Summer Rain Mani

Almost completely by accident, today's manicure ended up being the exact opposite of my last one. I say "almost" by accident because my last mani included gold stamping using a Sally Hansen polish. This time, I wanted to try a similar Sally Hansen in silver to see how it worked. The long and short of that experiment is: Don't waste your hard earned cash on the Konad Special Stamping Polish in Gold or Silver. Gold doesn't work at all and Silver doesn't work well enough to be worth it. I haven't tried any of the colors yet, so I can't speak to those. Now onto the good stuff.

I started today's manicure with Essie Coat Azure from their Spring 2011 French Affair collection. Coat Azure is a medium, sky blue with a little bit of blue and white shimmer. This polish seemed a little thick going on, and after the first coat was streaky enough to worry me. However, with a second coat it leveled out very well and became completely opaque. The color is great; it's a really rich, summery blue that reminds me of the sky on a beautiful day. It's a perfect shade for summer when you want something subtle and not-too-bright. My only complaint is that the shimmer is much less obvious on the nail than in the bottle. Overall, though I'm happy with this one.

On top of Coat Azure, I stamped a concentric circle pattern from my Bundle Monster plates using Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Silver Sweep. I originally planned to use a different pattern from the same plate, but when I looked at this one, it occurred to me that it would look like rippling water in this color combo. Silver Sweep stamped perfectly and instantly became my go-to silver stamping polish (boo, Konad Special Polish). I don't have much else to say about that, except that it was hard to catch the cool look of this mani in a photo. The silver is so shiny it kind of blurs the pattern in a way that it doesn't in person.

In light of my dissatisfaction with the Konad stamping polishes, I'm curious about the warnings on their sight about not putting them directly on nails. Does any one know what might happen if I did? Or is it just that they're too thick to go on well?