Falling leaves mani stamped with Pueen

Hey guys! Happy last day of November! I figured it needed to get this post live before Christmas Nails season begins (happy dance). I wore this about 6 weeks ago, and I'm just now getting it up here! Mostly because I filmed the process, I haven't been filming lately but I'm still working on a good method for me.

This was one of the first mani's I did with my new Pueen stamping plates I ordered off Amazon! I have been having alot of fun with them.

outdoors

For the leaves I used a mixture of Zoya Courtney, Cam, Darcy, and Wyatt. The nude base is Cala and the gold is Levi, which picked up on my stamper fairly well.

indoors

Check out the video to see how I achieved the mixing of the colors on the plate :)

(Drumroll) I even did my right hand! I usually never have nailart on my right hand because using vinyls takes too long and I pretty  much can't even use a dotting tool with my left hand. Stamping has opened up a whole new world! Matching nail art on both hands?!?

my right hand!

China glaze periwinkle plumerias

Hey guys! Today I have another look I came up with while swatching the China Glaze Seas and Greetings collection, which you can see here! I'm clearly obsessed with this beachy holiday collection! As soon as I brushed on Good Tide-ings and saw how creamy and opaque it was, I immediately stopped and got out my stamping stuff! I'm having a lot of fun with my new interest in stamping and it's nice to have a rekindled interest in nail art.



The technique is pretty simple. Brush a little polish at the top of the image....


Use your scraper and scrape the polish down to fill in the image....


Pick it up with your stamper and place on a dry nail.  I find about 10 min after applying Seche Vite is long enough. I'm still wrestling with my clear stamper having the head get pushed down in the base...how to I prevent that?? I brushed a little clear polish around in there hoping it would stick better and it didn't work....so I just have to press really gently. Which is hard for me and sometimes doesn't pick up all the image!


I just love how this looks! So simple :)


Lush Lord of Misrule bath bomb inspired nail art featuring Zoya

Hello! Today I have a little post with more detail about the matching mani I did for the Lush Lord of Misrule bath bomb from the holiday collection! This bath bomb has quite the reputation and I was really excited to finally get one and try it out! Check out my post yesterday to see the review.


I went back and forth on what design to do since there is really no character to this bath bomb. I was originally going to do a splatter design but then my first Moyou order came in and even though its mostly holiday-ish, I was determined to find something I could use! I settled on the Enchanted Collection 06 plate, which was part of the holiday bundle I ordered. I probably wouldn't have ordered it on it own, but I'm glad I have it!



Polishes I used are, from left: all Zoya

Ness, Tiana, Vespa, Nana, Arabella

This is what I usually do before stamping on my nails, I play around with polishes and stamp on paper. The wolf and leaves are on the Moyou plate and the butterfly is from the Pueen plate (Animal Safari 01)

I played around with removing parts of the designs and making them 2 colored. I used tape and dotting tools to remove bits of polish from the stamper. You definitely have to have a clear stamper for this!

Here's the final look with the bath bomb.

I have been having a lot of fun creating these Lush mani's and have lots more planned :)

500th Post.....Lush Lord of Misrule bath bomb with coordinating nails!

Hey guys! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Guess what... this is my 500th published post! I've been blogging for 6 1/2 years and it's been a ride!

Today I have some more Lush nail art. The Lord of Misrule bath bomb is one I heard tons about as soon as I started getting into Lush. I ordered it as soon as the holiday line came out! It's usually only available during the holiday season. I wasn't sure which design to land on to coordinate, but when I finally chose an idea I was happy with the result! Be sure to check back tomorrow for lots more on this mani!



This is a really fun bath bomb to watch in action.... check it out! 

I used my new Moyou Enchanted stamping plate to create this look, check back tomorrow for more details on this mani!



This bath bomb contains Vanilla and Black pepper oils as its first few ingredients....which sound like an interesting combo. Mostly I just picked up a clean and simple fragrance. I did take forever to dissolve, but it was fun to watch! I'm not sure this is one I'll buy up a ton of to last me all year, but if I can catch some half price on the Boxing Day sale I might pick up a few! Be sure to watch my video to see Lord of Misrule in action!

Black Friday-its a jungle out there! (plus mini tutorial)

It's Black Friday! It's a jungle out there! What deals are yall grabbing up today? Or did you go out last night?? I avoid the crowds at all costs, I have to stay home with the kiddos anyway :) My husband likes to go out and have the whole experience, sometimes we get deals and sometimes not!

Today I have a look I came up with when I was swatching the China Glaze Seas and Greetings collection, which you can check out here. The title polish, Seas and Greetings, is a really pretty purple shimmer. It really glows, especially in the sun. I wanted to play with  my stamping stuff more, the more practice the better, so here's what I came up with!



I used the Pueen Nature Lover 01 plate and a super opaque, one coater crème from last year's China Glaze collection, called Take a Hike.



Here's the basic method for stamping. Brush some polish at the top of the image...



Use the scraper to scrape the polish down the image...not too hard or you won't leave enough polish in the grooves...which I'm still practicing!




Use the stamper to press into the image...



Pick it up and admire your work... and press it on your nail. You do need to have your basecoat pretty dry, I find that after 10 minutes from applying Seche Vite it's dry enough. That's a big difference from the drying time to wait to use nail vinyls! The whole process has to be fairly quick, or it will dry out in between steps. Still working on that also!



I use tape to clean off the dried polish from the stamper.



There you go! I didn't get the lion very centered, because I've been having some trouble with my clear stamper so I used the one that came with my kit. It works great, you just cant see through it.



 

 I opted for a matte topcoat just to see what it looked like over the shimmer in the sun. It almost gives a tinted glass effect. So cool!

 

Thanksgiving 2016: Using my OPI Untrieds and new nail vinyls

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope everyone is stuffing themselves silly today :) For today's look I decided to rummage through my OPI drawers and find some untrieds to use. I have the most untried OPI's of any other brand because for a long time I was grabbing them up when I found sales like crazy! I also recently ordered some nail vinyl stencils but I haven't used that many of them yet.

The bottle shown is OPI German-icure, a really pretty reddish brown shimmer. It's perfect for Thanksgiving! It had a phenominal formula considering I hadn't cracked the bottle yet.

My bottle of Samoan Sand has also gone unused for years because it was stuck shut. I had this problem with one other bottle and was advised to soak it in hot water. Which works (surprisingly) but most of the time I can't be bothered and have other similar polishes to try! Today was the day.



(pardon the mess)

wha-lah! Got it open, but it was still hard! How does that even happen? Sloppy filling, maybe.


The polishes I used are, from L:
OPI German-icure (untried)
OPI Samoan sand (untried)
OPI Love.Angel.Music.Baby
OPI Brisbane Bronze (untried-for shame!)




These are some of the vinyls I purchased, this is quite a popular design. I've done it with striping tape, and frankly I think it comes out better, but it's so time consuming.



I have really curvy nails and had some trouble getting it to stick to the sides. I've seen some people clip the sides to get them to stick better, I'll have to try that next time.



I just use a dotting tool to fill in the gaps. It's not as easy as it looks! You also need to remove it as soon as possible, which isn't easy either when you are using multiple colors.



I'm pretty happy with the way it came out! Samoan Sand only needed 2 coats for full coverage, which was surprising seeing how sheer it was on the first coat. German-icure was 2 coats also, it was pretty thin on the first. Brisbane Bronze was 2 coats too. I am going to use that one more often-its awesome!


Thanksgiving 2016: Simple Stamped Leaves

Happy Thanksgiving week again! Tomorrow is Thanksgiving....what is everyone eating?! I seriously love Thanksgiving. Its one of the few redeeming qualities about Fall. I love making a huge meal with a ton of sides, gravy from scratch and a giant turkey! And the leftover turkey sandwiches for daysssss. Are you a turkey sandwich person or a full plate of leftovers person? Full plate here but my husband and kids are sandwich people.

I am so obsessed with the newfound looks that stamping is giving me! I seriously never thought I would get into stamping. I even just ordered some more plates! For some reason though, I have several Pueen plates now but the Nature Lover 01 plate I keep going back to.  I love this leaves design! I thought I'd try a little contrast stamping for a simple yet elegant look.

The polishes I used are, from left, OPI- OPI Scores a Goal! and OPI Don't Bossa Nova Me Around. These are both from the Brazil collection a few years ago, which is phenomenal. If you don't have any of them and see them around be sure to pick up a few!

These are both fairly opaque and creamy polishes I was curious how they'd stamp over each other.



Turns out, pretty good!



I went ahead and used my liquid latex, I've been a little lazy about using it lately but OPI Scores a Goal is fairly dark and dark polish + dry skin = no bueno.

This is a simple enough process that I was able to do all 10 fingers to match! Yay me.



I'm really happy with the way they turned out. Don't Bossa Nova Me Around showed up pretty good over such a dark polish! I've been completely obsessed with these... I wore this mani all weekend!


Here's extra pictures....because I had them ;)






Disney's Moana inspired nail art with stamping!

Hello and Happy Thanksgiving week! Who's excited about Moana coming out tomorrow??? We were planning on seeing it tomorrow but now we will have to wait a few days. We love all things Hawaii and Disney so when we first heard about this movie ages ago we were so pumped! It looks really amazing and I hope it does well at the box office!

I got the idea last night after I saw something about Moana on the internet and remembered my new Moyou Tourist plate I just purchased...it's Hawaii themed. There was so many I wanted, including an Australian one, but a girl has to stop somewhere loading her cart ;) I sketched out some ideas and got to work!




We all know the main reason I am getting into stamping is that I can not free hand anything. The little bit I used to be able to do I can't anymore. So there was no spelling out her name or painting her face. But there was plenty on the plate to work with!



This is what it looks like....heart eyes!



Here are all the polishes I used. I would up using my OPI Black Onyx for the black birds because my black Zoyas weren't working so well.



This is what I started with as a base...



For the rest of the tutorial you'll have to check out my video!

Thank goodness the sun was out so I could get some decent pics!



These turned out pretty well for a girl with no artistic skills :)



 

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone! 

 

Thanksgiving 2016: Thanksgiving Disney nails!

Hey guys! Today I decided to do a little throwback to one of my most popular mani's. No, definitely my most popular and most reposted/pinned I've ever done!  Almost 3 years ago I did some Disney-themed nails with out character's actual faces, which I prefer so  far because I have zero drawing skills! I had no idea it would take off like it did. They were actually the first mani I did to kick off the relaunch of my blog!! You can see that post HERE :) I thought about how I could take the same design and make it Thanksgiving themed! I wish I would have thought to do that with Halloween! I'm going to try to do it for each major holiday now. It is fun!

This would be a great look to rock if you will be at the Parks or on a Cruise for Thanksgiving! I wish we were!!!!



Here are my original nails! So much has changed since then!



I have a lot of pictures of this mani so prepare for some spam ;)



The method could not be more simple: I started with a brown polish on my ring finger (all polishes are listed below). I applied a quick dry topcoat (I used Seche Vite) and wait 45 minutes. Some people can tape after 10 minutes but I have to wait longer. After its thoroughly dry, add a straight nail vinyl (or scotch or painters tape, whatever you have) a little more than halfway down the nail.



Paint the top half with black polish and remove the vinyl/tape immediately.





The rest is pretty simple, just polka dots! I have such a hard time making asymmetrical dots! So crippling!

The polishes I used are, from Left:
OPI First Date at Golden Gate
OPI I Just Can't Cope-acabana
OPI Love.Angel.Music.Baby (under the glitter)
Pipe Dream Polish Tn meetup exclusive
OPI Black Onyx
OPI A-Piers to be Tan (one coat and it was untried! For shame!)
OPI What Wizardry is This?
Wet n Wild Hollywood Walk of Fame 





indoor lights



indoor lights



What do yall think! I'm already working on Christmas designs, it will be a lot easier than coming up with these I think!!