A Little Parisian Stamping

Bonjour my lovelies.  TGIF!  Do you have anything nice planned for the weekend?  I'm off to a conference in Brighton on Monday, so me and my OH have decided to make a weekend of it.  Tomorrow night we're staying in a hotel with a jacuzzi in the room...pretty darn swish.

Today I have another product I was sent from Born Pretty Store to show you!  Born Pretty Store has a huge selection of nail art products, including loooaaads of stamping plates, which is what I'm showing you today :)

This plate is QA42, and it has lots of Paris-y images!  There are four different versions of the Eiffel Tower (which is actually the reason I chose it, and I've ended up not using any of those images!), as well as the Moulin Rouge and a couple of airmail-type images.  And Big Ben.  I don't quite understand why that's there, but there we go!

First of all I decided to use the airmail images.  I struggled a little with the image transfer, but no more than I usually do with Konad or MoYou, so I can safely say that's down to operator error.  As I mentioned when I last reviewed a Born Pretty Store plate, they don't have any backing on them.  I read a review once that said the edges were sharp, but I jabbed at myself with it (all in the name of a thorough review!) and it was fine.

I used Barry M Matt White and Bright Red for my base colours.  Then I stamped with Barry M Gold Foil and Konad Red, and added some airmail envelope tipes with my Sharpies.  I probably should've used some tape to make this neater, but you know how I hate tape...

Next I decided to go for the Moulin Rouge image!

When we went to Paris we didn't really have much time to look at the Moulin Rouge...it's in probably the dodgiest area I've ever been, so we took a quick photo and were on our way!  Then we passed a shop that had Eiffel Tower shaped...er...toys in the window.  All very charming.

Anyhoo, I used Barry M Black and stamped with Konad Red again, then added a couple of rhinestones to my other nails.

All in all, I think the Born Pretty Store stamping plates are as good a quality as any others, and at £1.29 each they're a lot cheaper than some of the alternatives out there.  You can check out this particular plate here.  Don't forget, shipping is free worldwide, and you can get 10% of any purchase with the code LKL91 (and you can use it as many times as you like!).

I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Guest Post: Cambridge Nails

Aloha!

Speaking of which...my fiance suggested Hawaii for our honeymoon.  Has anyone been there and can recommend it??

Sorry, I'm far too easily distracted by wedding talk!

Today's guest post comes from Emma at Cambridge Nails.  This is a fairly new blog, but my word has Emma posted some stunning manicures in the few months she's been up and running!  I love that her manicures are all so bright.  Check out this Samba Nail Art to see what I'm talking about!

Emma has very sweetly taken inspiration from my Nail Art In A Hurry series for her guest post.

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Hi, I'm Emma from Cambridge Nails and I'm very excited to be writing a guest post for Samantha of Polished Art whose blog I really admire. I thought I'd do another post along the lines of Samantha's nail art in a hurry series and show you a couple of things you can do very quickly with dots. The first one I'm going to show you is a very simple design using two contrasting polishes and a single dotting tool.

1) Paint your nails with your base colour, you can use the same colour on all of your nails or mix things up a bit using different colours. The ones above are Lilypad Lacquer Bluebell and Nature Calling, you can immediately move onto the next step without these needing to be dry.

2) Put a blob of your contrasting polish onto a piece of paper and use the bigger end of your dotting tool to make a dot in the middle of your nail at the cuticle end (get enough polish on your tool that you can make the dot without touching your nail with the actual tool, this will make more regular dots) then flip the tool over and use the smaller end to make a second dot directly above the first. If the dots start to become irregular wipe off the end of your dotting tool on a tissue (not cotton wool because it will get tangled round the tool!)

3) Top coat and you're done. 

Variations

1) Do some of your nails with the dots starting from the free edge as in the above photo

2) Use a series of different sizes of dotting tool to make a line of tapering dots all the way up your nail.

But I don't own a dotting tool!

Not a problem, you probably have a pencil, the non writing end of a biro, a hair grip (bobby pin for you Americans), a toothpick, or a steady enough hand just to use the polish brush (if you have wide/long enough nail beds to handle large dots). And if you've read this and now think it would be really cool to own a dotting tool set they're floating around for sale on eBay and amazon and some high street sellers are branching out to nail art sets which include them (I have seen one in H&M).

Which are the best polishes to use?

Polishes which are very opaque will make the strongest dots, however as a dot is usually a fairly large glob of polish almost any polish will work (see the yellow over black below). For an interesting effect use a glitter in a clear base or a base the same colour as the polish to produce a dot which does not have an exact edge. 

You can also make a really quick look by doing a single diagonal line of dots on each nail - I used a toothpick to make the dots in this design.

If you have a little longer you can use a rainbow of polishes over a neutral base to give a very design. I did this on all my nails but you could just do it on one or two for a striking accent nail.

Even this design only took me about 10 minutes to complete all of the dots so it really isn't that time consuming.

If you've enjoyed this post head over to camnails.blogspot.co.uk to see some more of my work and thank you Samantha for having me as a guest poster :)

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I am slightly in love with that rainbow dotticure...  I always think I don't have the patience for so many dots (and to be fair actually, I probably don't...can't stuff chocolate in my mouth when my nails are wet) but I may have to give something like this a go!  And I love the simplicity of that two dot manicure - would look really sophisticated :)

Thank you again Emma!

If you like what you see, here are all the ways you can see more of Emma's work:

Blog

Facebook

Twitter (@cambridge_nails)

Pinterest

Bloglovin'

Guest Posts at Ithinity Beauty and Seriously Swatched

As I said, I've been a busy bee guest posting!  Pop on over to Ithinity Beauty and Seriously Swatched to see my posts!

Prairie Charms Project Blogger

Evening ladies, are you all enjoying the start of your weekend?

I was recently contacted by Prairie Charms on Twitter asking if I wanted to take part in Project Blogger.  Prairie Charms make really cute, unique pieces of jewellery, including headbands and the like.  All very cute so do check them out.  And they'll also make custom products if you've got something in particular in mind that you'd like!

Also, 10% of all their profits go to Great Ormond Street Hospital, so you can do a good deed while you shop :p

Anyhoo, what does Project Blogger involve?  Well, they offered all participating blogs a 50% discount code to purchase some products to include in blog posts.  This post then serves as your entry into their competition to win the opportunity to design a custom product to be sold on their website!  As well as that, you get a discount code to share with all your readers.  Happy days!  So here's my attempt at saving all you ladies some money!

I chose to buy a couple of bracelets, and today I'm showing you this Sadia Bracelet.  I don't wear a lot of jewelry (apart from my engagement ring of course!), but when I do I tend to go for bracelets :)

The bracelet is made up of these lovely marble effect beads, which I attempted to recreate on my nails!  I used the DIY spotted technique.  Well, I attempted to use this technique.  Instead of doing to nice spotty thing, it just sort of split up and clumped together.  I'm pretty pleased with how my middle finger turned out anyway, but my index finger's a bit of a disaster...  Any tips?

For the marbles nails I used Barry M Matt White and Grey, with a smidgen of Barry M Black in there as well.

On my other nails I used Barry M Black, and painted a little feather to match the bracelet using Barry M Gold Foil.  It seems I created another unintentional Barry M fest...

I think the bracelet is really cute, and the quality seems great :)  I'm now just pondering whether or not I can start wearing jewelry to work...

I also ordered another bracelet, but I'm currently testing out the Vinylux top coat, so if my nails ever chip I shall remove my current manicure and do one for the other bracelet!  And don't forget to pop by Prairie Charms to see if there are any products that take your fancy :)

Guest Post at The Fancy Side

I may not have been posting very often recently, but I have been busy writing guest posts!  Please pop over to The Fancy Side to see the post I wrote for Amy :)