Today's mani is created with one of my stamping plates which I really love. I never made a proper mani with it so far, and I really wanted to make one. Over the weekend I demonstrated to a friend how stamping plates work, and we used this peacock feather, so I really felt like making a whole mani with it.

For the base I use two coats of L'oreal Owl's Night which is a gorgeous black with golden flecks, and sometimes you can see some red and green sparks. I really love this polish and I have no idea why I haven't used it before. Then I stamped the peacock feather from Nailz Craze NC01 plate with Barry M Gold Foil (Gosh I love this one for stamping! It does such a great job). Then sealed it with one coat of Poshe.

I've cut my nails quite short so there wasn't much space for the huge feather,  but I still got to play with the parts that will show on the nails and I think it came out pretty nice. The stamp pretty much covers the whole surface so it's hard to see how pretty the base color underneath.

Suddenly I have the urge to make many more manis with this gorgeous peacock feather stamp and try different colors such as purple, green and multi-chrome polishes. It's really hard choosing when you have so many stamping plates ;)

For the last Go Pink Wednesday I decided to go for something special, so I used two of my favorite things for this mani - Holographic nail polish and the butterfly wings stamping plate I designed a while back ago.

I started with two coats of Shaka Hologram Silver 06, then created a gradient with PUPA Holographic Strawberry 38. Once it was ready for my stamp, I stamped the black butterfly wings stamp from my Nailz Craze NC01 stamping plate with Wet n Wild Black Creme polish. I added some white spots with a dotting tool, used Chic White Flag white polish. Then I added Poshe top coat once the design was all done.

I had a few rough incidents while creating this mani, the most annoying was that Shaka's holo polish just didn't work with my regular base coat. I've been using  Nail Tek foundation 2 for few months now, and I haven't seen anything like this with my other polishes. Shaka's holo just wouldn't go on to of it even after the base coat dried. It left huge bald spots and dried so dull you could never see it was a holo at all. Even after applying the second coat on top of it, it was bad. So I removed it all and applied my old nail hardener by GADE which is kind of transparent glossy polish that doesn't do much. It was better on top of it, but first coat wasn't great. It was better when I applied the second coat of the holo, and then I could go on with my mani.
Pupa's holo wasn't as satisfying as I hoped it would be, I guess the sponging process didn't do justice to it because by itself it has a gorgeous holo effect.
Then the sun wouldn't come out for me and my holographic mani, it's a gloomy day here, so I had to use my lamp for the photos. So it's not as pretty as I hoped it would be but you can still see the holo effect.
I really love how Shaka's Silver holo changes it's color in the light, you can see the blue, green and even some purple which is really nice. Overall I love this mani and I'm happy to share it with you and would love to hear your thoughts.





The next day I managed to take some photos in the sun, although it came out for few minutes and it wasn't as bright, but the holo looks pretty and the colors are more accurate :)

Recently I bought a new addition to my collection - PUPA Deep Ruby. I saw it in a store and I knew I had to have it. When I arrived home, I realized I had something similar to it but I was surprised to see that it was quite a perfect dupe for the lovely Zoya Jem.

In the bottle PUPA looked kind of a deep burgundy, so that what "deceived" me. I remembered that Zoya Jem is more purple, but that was a deceiveing memory because I forgot that Zoya didn't look the same on the nails as in the bottle.

Zoya Jem and PUPA Deep Ruby are surprisingly identical, the only difference I could see is that Zoya Jem has little flakes as PUPA has only shimmer. The shimmer is golden, red and blue.

In the bottle it look kind of burgundy, deep plum color, and on the nails (in direct sun light) they look more purple. The color is defiantly gorgeous, rich and beautiful.

I really couldn't see the difference when I applied them on the nails, they look identically to me. In the bottle there is some difference but on the nails, the same!

I did see a bit more of blue shimmer in PUPA but it's a slight difference.

As for application and formula, PUPA was a delight! I like the long thin brush, and it was SO opaque in one coat that I could leave it like that (actually for this swatch I applied two coats but on the right hand I used one coat only. Shh... don't tell anyone). When I applied it I said to myself outloud "What a rich color!" lol so that's how great it was!

As for Zoya, it needed two generous coats for good coverage. It's formula is thinner but also good.

Another difference I've noticed while I applied them, is that the base color of both polishes was different - I'm not sure how to explain this but Zoya was more red toned, and PUPA was blue toned, which is pretty weird considering the result is the same (I can see this clearly if I raise my hand against the light, so I can see that the distal edge has a different color).

The last thing - PUPA was a bit more shiny and Zoya was kind of dull, before I applied the top coat (Poshe), but once with a top coat - Zoya sparkled a bit more in the sun and showed it's flakes.

Overall I like them both, I can't decide which I like better because they are so similar. I can say that if someone else would have made this comparison before me, I probably wouldn't buy PUPA as well because I already had Zoya and I'm not a big fan of identical dupes, but I could live with them both. I'm thinking that PUPA might be better for traveling and such, because it's small and convenient. But I swear - I do LOVE them both! :)

For today's mani I used PUPA Deep Ruby 619 from the new China Doll collection. I just got it a few days ago and I had to try it. I had a feeling I have something similar to it in my collection, but I wasn't sure, so that was my excuse for buying it :)

Deep Ruby is a gorgeous rich color. I would say it's something between a burgundy and purple, with golden, red and blue shimmer. It was opaque with one coat, and I just loved it! When I compared it to Zoya Jem I was surprised to see that they were quite a perfect match, but I will write about it in my next post.

For these pictures I used two coats of PUPA Deep Ruby and stamped with Barry M Gold Foil using the QA39 plate from ebay. I really love this Louis Vuitton pattern and I thought it would go nice with this deep color from PUPA. What do you think?

This is the third mani I've done for the  Go Pink Wednesday and I think this is my favorite so far. I've been waiting to use my new polishes from Essence and the new Cheeky plates (this one is so pretty!) and I really love how it came out, even prettier than I imagined.

For this mani I used Essence Modern Romance which is a light peachy color with pink shimmer, and Essence Naughty and Pink! which is a sweet hot pink creme.
First I applied two coats of Modern Romance, and when it dried I applied both polishes on a sponge and created this gradient. I like to use a dry makeup sponge, I find it to work best for me.
Then I stamped with white stampy polish also from Essence and used the Cheeky CH53 plate, and finally topped it all with Poshe.

This came out to be such a sweet mani and I really love everything about it. I think I could wear this forever, and I know I will be doing this again with other colors or maybe even repeat it just as is. That's how much I loved it! haha
I've been waiting to use this lovely birds and love letters stamp and I was so excited when I got it! I think it's my favorite design from all Cheeky plates.
I already planned my next mani for the Go Pink Wednesday and I'm excited for it to be my final mani for this project.
So what do you think of my mani this week? What other color combinations would you suggest for it? :)