Pebble in a Pond - Revlon Zealous, Hit the Bottle A bolt from the Blue, Stamping plate A by Cheeky

[Ripple Effect!]

For this ripple effect, I have used Revlon's Zealous as the base, which is a light lime green colour with a gold-ish shimmer. The shimmer isn't really visible on the nails versus in the bottle. The pattern was stamped on using Hit the Bottle's A bolt from the Blue, which is starting to become my favourite stamping polish from Hit the Bottle. A bolt from the Blue is this vibrant cobalt blue with a foil-like finish and is beautifully opaque which makes it perfect for stamping.

[Bottle to nail: Hit the Bottle A bolt from the Blue]

The stamping plate I used is stamping plate A by Cheeky. I have only included some of the patterns from the stamping plate below, but I have used this stamping plate before so if you want to see the full image with all the patterns, you can check it out in this other post here. The ripple-like pattern that I used for this mani is in the dark pink square below.

[Stamping plate A by Cheeky]

[Base: Revlon Zealous
Stamping: Hit the Bottle A bolt from the Blue, Stamping plate A by Cheeky]

While the Cheeky stamping plates pack so many patterns together into each plate, it does make each pattern a little bit small for long nails. As you can see, the blue ripples above don't quiiiiiite make it to the end of my nail bed. I think it's interesting that you can see that I scraped off more nail polish for the pattern on my thumb, making the ripples a lot thinner compared to the others. What a difference it makes if you scrape off excess nail polish twice, instead of just once.

Overall, I love this pattern. I think the colour combination works well too. The effect is just such a stand-out and loved how it looked so jazzed up.

Green Geometry - Hit the Bottle's Absinthe Minded, Stamping Plate B from Cheeky, Sally Hansen's Blue Me Away

I'm losing track of my manis, and hopefully I haven't posted this one yet before!

[Base: Sally Hansen's Blue Me Away
Stamping: Hit the Bottle's Absinthe Minded, Stamping Plate B from Cheeky]

What I've got here is Sally Hansen's Blue Me Away! as the base, which is a blue creme. I've stamped on top of that with Hit the Bottle's Absinthe Minded, which is a green chrome, as photographed. I love the name Absinthe Minded too. :P  And I've used Stamping Plate B from Cheeky, with the specific pattern lined in dark pink below:

[Stamping Plate B by Cheeky]

[Base: Sally Hansen's Blue Me Away
Stamping: Hit the Bottle's Absinthe Minded, Stamping Plate B from Cheeky]

I do like the look. I just wish I used a stamping polish colour that contrasted more with the base in this particular case. Absinthe Minded stamped beautifully with crisp lines as always.

Copper Lightning - Hit the Bottle Burnt Orange, Sally Hansen Blue Me Away, Stamping Plate D by Cheeky

Today's stamping efforts kind of look... weird.

[Base: Sally Hansen Blue Me Away
Stamping: Hit the Bottle Burnt Orange, Stamping plate D by Cheeky]

Weird and a little creepy, for reasons I can't place. But I'm going to share it anyway, because you should get to see misadventures in nail polish as well. :P The base polish is Sally Hansen's Blue Me Away (good one, SH!), which is a nice sky blue. The stamping polish is Hit the Bottle's Burnt Orange. It's a copper-gold colour and stamps opaque beautifully.

[Stamping plate D by Cheeky]

This is jumbo stamping plate D by Cheeky, from the 2012 collection. As I mentioned in my last post, you can still buy this on Amazon. The pattern I'm using in this post is the one with a dark pink square around it and you can click on the image above for a larger picture.

[Base: Sally Hansen Blue Me Away
Stamping: Hit the Bottle Burnt Orange, Stamping plate D by Cheeky]

I usually love blue and gold/brown combinations. I thought the pattern also looked lovely on the plate. But on my nails, it just looks a little weird. I think my nails are kind of small and narrow so you couldn't see more of the pattern, which makes it look like there's just weird squiggly lines across my nails rather than a coherent image.

The stamping itself was fine. The pattern stamped easily and the Hit the Bottle stamping polish is a dream to work with as usual. The end result just wasn't what I expected. What do you all think?

Basket Weave - Covergirl Midnight Magic, Hit the Bottle Chromeo, Stamping plate A by Cheeky

More stamping but with old plates this time!

[My metallic weave]

The base is CoverGirl's Midnight Magic and I have stamped over it with Hit the Bottle Chromeo, a silver chrome stamping nail polish. Now as for the stamping plate...

[Stamping plate A by Cheeky]

This is jumbo stamping plate A by Cheeky which I bought in 2012 on Amazon. I looked through Amazon and was amazed that they do still sell it and you can find one here. Back in 2012, I bought it and then left it to languish in a drawer until I dug it out now to test it out. There really are a lot of patterns here! Look at how shiny this untouched stamping plate is, hah.

The pattern I chose is the one with the dark pink rectangle around it. The stamping didn't go too badly I think.

[Base: CoverGirl Midnight Magic
Stamping: Hit the Bottle Chromeo, Stamping plate A by Cheeky]

The only hard time I had with this pattern was stamping it on straight. As you can see, some of them are more diagonal than straight, oops. Oh well. I think it turned out pretty well. Chromeo is a basic silver chrome but it stamps like a dream.

As for the stamping plate, I'm not crazy about this 2012 Cheeky stamping plates. I tested some of the other designs from a couple other plates and some of the lines were just too fine. Even when you could pick up the fine lines, they were often barely visible on the nails when stamped. That's not to say that the plates are a write off. I found most of their geometrical patterns tended to be better, probably because they had slightly thicker lines.