer charcoal grey base packed with magically light-bending pigment that goes from a rich magenta-wine color, through a lighter pink, then bronze, on its way to a vibrantly saturated emerald green.  It took 3 coats to get it to visible opacity, of the sort where it can look sheer if you hold your fingernails up to the light.  Though it's most often a metallic to slightly brush-strokey chrome, in the sunlight, a sparkly shimmer peeks out. outdoor, bright sunlight The color range can be soft and muted: ok, "muted" for something like this, anyway.  outdoor, overcast/cloudy day It can be mostly wine: outdoor, overcast daylight
Read more

Topcoat battle! HK Girl VS Pro-FX quick dry!

By -
Image
I'm sure that every polish geek has a half a handful (or plenty more) topcoats - I myself have my go-to quick dry, a thicker one for chunky or unsmooth finishes, some back-up "lesser" quick drys, and a matte.  Having that many, though, honestly means we're all still looking for MORE! For a couple of years now, my holy grail TC has been HK Girl.  I'd been pretty happy with INM Out the Door for a year or so, but HKG dries much faster to a harder (aka more chip-resistant) finish, so I made that switch around the time we started blogging here.  I've never had the love affair with Seche that plenty do - it seems more stinky to me and I get shrinkage often enough to have never bought more after my first 99 cent mini of it.  I've seen a few blog posts mentioned some behemoth from WalMart, and remembered to pick up a bottle when driven to the commercial den of iniquity by a wild goose chase for multichrome notebooks, which brings us to... Topcoat Battle!!!!
Read more

Sally Hansen Belle of the Ball

By -
Image
 Just a few weeks ago, I saw a stunning swatch pic in the facebook dupes/comparisons group that led me (and I think several others) down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out what we were looking at.  Turns out that the original pic was both photoshopped all to hell and from a brand that's no longer active... but several people suggested alternates, including this: indoor, CF lighting Well, hellooooo there, vampy dream. outdoor, bright sunlight The end result of all the image searching is that Sally Hansen released a whole red collection in 2018, several of which weren't truly red, and that one of which was reported as a dead-on dupe for OPI Every Month is Oktoberfest, with a more opaque and smooth formula.  Oktoberfest is one of the ones that got away - it looked identical to Germanicure in the bottle, and by the time I realized I'd like both, it was going for crazy prices on ebay.  For a mere $5, I was more than willing to take this possible dupe for a spin. outdoor, dire
Read more