More Stranger Stamping

Hello everyone.

Today is probably the hottest day of my life.  It's literally insane.  If I don't literally melt by the end of the day it will be a miracle.

My daughter currently refuses to let me put her to bed, so while my husband is doing that (after me trying and resulting in her screaming the house down - sorry neighbours!) I thought I'd catch up on some blog posts.  You know, because the cleaning can wait.

So this is the final look I have that I did over my base of OPI On Stranger Tides with the Sensationail Polish to Gel Transformer top coat.  As the floor outside Swansea train station says, ambition is critical.  Sometimes, however, you need to reign in that ambition and be realistic about your capabilities.  So this time I only attempted stamping on one nail instead of them all.

The gold accents are my old faithful Barry M Gold Foil.  Yet again my Seche Vite smudged my stamping so we're not on talking terms at the moment, although it's probably my fault for neglecting it for like two years and then using it without adding any thinner.  Oh well.

Anyhoo, this is the last manicure I did over my Sensationail base because I received some items to review for Born Pretty Store and I was itching to try the thermal polish.  This was great though, so easy to remove the nail art with an acetone-free remover so you can switch it up a bit, meaning you get all the benefits of gel without being stuck with the same boring manicure for two weeks.  Yay!

Stamping on Stranger Tides

As I said in my last post, I tried a couple of different stamping looks over my OPI On Stranger Tides and Sensationail Polish to Gel Transformer manicure.  This is the first of those.

I think the lovely muted green of the polish calls for some delicate white and gold detailing, so I rummaged through my plates and settled on this floral design from Konad plate M73.

I then added some little gold dots that you can’t actually see, such is their delicateness, but I assure you they make all the difference.

Then I added Seche Vite topcoat but it had gone all gloopy and smeared my stamping everywhere leaving me with this mess of a manicure, and I probably shouldn’t even admit this but this is actually the third attempt on my ring finger, at this point I just gave up. So yeah...stamping 1, Sam 0.

My second look was marginally more successful, so keep an eye out for that in the next few days!

Bridesmaids Nails

Right, I know I know, I've been a terrible blogger...but moving on!

My best friend got married last month :)  She asked me to do bridesmaids nails, so I tried out a few ideas for her.  We were wearing red dresses with white fur shrugs, so we decided to go with red and white, with gold accents, for the nails.

These are the designs I did for her to choose from (and thank you to everyone in various Facebook groups for suggestions!).

All I can say in thankfully she didn't choose the fishtail braid tip!

I didn't think I used that many different polishes, but now that I have to list them all out there are quite a few!  The main red is OPI Flick Chick Cherry, plus Barry M Red Glitter, Gold Foil and Matt White, OPI Minnie Style, China Glaze Pure Joy and Hits Atenas.

These nails were one of the runners up...

She didn't go for those in the end, which is a shame because they would have been dead quick...  I did bring the glitter with me in the hope she'd have a change of heart lol.

These are the ones she chose :)

The glitter is Saffron 02 and I used Konad white stamping polish with one of the MoYou Christmas plates (the one with the gingerbread house on!) for the stamping.  Now, you know I'm not a stamper, and it almost killed me doing 30 nails!  Thank goodness there was champagne!  Quite a few times I tried to stamp and the image just didn't transfer at all - any advice on what I was doing wrong here?  Maybe not drying off all the acetone or something?

Which nails are your favourite?

And I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year!  (Gosh, it really has been a long time since I posted...sorry!)

Black & White Challenge #2: Stamping

I WILL get this posted today!  Don't know why I'm feeling so lazy recently!  I also need to pack for a weekend at home, but I've been sitting here watching TV all night instead...

Anyhoo, yes, today the challenge prompt is stamping!  Ok...I can do that...maybe only on one hand, but all the same...

Here's what I came up with:

Of course, once again I used Barry M Matt White and Black, with a Barry M nail art pen on the black nails, and Konad M73 on the white nails.

Sorry, just a short post today!  I need to go and pack all my nail polishes for the weekend!

Don't forget to have a look at all the other black and white manicures!

Untried Challenge: Day 1

Ah, Monday tomorrow!  Boo!  The weekend seriously needs to be a day longer.  I do enjoy my job, I just haaate waking up before 10am lol.  I know, I'm lazy...

Anyhoo, I'm starting a new challenge!  Jonochi from Just Add Polish is hosted this fab Untried Polish Challenge.  It's a post every three days (which I should be able to keep up with!) and a great opportunity to try and use some of those polishes that have been neglected.

So this morning I sat and went through all my polishes, trying to remember which ones I haven't used.  It is possible that one or two of these have been used for a small nail art detail somewhere, but as far as I can remember, they haven't been.

Here's what I have to play with:

Definitely more than the 19 that are required to complete the challenge...  There's quite a mixture in there - Barry M, Nails Inc, loads of OPI minis, China Glaze, Ninja Polish, W7 and so on and so forth.  Plenty to choose from!

Here's the challenge prompts:

So for today's one colour manicure I used...erm...well, I'd call both of these purpley pink.  Totally one colour.

This is OPI Sparrow Me The Drama and Hits Specialita Pega Pega (available from Sally Magpies).  Then I made a poor attempt at stamping, and added a few rhinestones to finish the look off.

Pop on over to take a look at all the other ladies participating in the challenge:

Jonochi at Just Add Polish

Masha at Lost In Lacquer

Raine at Lacquer Lily

Amanda at Designer Nail Accents

Amy at The Fancy Side

Patricia at Polished and Glittered

Sam Attempts Stamping

You may remember from my New Year's blogging resolutions post that I said I was going to make better use of my stamping supplies by posting at least one stamped manicure a month.  I regretted this almost instantly.  I've put it off as long as possible, but now the end of the month is fast approaching, and it'd be a shame not to even make my resolutions last through January...

She here it is, my first attempt at stamping in 2013.

Not wanting to throw myself in at the deep end, I just went for stamped accent nails.  Baby steps, you know.

I used Barry M Gold Foil and Teal, and Konad plate M83.  I think my issue with stamping is that I can't get it perfect.  When I do freehand, it's obviously not going to be perfect, because it's freehand.  But with stamping, there's no reason it shouldn't be perfect lol.  I do love that you can get such fine detail that I'd never be able to paint freehand though, and that you can get consistent results on every nail.

A few problems I encountered.

I'm rolling the stamp sideways across my nail, but then it misses off the top and bottom, since my nails and the stamper are quite curved in all directions.  I tried just pressing the stamper into my nail so that it was in contact with nail across the whole length, as I rolled it sideways.  On my index finger this ended up in all my polish getting smooshed up (you might just be able to make this out, although I hid it pretty well with the angle of the photo lol).  Is this what other people do?  Do I just need to let it dry a bit longer, or do I need to go for a roll across, roll up and down type manoeuvre?  Any tips are greatly appreciated!

Here's a close up of the non-smooshed nail.

A few little gaps but, all in all, I don't think it's bad!  Hopefully I can just keep improving from here :)

How about you - do you get on better with stamping or freehand?

31 Day Challenge - Day 7: Black and White

Bonjourno!

Today is day 7 (I think...I keep getting my challenges mixed up) of the 31 day challenge, and the theme is black and white!  I thought this seemed an appropriate occasion to whip out Konad plate M73 and use the music/piano image.  I initially pictures this manicure differently - I wanted to use different parts of the stamp on each nail, so that some would just have the keyboard, some just the music and that.  However, the image was a lot larger in my head than it actually is, no I couldn't do that.

Here's what I ended up with.

I used Barry M Matt White and an FCUK unlabeled black (I've given up on my 17 one because the bottle's too empty now...).

It took my like a million attempts to get all 6 nails stamped...I don't quite know what I was doing wrong, but I guess I got there eventually.  Ish.

Next up will be metallic nails on Monday.

Check out all the other lovely participants:

Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner

Kat at Hooked On Polish

Diana at Nails By Diana

Aly at Wonderland Beauty

Meredith at Perfectly Polished

Nicole at The Color Republic

Kate at The Painted Pony Nails

Cee at Absolutely Cee

Nail Narcotics

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful 

Mixed Mama

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Patty Greenberg

Liz and Lisa at Lozlosa 

Mari at Nailista 

Greta at How Was Your Day?

Miss L at Beauty by Miss L 

Gini at Sassy Paints 

Chameleon Stampede 

Pam at Nail-E-Glance 

Me, Myself and Polish

Teal Tuesdays: Funky French

Morning :) Well, afternoon actually. I need to stop sleeping so much...

Today's Teal Tuesdays theme is funky french.  I was going to go with a similar design to the last french tips I posted, seeing as I know I can do those, but I felt that was probably cheating slightly...  So, instead, I decided to have a little go at stamping.  I've got a few Konad plates, but they're very underused, so I've been wanting to get a bit more use out of them.

I used China Glaze Exotic Encounters for the tips, then stamped with Star Gazer 232.  This got a bit messy, so I added the lines of silver glitter with a nail art pen.  This possibly made it messier...

Take a look at all the other teal tips that people have been working on this week :)

Gnarly Gnails

Nails Beautiqued

Geeky Owl

Mandy's Polish

Fancy Phalanges

Colorsplash Nails

Simple-and-Beautiful

Persistently Glittery

No Holos!

Cherries Sweets

The Frenzied Polisher

Caitlin's Creative Corner

Lacquered Libra

Nail Polish Lane

Once Upon a Polish

Subtlety is Overrated
Elyssian Beauty
My Rusty Nails

Patchouli & Lace

Ms. Meow's Nails

Love in a Bottle

Klutzy Hands Nails

Teal Tuesdays: Monochrome

Good morning :)  Today I'm participating in Teal Tuesdays for the first time (had a good old rummage through my nail polish collection to find everything that resembled teal).  This week's theme is monochrome.

This is definitely a manicure that looked better in my head...but oh well, here it is:

I used OPI Mermaid's Tears, Max Factor Graffiti and for the little stamped flower that you can't see because I made a colour choice fail I used Nubar Reclaim.

Here's another picture so that you can actually see the flower.  I was originally going to do this in the Max Factor polish, which I think would've looked better, but I felt like I needed some holographic polish in my life.

I'm not really a fan of this manicure, but at least the colours are pretty :)

Check out these other teal lovelies:

Gnarly Gnails

Nails Beautiqued

Geeky Owl

Mandy's Polish

Fancy Phalanges

Colorsplash Nails

Simple-and-Beautiful

Persistently Glittery

No Holos!

Cherries Sweets

The Frenzied Polisher

Caitlin's Creative Corner

Lacquered Libra

Nail Polish Lane

Once Upon a Polish

Subtlety is Overrated

Zoya Yara + Konad

I was a little stuck for ideas today, so I decided to raid my collection of polishes that I've yet to try.  I recently bought some new Konad plates as well - not that I've used the other Konad plates I had - so I thought I'd give stamping a go too.

The Konad design is more visible in the photo below.

I used two coats of Zoya Yara, which is a lovely khaki polish packed with loads of gold shimmer (the first photo's the most colour accurate, but you can see far more gold in person).  On the accent nail is one coat of Barry M Instant Nail Effects Gold Foil, stamped with an image from Konad plate M83.  It's all sealed off with a coat of Seche Vite.

I was originally going to paint all the nails with Yara and stamp on the accent nail with the gold, as I think that polish would be perfect for stamping, but in the end I decided it'd look a bit random.  What do you think?