Chinese New Year Nail Art aka Sunday Stamping on a Thursday?!

Hey there!  Chinese New Year is the theme of this week's Sunday stamping challenge so technically I should post these on Sunday but that's way less fun than posting them on the special day.  I was bound and determined to do some sort of Chinese/Lunar New Year nail art.  Tomorrow brings us the year of the horse and I was born in the year of the horse.  Sounds perfect, right?!  Nope, according to my Chinese co-worker, it's actually bad luck.  So I'll wear some red, have my red nails and I even bought new towels and put on clean sheets (other superstitions taught to me by another Chinese friend).  Honestly, the last couple years have been pretty tough ones for me so I'm throwing away all my scientific sensibilities and following superstition, just in case...

For this I started with 2 coats of my all-time favourite red polish, A England Perceval.  I really think sexy is the perfect word to describe this polish.  It's opaque (works for stamping!), metallic and deep. Love!

The only bad thing about Perceval is that it doesn't play nice with black stamping polish.  Black is just a bit hard to see on top of it.  I wanted to do black and gold stamping but went with gold only instead.

For the stamping I used Maybelline Bold Gold and the Chinese characters from the Bundle Monster plates as wishes for my year and for everybody else.  I even asked another co-worker what the characters meant so I didnt inadvertently offend anybody.  In order they go:

index - BM-225 Love ... and all you really need is love ;-)

middle - BM-221 Fortune/Luck/Happiness

ring - BM-206 Friendship

pinky - BM-203 Double Happiness

thumb: BM-H15 same symbol as BM-221 surrounded with blossoms

This was a super easy look to achieve...in theory!  In reality I kept messing up and trying to add extra bits (I really wanted a horse in there) and ran into failure after failure.  So the final look is simple but I love it.  

May everyone be blessed with good love, good fortune, good friends and so much happiness this year.  It's like a second shot at a new year, in case January hasn't played nice so far...

'Til next time...