The Lacquer Ring – Beach/Tropical

Are you Sea-Rious? That’s the polish I chose to use for this look by Glam Polish from their Under the Sea collection. This is what started my brainstorming for this look and my decision to go more Beach rather than Tropical for our TLR theme.

I still have yet to get my macro pics quite down as good as most bloggers Perhaps below if you have any recommendations for me, I’d be happy to hear. I am currently using my Iphone 6 along with my macro clip on piece I got on Amazon. Sometimes I use the lighbox I have sometimes I don’t but I don’t have a problem with lighting so much as I do the clearness of Macros..

Anyway, Are you Sea-Rious? is a gorgeousssss seafoam green holo with shimmer and holographic aqua micro-glitter. It’s a textured polish which also reminds me of the beach but I did use a top coat in this case.  I stamped a large seashell on one of my nails using my MoYou plate. I used the same MoYou plate that has the same seashell but a bunch of little ones on the other fingers. I used Essie’s Good as Gold as my stamping color.

I’m even wearing my mermaid ring to match my beach theme today 🙂

Please let me know what your macro tips are 😉 Please check out all of our lovely TLR ladies we have some new members 🙂

The Lacquer Ring – Seafoam

Whoa, two back to back posts on the blog!? That’s right! This time I have our latest TLR post for you Seafoam.  This color is perfect for me not only because I have  A LOT of Seafoam green and blues, but because our car color was Seafoam Green! Before our Camry we,  had a Seafoam Green Altima. Don hated it! I got it just before we started dating so he basically had no say in the color! lol  I bought it used so I really didn’t either, but I loved it, of course! He always said it looked like toothpaste! 😦  In any event, I had plenty of options for this theme.

I ended up choosing Cirque’s Julep and I did an accent nail using Lime Crime’s Milky Ways and some polka dots with Julep.

 

 

So our Altima wasn’t quite this sparkly, I wish it was, but it was a gorgeous color

Make sure you check out the other TLR girls, be sure to welcome them as we all have!!

Have a good weekend all!

The Lacquer Ring – Dotticure

We are back with some dotticures! Although Frosso pointed out she picked this month even though I thought I did.. lol dotticures are one of my favorites to do, the color options and patterns are limitless. Oh did I also mention I am obsessed with Polka Dots, hence why I thought I picked this 😉

On Monday I have an interview!! So I wanted to mess around with some neutrals as I normally don’t do too many manis like that. Although I will probably put on something even more neutral, I absolutely love the way this came out!

I used OPI’s Gwen Collection for the most part, 4 In the Morning, Push and Shove, and Love.Angel.Music.Baby along with Essie Good as Gold and the base is China Glaze Dandy Lyin’ Around

 

I cannot say enough how much I love how this turned out… normally the ones I love you guys don’t and visa versa, lol so tell me what you think, and what’s your favorite dotticure color combo if you have one 😉

Don’t forget to check out the other TLR girls!

The Lacquer Ring – Red

I am not sure who picked this month, however with the color and the next theme in two weeks I am thinking it was me, you’ll see why. Either way this month (as always) we have great colors and themes in store. Check out how #TLR does red!

My husband was so sweet and bought me the Ciate advent calendar for Christmas this year. I had so much fun opening it up each day, he gave it to me early so that I had a present each day of the month! For this look I am using one of the Ciate’s I got called hutch, I love how hookery this red is. lol I also used Pretty Serious’s Viscous Vampire.

Don and I have been watching Supernatural on Netflix lately… with the name of the Pretty Serious color I chose, I call this mani ‘My Bloody Valentine’ after the name of the episode we just watched 😉

I painted two thin coats of Hutch and then painted Viscous Vampire as a gradient on the tips

This second pic is more accurate of how it looks in person, sometimes the lighting is just so hard to get with some of these polishes! I do like however in the first pic how you get the different shades of the glitters. Pretty Serious website description states there are both red and fuscia in there 😉

Well there you have my red mani just in time for Valentine’s Day! Check out the rest of the TLR girls for their manis!

The Lacquer Ring – Mandala Inspired

So as it happens I have no stamps mandala-ish nor did I really know what mandala inspired really was. I asked our expert and of course the one that picked this prompt, the #goldmasta V. I sent her a few pictures of some stamps that I could possibly pass as mandala and she approved of this one. Of course you did.. the one that was something I’ve never done before that was for sure to take me forever…. lol

I decided to use my Uber Mat that I got for Christmas. When I got it I feel like all of my creative-ness went away lol I know that the opposite is supposed to happen… I’ve been watching a lot of how to’s with the uber mat capability and in making your own decals so I decided to give it a shot.  I sent the one that I tried to Sib and she loved it so decals it is..

 

First step was to choose my colors, online mandala inspired were both plain and just the design or multi colors or different shades of the same color. I went for a white base with the black outline and blues for that pop over the white.

 

Step 1: Using my Ubermat I painted a layer of clear in 10 positions on my mat

Step 2: Once dry enough, using my stamper, I stamped the desired design on all of the clear spaces I had painted

Step 3: Now here comes the tedious part, Using a brush or a dotting tool, I painted in the desired spaces (tip: Do all of your smaller spots first or lighter colors and then you can fill in overtop of it with another color for the spaces around it, as you will be flipping the decal over anyway)

For this step I did one color at a time and just put a drip of each color one at a time and started to color in my spots

Step 4: Once all desired spaces were colored in, I went an extra step as I hate white base polishes.. I don’t know about you but I feel like I can never get a white to look perfect on my nails. As you will see from my picture I also did 10 white spaces as well. This next step was to gently peel up my decals one by one and while slightly still wet from the colors to place them overtop the white to make the white on my nail more opaque and make my life easier

Step 5/6: Once my base coat was applied, one by one I painted a white layer on my nails. While the white from each nail was slightly wet not quite dry and not freshly painted, I peeled up the design I made with the white as shown above and applied it to my nail

Step 7: Using a clean up brush and tiny scissors or a cuticle cutter cut the overhanging detail and press down to secure. Once fully secure continue cutting off excess and getting excess off with polish remover and your clean up brush around your cuticles

Step 8: Top coat and done

I am no expert, as I said this was my first time ever doing these and they for sure need some improvement. If you have any tips or tricks to help me out in the future please, please let me know!

Tools used for this mani: (for prep) Sally Hansen cuticle gel, cuticle pusher, cuticle clippers, file (for mani) cuticle clippers, tiny scissors, MoYou Bridal Plate 06, nail polish remover, fine dottig tool, and two clean up brushes one angled & one straight.

Here is a close up of the design 

Polishes used for this mani: OPI Nail envy base coat, China Glaze white out, Cirque Monte Carlo, Cirque Cabana Capri, Illamasqua Boosh, Lemming Lacquer Curiouser & Curiouser!, OPI My Pal Joey, jessica Barely Blueberry, and Cirque Twilight

Now for the mani pics 🙂

For my right hand I did the decals and for my accent hand a gradient using Cirque’s Monte Carlo and Twilight

For my left hand I did the decals on each finger and for my accent just used Cirque Twilight

This picture I know is very bright, I was messing with my camera options and just really liked how vibrant the colors looked in my decals

For once I liked how my right hand came out better than my left, I am sure it has something to do with the fact that my left/model hand my pointer finger nail broke this week 😦

 

So there you have it, my Mandala inspired and first time making decal nails! What tips do you have for me or others that want to try the decal look again? What do you think of all of the girls mandala inspiration nails?  Check em out below!

The Lacquer Ring – Turquoise shimmer

Hello to anyone that reads this anymore… lol I am sorry.. I suck I only barely post twice a month it’s bad, but my life is hectic, not that anyone else’s isn’t… trust me I know.

To fill you all in as I think I sort of touched on, my husband’s brother(my brother-in-law), his fiancé (my future sister-in-law), and their two children moved back to NJ from AZ and are living with us for a while until they get on their feet. I took off a couple of days from work to help them move in and things are going well I think we got our schedule going with everyone in the house now… oh and did I mention in case you don’t know we also have 3 horses… not really horses lol but three large dogs 😉 lol. So with preparing for them to come and getting settled and all it’s been hard for me to paint, or blog but I am trying to come back 😉 I love my blog I love painting my nails it’s so relaxing as most of you know, it’s just finding the time which I am going to make sure that I do 🙂 Plus Ashley and I were doing our nails together a couple of times already so I’m getting her hooked hehe

#TheLacquerRing is also trying to come up with another segment twice a month like this for anyone that wants to collab like Stamping Saturdays for untrieds and such so keep an eye out for that 😉

 

 

Before I begin with the actual TLR post for this week, I want to first welcome our two newest exclusive members! Rei and Shelby Lou! Welcome Ladies to The Lacquer Ring!!

For this post, it was turquoise shimmer, I have always really wanted to try the turquoise gem nails, so why not… UGG! So for those of you that have tried it and did well, you suck. Those of you that don’t know I will explain… So it’s sort of like water marbling.

• You paint your nails the base coat in this case mine was China Glaze’s Too Yacht to Handle.
• Once dry, you can stamp a gold and/or a white a little bit as most turquoise has those hints. I used OPI’s Love.Angel.Music.Baby and China Glaze’s Dandy Lyin’ Around.
• Again once dry you drip a couple of drops or only one of black into water I usedIllamasqua’sBoosh. Once it separates and is a big circle, again like water marbling but without the bullseye you lightly spray hairspray or alcohol on to it.
  • From there the black will separate and make a watermarbly or a turquoise design.
    • You dip one finger at a time in the water (unless you’re pro- I’m totally not) and while under take a pin or a toothpick and swirl it around in the top layer of the water to get the excess polish at the surface
• Oh and before I forget in case you didn’t already knowing from water marbling TAPE, TAPE, TAPE, or latex. Just like water marbling this is MESSY, MESSY!
• Once done you can sponge a little bit of the goldish and/or white again if you’d like
• Top Coat and done (Oh and since this was turquoise shimmer I also did a coat of Enchanted Polish’s Ice Castle overtop for some extra shimmer)

With that being said I don’t know what I expected for my ‘first time’ but it wasn’t this… lol I like how it came out but it’s not as turquoise gem as I’d hope.

So what do you think of this? Have you tried this look and how did you make out?

Don’t forget to check out all the other girls posts for TLR and make sure you welcome our newest members! 😉