Sincerely Stephanie Does Let Them Have Polish

Morning ladies and gents and lacquerheads!

Today I have some nails that I blatantly copied from Let Them Have Polish! I had just finished a swatch marathon and needed something simple to put on my nails that would still look fabulous. I remembered this manicure of Cristina's that I had pinned to my inspiration folder months ago and decided to just do exactly what she did!

The only thing is I have none of the exact same polishes Cristina used, but I have very close dupes. I started off with one coat of NOPI Keeping Up With Santa. Then used the saran wrap technique and SOPI Never Enough Shoes to add a little edge.

Then I stamped with Essie Good As Gold and Konad M83. Add a coat of Seche and I had some gorgeous LTHP nails on my nails!

I loved these and was actually wearing them when I was sick last week so they stayed on for 5 days! Cristina is pretty much a nail genius and I love her blog. If for some reason you have never heard of Let Them Have Polish! then run over and follow her now. :)

Hope you're all having a wonderful day! We're getting close to Christmas! Less than a week away! Eeeeeeeee!

Products in this post were provided for my honest review.

31 Day Challenge Day 6: Violet

It’s violet day! I’m not sure about you, but violet is essentially purple right? Well I’ve got some purpleiffic nails to show you today.

Candice from Mr.Candiipants posts some epically awesome manicures and awhile back when gradients were all anyone was talking about she decided to amp it up a little and do this amazing block gradient. It has been bookmarked in my Nail Inspiration folder ever since she did it and I figured it was finally time to recreate it!

These are actually super easy to do! Here is the tutorial from Candice, but I’ll do a quick run down of what I did. I started with a coat of Nail the B.Y.T.C.H. Fruity Cutie Butte the lightest purple and the colour closest to my cuticle. This does not have to be opaque because you’ll be going over it with the rest of your gradient! I took my favourite medium length striping brush and my middle colour Sally Hansen Psychedelic Purple and made a block in the middle of my nail. Then I went down the gradient using Essie Jamacia Me Crazy and Zoya Keiko creating again blocks about 1/7 of my nail long. I filled in using Fruity Cutie Butte near my cuticle making sure there were no bald spots. Then I went from the middle of my nail to the tip using, Barielle Grape Escape, Konad Special Polish in Purple and finally Rimmel Night Before on my tip.

Now if you aren’t crazy like me and don’t have 7 purple polishes that you can use to make a block gradient you can do this by mixing one colour with black and white crèmes! This was actually my initial plan, but then I hauled out all my purples and realized I had enough… I’ve got a lot of polish ok. :D

I added those two rhinestones on my thumb and ring finger to bling it up a little, buuut turns out you couldn’t really see them. Oh well. I still like them there.

I love the idea of the block gradient, and it’s pretty fly and all you need is a striping brush and all you have to do is draw lines! And even if your lines aren’t straight since it’s a gradient, who is really going to notice?! Ya I just realized I said fly… he he…

Do you love the idea of the block gradient as much as I do?! Thanks for coming up with such an awesome idea Candace!

Now head over to The Lacquerologist and see what Emily has done for violet day!

Six down, twenty-five to go. I’ll see you tomorrow with some black and white nails that I’ll be attempting tonight! I’m super excited about them! :D

Twin Post with Carmela Take Two - MASH 41

Morning! Time for the second twin post with Carmela of Polished Indulgence! If you missed our first twin post, you can find it here. This is my second pick, MASH-41. When I looked at this plate there was one design that really stood out to me. This was the intersecting wavy lines!

I liked a lot of pictures on this one, so check them out after the jump! :)

Twin Post with Carmela of Polished Indulgence MASH 39

Good Morning lacquered lovelies!! Today I will be starting a series of twin posts with the lovely Carmela of Polished Indulgence! Awhile back I was on twitter and mentioned how much I wanted the new MASH plates but wasn't about to pay $20.00 for shipping to Canada. So Marta of ChitChat Nails chimed in and mentioned that both myself and Carmela were after the plates and since we're both in Southern Ontario we should order the plates together! Well we ordered them that day. Once we both got our hands on them we decided to do some twin posts! We both picked two plates and put no other restrictions on it than we had to use the plate in the manicure! We will be going in numerical order so the first two days will be my picks and the last two will be Carmelas! First up we will be using MASH-39.

I was feeling something really subtle and pretty. Cult Nails Charming was sitting near the front of my plastic drawers and it was staring at me begging to be used. So I whipped it out and did 2 lovely coats. This is a charming purple jelly creme (see what I did there? *nervous laugh*) with a beautiful lilac/pink shimmer throughout it. It is really velvety and beautiful. I used Konad Special Polish in Purple and stamped with of course MASH-39!

After all the crazy manicures I sport, sometimes a pretty subtle look is what my nails crave. There is a shimmer in Konad Purple that complements beautifully with the lilac shimmer in Charming. This whole manicure was shimmering and I loved the look!

Do your nails ever crave something a little more subtle? Or do you always sport a crazy look? Or maybe you always go for something a little more subtle? What's your nail style?

Make sure you head over to Carmela's blog Polished Indulgence to see what she came up with using MASH-39!

Hope you are having a fabulous day! Thanks for stopping by!!! :D

Feelin' Pink?

Today is my LAST EXAM! Guys I'm so excited to get this thing over with. This post is going to be short and sweet, because I should be studying (aka last minute cramming), but instead I'm taking a little break to show you a manicure I did a few weeks ago!

I kind of felt like this mani was a tad of a fail, but I thought I'd share it with you anyway to see what you thought! I started out with 3 coats Essie Knockout Pout which is such an awesome bubblegum pink. It looks like it might be a little more pastel in the bottle, but once you get it on the nail it's soooo bright. It dries to a bit of a satin finish, so I think there is a little neon pigment in there. Then on my ring nail I added an accent of Pretty and Polished Hello Dolly. My original swatch of this polish can be found here. Then I stamped using Konad m83 and Konad Special Polish in White, Zoya Keiko and Essence A Lovely Secret. I just stamped the image a few times on each nail in each colour. I was going for some dimension to it, but not sure if it really panned out. I added a little iridescent glitter from Born Pretty Store in some of the petals of the stamp to give it a little extra dimension.

What do you think? Stamping fail or do you like it? Let me know! :)

Well that's it for me! Back to hit the books! 6 1/2 hours until the exam! Thanks SO MUCH for stopping by! <3

A Minty Double Stamp

Morning my loves! Today I've got another adventure in stamping to share with you. This time I attempted my very first double stamp. For those of you that know nothing about stamping all this means is that I stamped an image and then I stamped another image on top of that one. This requires lining up your images and actually knowing what you're doing. I was slightly terrified but I took a leap and decided to go with it. 

Ok before I tell you what I stamped, I know all of you are going WHAT IS THAT HOLO GLITTER GOODNESS?! Well let me tell you my dear friends. That is the wonderful, the fabulous Harlow & Co. Misfits. Katie the creator of this awesomeness describes it as, "charcoal grey glittery goodness, splashes of silver and holographic glitter, sprinkled with black hexograms." It really is a masterpiece. The above photo is slightly blurred for holo goodness, but I wanted to start it off with a bang. This was 2 coats of Misfits.

For my other nails I started with 2 coats of one of my all time favourite polishes, Essie Mint Candy Apple. Then I stamped using Konad m78 and Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris and then stamped the same image slightly moved to the left in Konad Special Polish in White. 

The inspiration for these nails came as I was browsing Pinterest and saw these incredibly cute boxes! 

Aren't those gorgeous? I would love to get a gift wrapped in one of those! Plus the mint, black and white colour scheme is fabulous. 

I loooovveed this combination. Its got my favourite type of accent nail. One of my all time favourite colours. And a new technique for me. I think this was an all around win for me. And I wore it for 3 days. Did not want to take these bad boys off!!

Also are you seeing how much sparkle is in Misfits?! This has jumped into the top few polishes of 2012 for me. Simply stunning.

Have you ever tried to double stamp? How did your double stamping go? What kind of combinations did you try? Are you loving this holo goodness glitter?

Hope you are all having a wonderful day!! Thanks for stopping by dears! :D

Abstract Nail Art Challenge Day 9: Sponging

I can't believe we are already at the 9th day in the challenge! It's going by so quickly! Today's challenge is sponging. With the gradient taking the nail polish world by storm I decided to throw my hat in the ring with this trend! 

I started with two coats of Sally Hansen White On and then using The Nailasaurus method to create my gradient with White On and Sally Hansen Hot Magenta. This method really creates the smoothest  gradient! I mean look at it! I simply love it! 

The one thing to watch when trying this technique is to make sure your 1st colour is completely dry. You can see on my thumb where I was a little ambitious in creating the gradient and it ended up looking a little lumpy. Any nooobody likes lumps in their manicures! 

As much as I loved the gradient on it's own once I had done it I had an urge to stamp over it! I'm catching this stamping bug I swear...

I used my lovely Konad plate m83 and Wet n Wild Black Creme to stamp this super cute image onto my nails. I still need to practice as this was only my second time stamping, you can see where the image scrunched up a little on my middle finger, but I didn't want to redo the gradient so I left it teehee. 

I then grabbed Wet n Wild Hallucinate which is a holo microglitter topper to give the mani a little bit of extra sparkle and shine :) Topped off with a coat of NYC In a Minute top coat and I was all done! 

I really liked the outcome of this and this is the mani that I wore for 4 days during my hell week of exams, assignments and interviews last week! 


I love the gradient trend that's been going around and Sammy's tutorial just makes it so easy to do. I'm also starting to get the hang of stamping I *think* lol! 


Do you like my gradient or my stamped mani? Are you all over the gradient trend or do you find it's been overdone? Let me know! :D 


Don't forget to stop by The Lacquerologist, BeautyGnome and Manicurator to see what they have done for their sponging manicures! 

My First Konadicure!!!

Morning Sweethearts! Today is all about firsts for me! This post showcases my very first Konadicure and I am announcing that I have my own domain name! Sincerely Stephanie is now located at www.sincerelystephanienails.com! If you have the .blogspot address bookmarked or anything don't worry it will still redirect, but I am giddy with excitement over having my own domain. With this domain I also got a fancy new email, stephanie@sincerelystephanienails.com how cool does that look? 


I was really hesitant to start stamping because well I love my freehand nail art and I was nervous about not being able to do it. After many hours admiring stamping queens such as Marta from Chit Chat Nails, Sammy from The Nailasaurus and Carolina from Colores de Carol, I finally decided to reach out to my friend Marta and ask her where I could purchase my first stamper. She led me in the right direction and here I am posting my very first Konadicure! 

I started out with 2 coats of NYC Times Square, which is a slightly jelly creme red, tangerine fluorescent polish. It has such a squishy quality to it which I of course adore! I then used Konad Special Polish in White to stamp on that lovely pattern from plate m83. It took me a few tries to get the hang of how to stamp and I was actually surprised at just how squishy the stamper was! 

Since you all know how much I love my accent nails I went with accents of 4 clear rhinestones going up from the base of my nail on my ring finger and thumb. I am absolutely loving this look!! It's something I would never have been able to achieve by freehanding and it just looks awesome in my opinion. 

I know I need practice and I didn't get the image straight on my pinky nail, but I don't think it's terrible for my first attempt at stamping?


What do you all think of my first konadicure? Any suggestions for me? I'm willing to learn anything! :D I'm also going to need some more plates. I just wish the MASH plates shipped to Canada! lol 


I hope you are all having a marvelous day!