Day four and I've made it to the European continent today. I pulled out some of my aEngland polish which I have not wore for years.  These polishes were so popular then they first come out, but I don't think I've bought any new ones for ages.  What I love is that they have a soft holo sheen,  but they are generally one coaters.

The two aEngland polished I used were Dragon and And the moonbeams.  I was inspired by the name of the polish, and by the fact that Game of Thrones returns on Monday at 11.00am (which is the same time as the USA). I free hand painted the dragon eye. I figured it was about time I did something freehand for the Digital Dozen this month.  The stamping plate I used is the dragon plate from Messy Mansion for the scales.

I applied OPI matte top coat to the entire mani cause dragons aren't shiny to me, although this did dull the holo effect.  I added a bit of regular top coat onto the eye again to make it glossy, and it also really made it pop!

I'm starting to run a bit low on my draft manis that are edited and ready to post. I think I'm down to only three of four.  I hate having that feeling that I'm falling behind and I need to catch up. I usually like to have at about 14 days worth of available manis to select from.  

I think I have a bunch of manis photographed on my camera that I haven't yet downloaded and edited, but the truth is that I've been to busy playing a new game on my ipad in my spare time over the last few days that I haven't been bothered to edit anything.  I've been playing Plague.  Has anyone else played it.  It's a simulation strategy game where the purpose is to develop and mutate some sort of global plague, be it a bacterial one, a virus, fungal etc, with the purpose of infecting the whole planet and then wiping out the entire human race.  It's like the reverse of real life where you want to work to stop a plague, so instead you're on the plagues side trying to kill everyone. 

So I've dragged myself away from my current plague for the moment to share a recent mani I created using some of the aEngland polishes.  I think I used Tristam, Dancing with Nureyev and Fonteyn.  I don't recall right now which plate I used to stamp with, but I use Essie No Place Like Chrome for the silver.  On my ring finger I applied a layer of Shimmer Alice.

All rightly then, I'm off again to wipe out humanity on my ipad.

I loved my last subtle stamping effort with an A-England polish, I thought I would try another this week. I chose my untried A-England Princess Sabra (Tristam's Eyes), which really is the perfect cats eye golden green colour, with a light holographic effect.

I stamped over it using a really old polish.  It was one of my Revlon Street Wear polishes called Scheming.  It had just the right golden green colour that complimented Princess Sabra (Tristam's Eyes) perfectly.

The lighting in the top and bottom photos isn't great, cause I was trying to use the kitchen light up close (standing on a chair) just after doing my mani at night.  The two middle photos were taken in the very early morning sunlight.  But let me tell you, this is what I have to deal with in the morning before work, when taking my nail photos ....

Wondering what that is?  Although it looks like some sort of fuzzy grey fur, it's actually the cover to the BBQ on the back verandah where I stand outside to take photos of my nails.  It was a frosty morning today, got down to -5 here last night. Brrrrrrrrrr.  But golden nails warm me up.

Here is a mani that I wore last week.  It was the first time I had worn aEngland Princess Tears, and because it has been raining and cold, I knew I wasn't going to get to see much of the holo effect.  So I decided to stamp it.

I stamped using Layla Mirror Effect polish in Purple Diva.

I originally starting stamping on my right hand using Layla Mirror Cosmo Lilac, but the colour difference was almost impossible to see (I wanted subtle, not invisible), so after one finger I switched colours.  Purple Diva was just dark enough to show on top of Princess Tears.

I really, really loved wearing this mani.  I'd never done a really subtle stamping before, I'd only done strong contrasts with black or white for example. This was so pretty and give the mani something interesting indoors when the holo effect wasn't really visible.

We seem to have recovered from our chocolate induced Easter Monday coma.  Far too many MaltEaster Bunny's have been consumed in this household!  

A number of polishes that I got during the last few months were some the new aEngland Legends collection.  There are heaps of awesome swatches out there of this collection, which of course meant I had to get them.

This is Dragon, which is a dusty green polish with a golden shimmer and a light holographic effect.  I love that this polish is a true one coater.

After wearing my Lynnderella's for such a long time, I feel I can't just wear a plain old mani at the moment, so I pulled out my stamping plates and chose this cool number image off some plates I recently got through Fab UR Nails blog. This was plate QA9 from the QA image plates.

Stamping was done using China Glaze 2030, which matched the golden undertones of Dragon really well.

And for my little boy who is learning the shapes of different numbers, this mani is pretty cool.

For the record, here is aEngland Dragon on it's one.  One single coat over Orly Bonder base coat.

The holo effect is subtle on the nail.  The holo particles are very fine and totally smooth, but I don't think you could really call it a linear holo.  Gorgeous nail polish tough!

Back to work tomorrow after four lovely days off. At least it's a short week!