I've made another wintery design with the fabulous China Glaze Skyscraper.
China Glaze Skyscraper is a gorgeous glitter polish with blue jelly base and tiny silver glitters. This is actually the first time I've tried this one, it's quite new in my collection, and I was surprised that the application was quite good for a glitter polish. It was opaque in 2 coats which was great.
I decided to use this polish as my background for the stamping, I wanted to get the starry sky look and it did a great job.
I've also added a fine splatter of white acrylic paint to look like it's snowing, but you can't actually see this in photos because of the glitters in CG Skyscraper. I could have just skip this part since the sparkle of the glitters is looking like it's snowing anyway :)

The snowy skyline which I stamped with white Essence stamp me! polish is from HB33 stamping plate, it has this lovely house with the moon, some trees, snowman and a reindeer. It's really cute but I wish the design was a bit bigger so you could see it clearly.

Let me know what you think about this snowy design :)

I decided to join in on the awesome contest that Wacky Laki is hosting on her blog, and created my very first fashion inspired design, including a technique I didn't use before.

I found this cute black and white dress with the simple and modern print of a gradient and white stripes that create some sort of a net or squares, depending on how you look at it. Instantly I thought it would be great for my first striping design. I've never done before a design with a striping tape, and I wanted to give it a try.

I stared my design with one coat of Chic White Flag. Once it was completely dry (I waited about an hour, just to be sure, meanwhile watched the Titanic on TV lol, what a drama!) I placed my striping tape on each nail. I won't lie, it wasn't easy since I tried to place them carefully so I can get symmetric squares, but I think I managed to pull it off.

Once the tape was placed on all nails, I created over each nail a gradient using the same white polish and Catherine Arley 805 black holographic polish, which unfortunately looks like a plain black in these photos. I applied the gradient on each nail separately, and once I was done with one nail - I removed the tape and moved on to the next nail.
When I finished all the nails and let them dry, I applied Poshe top coat to seal it off and add some gloss to the nails.

I was really happy with how my design came out, even if it wasn't colorful and didn't have sparkles or glitters in it. I think it looks simple yet modern and sophisticated. It actually reminds me of the Azrieli towers in Tel Aviv, especially the third photo, with the nails facing up towards the sky ;)
I hope you liked this design, I would love to hear your thoughts on it. 

There are some fabulous designs in this contest, you can see them here.
If you would like to vote for my design, you can do this at the voting post.

I think everyone, including me, were waiting to see what I will come up with for my Matryoshka Dolls design. So finally I made a design using the new Nailz Craze NC03 plate, which is my Russian Themed plate, and this is what I made.

I chose to use the classic Russian colors like red, black and gold for the Matryoshka Dolls and to combine it with a neutral base color that will also go as the faces of the dolls.

It wasn't as easy as I imagined it would be, and I did try different combinations which did not work for me at first, but finally I came up with this design which I think is really cute.

I started with my favorite nude color Essence Iced Latte and applied two coats of it. I used the larger doll design that's placed in the middle of the plate, and stamped the top part of it on the index, middle and ring fingers. On the pinky I stamped the medium sized doll since this nail is much smaller for me. I used dark red Chic 270 which is an old polish I had and it was very thick, so I did struggle with it a bit but this is the only red I had that worked for stamping and was opaque enough. 

For the thumb I first stamped the bottom part of the large doll to use it as a guideline. I used Barry M Gold Foil, then filled the inner lines with it and let it dry. Once it was dry, I stamped that same part with WnW Black Creme and aligned it as close as I could to fir the first stamping (which unfortunately wasn't really aligned to the nail itself). That way I got the gold to show underneath the black stamping but it didn't come out from the sides.

I used a dotting tool for the eyes and added black polish, since the eyes were originally stamped with red polish. I tried using different colors at once for the face while stamping, but that didn't go well for me so far, but I will keep trying, hope to get it right sometime soon. Then with a pin I added tiny lines from the eyes.

With a thin brush I painted a little triangle at the bottom of each nail with black and added gold dots with a dotting tool.

The result is quite nice and I really love how playful this mani is, using the thumb you can create a Matryoshka Doll that will pop open, just like a real one :) (Saw this great idea first at wackylaki's awesome blog). I can't wait to try this design again, to use different colors and to find new ways to play with this mani.

I really hope you liked this design and I can't wait to see what you will come up with!

You can get this plate along with my other plates at my Etsy store: nailzcraze.etsy.com

Last Friday I was opening my Christmas swap package, and I was amazed to find this amazing polish among all the goodies. To tell you the truth, I never thought I will have Butter London polishes in my collection, but I guess you should never say never, right?

It actually has the best things in it! Purple, duochrome and holo glitters! This one looks so pretty and I love to see the colors shift, and the pretty little holo glitter sparkle int he light. The thing is, it was quite hard to catch this beauty on camera.

Butter London Knackered is a purple and green duochrome polish with fine holographic glitters.
It was actually very sheer and needed 3 thick coats to get it opaque, and still the nails show underneath. I think I will try it next time over a darker color, maybe Essie Sexy Divide or another dark purple or blue color. It's pretty on it's own but I don't like it when my polishes are so sheer that you can see the nails underneath. So I think layering it over a darker color is a good idea.

I realized I had two other colors I didn't wear yet, and they might be a good dupe for this one, so I'll make a comparison post sometimes soon including Butter London Knackered, OPI Not Like The Movies and Barry M Silvery Lilac. I'm sure that Knackered will be the best among them all, but it's still interesting to make this comparison between these three.

I was surprised to see that this polish looks best in the shade, and then you can see the purple color the most. In direct sunlight it look more gray but the holo glitters sparkle so pretty. It was pretty hard to get good photos with this one, but overall it's a gorgeous color and I can't wait to try it again and see how it will come out.

This is my first mani with the new Nailz Craze NC03 stamping plate I've designed. I just got them yesterday, and I was so excited to try them out! I had hard time deciding what design I should use first, but then I decided that a Christmas sweater pattern will be perfect for my first mani.

The design is originally made for long nails so you can get the whole patten, or you can choose what parts of the pattern you want to use. As you can see I have a bit different pattern on each nail but I really like that you can choose what part you like better and play with it.

I went for the classic combination of red and white, and I think it looks great. I was so excited when I stamped the design on the nails so there are some imperfections and missing spots, but even though I think it turned out pretty nice! I can't wait to try this stamp when I have a bit longer nails, I was thinking about using 3 different colors for the stamp. I tried it on paper and it looked great, like a real knitted Christmas sweater.

Another thing I really like about this stamp is the variety of designs you can create by using a single row and create your own combinations. You can do a few rows of hearts or only the snowflakes, to create your desired sweater look.

For this mani I used two coats of my favorite simple red, GADE Rodeo Drive and stamped with Essence white Stamp Me! polish. The topped it with one coat of Poshe.

As you can see, my third plate is also a themed plate and this time I included some lovely Russian themed designs. You can find on this plate the Matryoshka dolls, a flowery pattern and berries. This plate also has Cheburashka which is a cute creature with a lovely story (I've already planned a cute mani for this little guy) and the Russian embroidery pattern which happens to looks much like Christmas pattern, so that's a great multifunctional pattern. :)

As my previous plates, these are large designs as well. The middle row has the big designs which are about 2x1.6 cm and the rest of the designs are supposed to fit most nail sizes.

I have so many ideas for designs to make with this plate, so I guess you will be seeing these quite a lot for the next few posts :)

I hope you like this plate and the designs I've created, and if you would like to purchase this plate or any of my previous plates, you can get them at my new Etsy store.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/NailzCraze

I would love to know what you think about my new plate and the latest mani I've created with it.

What colors would you choose to create your perfect Christmas sweater look?