Let's watch paint dry!

Hey guys! 

Yesterday I got a brand new set of nail stamping plates, so I got inspired to make a little video of me stamping my nails.  I've been meaning to do this for quite a while, because every time I post a stamped mani I get questions about how it works.  I do have a page up top called "Nail Stamping Info" that I add and remove and then add back occasionally.  But it's always better to see it in action.

I mentioned before that I prefer to do stamping on a well-cured mani, so I painted my nails last night in preparation for stamping this morning.  But honestly, a lot of the time I do stamping to get an extra day or two of wear out of a mani that's starting to look a bit rugged.  Win!

Before I started I took a picture of all my supplies.  It looks like a lot, but I keep it all in a little kit so it's easy for me to get out when I want to do my nails.

Starting from the top left and working down and to the right, I've got:  pure acetone polish remover; a food carton lid with two cotton balls (the triple size ones); some scrap paper with my stamping plate on top; a small bottle of regular polish remover; nail polish for stamping - this one is Wet n' Wild Black Crème; my stamper; an old "credit" card; two pointy Q-tips; and a brush I use for clean up, but didn't use this time.

All of this is on a mat to protect my table, however,  I usually just do this by the bathroom sink.  My sinks are granite, so if any polish spills happen it's easy to quickly wipe them off.

Here's a picture of my stamping plate:

The plates are so shiny, you can see my camera and hand reflected on the surface!

For this mani, I stamped with black, but you don't have to use black.  Any strongly pigmented polish will work, and chrome-finish polishes work well also.  I used black in hopes it would show up better on camera.

And here's the finished mani:

For this one I used Essie Chinchilly (two coats) topped with CND Copper Shimmer (one coat).  Stamping was done with Wet n' Wild Black Crème, then topped with INM Out the Door.

You can see how quickly you can stamp your nails.  If I take out the explaining bits, I did five fingers in about 2 minutes.  Start to finish - and that includes cleaning up around the cuticles and adding top coat - I spend barely 10 minutes each time I stamp my nails.  The hardest part, for realz, is deciding which stamp I want to use!!  I've got over a hundred plates now . . .

Zebropard.

Here's a new Jungle Jan-y mani!

I got this Konad plate a while ago, but this is the first time I've used it.  It has a lot of great images, but this one is the reason I bought the plate.

For this mani, I started out with Color Club Silver Lake, a pale blue-grey.  After two coats, I took Zoya Harley (a lavender-grey) and brushed just a bit, from the cuticle toward the tip, with an almost dry brush in a random pattern.  Then I topped the color off with a coat of INM Out the Door Northern Lights quick dry top coat.

I did all of that last night, and then let the color cure over night.  I've found that stamping works better on a well-cured base.  This morning I got out my stamp, plate and Wet n' Wild Black Creme - my favorite black polish for stamping - and went to town.

After stamping and cleaning up around the edges, I topped it off with another coat of INM Out the Door Northern Lights.  I started with my right hand and didn't put enough top coat on the brush for the first few nails.  You can see below how it smudged the design, especially on the middle finger.

But using plenty of top coat on the remaining nails solved that problem.  One thing I love about the INM top coat is that even if I use so much that it pools around my cuticles, once it's dry it all settles nicely into place and doesn't look like it's pooled.  I also love that it doesn't cause shrinkage like Seche Vite, and doesn't dry out when the bottle's half gone.  And of course, the speed:  with this top coat, I can literally paint my nails and be knitting 10 minutes later! 

I didn't do a whole lot of nail stamping or nail posts last year, and I'm hoping to do more this year.  Jungle January is giving me a good start, because a lot of my favorite stamps are animal print!

Jungle January: the Mani Edition

The other night when I couldn't sleep, I was thinking about stamping my nails for Jungle January.  And then I started thinking about all the animal print stampings I've already done, so I went through my old posts and pulled some pictures.  It was fun to look at these again, so I thought I'd share them.

I've got various iterations of leopard - the real kind:

and the fantasy kind:

Same for crodile:

I've got a giraffe:

A snake:

And even some butterflies!

{If you'd like to see more nail stamping, click on "Bundle Monster" or "Konad" in the category cloud!}

Two Things.

Here's the shirt, with buttons but before washing out the markings - mostly for the sake of putting it on my 2013 FO page!  Nothing to add, except that Hubby came home right after I finished sewing on the last button and immediately tried it on with no prompting from me!  Such a good boy!

And for fun, here are a couple pics of a mani I did the other day and really liked.  The base is Misa Baby I Love You, and the tips are Zoya Ziv.  I really like how Ziv worked on the tips - it's slightly sheer and very sparkly, and I think it's a different look from the chrome polish I would normally use for this sort of thing.

Adding these tips extended my mani by a couple of days!  But I've found that the Misa polishes wear pretty well on their own as well.  I think this one is my perfect coral polish.

Because I'm a dork.

Tonight we're having dinner with some friends, and I'm planning on wearing my newest Hazel, along with some leopard print sandals.  And because I'm a dork, I did my nails to match:

The base color is China Glaze Kalahari Kiss from last year's On Safari collection.  I stamped the leopard print image from Konad plate m57 using Wet & Wild Black Creme, then filled in some of the dots with China Glaze Desert Sun, also from the On Safari collection. 

I topped the whole thing off with a coat of INM Out the Door.  Even though I got a little bit of streaking, it's really only noticeable in these macro shots.  Out the Door is quickly becoming my go-to topcoat.  It dries as quickly as Seche Vite, but without the horrible smell or more importantly, the shrinkage.  And I'm told it doesn't get goopy and thick once the bottle's half gone.  I just bought mine the other day, so that remains to be seen!

The Great Beyond

Color Club Beyond, from the second Halo Hues collection:

Incredible holographic shimmer.  This is two coats with Essie Good To Go topcoat.  Please excuse the dry cuticles - I like to oil them AFTER using the camera rather than before!

Feast or Famine

It's a little weird that I've been posting every day for the last several days, after posting only intermittently for a few months.   What can I say?  My blogging philosophy is that if I don't feel like posting, I don't!  It's a hobby - I try not to get stressed out about it!

I stamped my nails for the first time in a long while the other night, and I liked it so much I decided to share.  I really like this "tribal print" motif on Bundle Monster plate 315 - I've been seeing a lot of fabrics with a similar look lately.  My base polish is Misa Great Grape from the summer 2013 "Fresh and Fruity" collection.  This is the same polish I was wearing in the video I posted a few days ago.  On top of that I stamped with Essie No More Film, a very deep blue-violet from last summer's resort collection.  It's dark, but less stark than black would be and so pigmented that it's great for stamping.

I love this stamp!  I think it would look fantastic over a gradient nail - kind of like all the ikat fabrics that are all over the place lately!

Lou

Thank you all for your lovely compliments on my sweater yesterday!  As soon as I'd finished that one, I got started on something I don't have to think much at all about:  I can watch TV while I work on this one!  Yay!

My new sweater is a rather old Kim Hargreaves design, from Rowan 33 way back in 2002:

Lou by Kim Hargreaves, Rowan 33

I've wanted to make this sweater ever since the magazine was published, but could never find a combination of colors I thought would be versatile enough for me.  Last week it dawned on me that this design would work equally well in a solid color; I could really see it in a sunny yellow.  And I just happened to have seven balls of Calmer in Freesia:

So yesterday afternoon, with Doctor Who to entertain me, I got started:

I'm surprised that until I cast this on, there were no projects on Ravelry for this pattern - in fact, the pattern itself wasn't even in the database until I added it yesterday!  I think it's a very cute and wearable design.

I haven't shown nails in quite a while, but I couldn't resist today.  I just bought the Misa Fresh and Fruity collection based on these swatches, and was excited to try out Peach Passion.  The color wasn't what I was expecting based on those swatches, but I really love it - it's the perfect shade of melon:

It's quite a bit brighter in real life - it was still pretty cloudy when I took this picture.  I've only recently started using Misa polishes, and I really love them.  I haven't come across one wonky brush or icky formula.  Win!

Turquoise Crocodile

Me likey.

More feathers.

This time on my nails!

The other day I decided to try out Zoya Minka - an opaque nude - with the Mentality Holo topcoat I bought a few months ago.  The holo topcoat shows up much better on darker colors, but I still like it on the nude:

It was nice and sunny yesterday, so I took lots of pictures:

This morning I was getting ready to take it off and try something different, but decided instead to use a new stamp I got in December.  This is made by a small, indie stamp designer in Israel.  She calls her line (and blog) Nailz Craze, and this is plate NC01.  (Which looks like it may be out of stock at the moment, of course!  Isn't that always the way?)  It includes butterfly wings in large and small for both right and left hands, a peacock feather and a dandelion, along with some assorted heart motifs. 

I found the quality to be excellent on this stamp, and the price was reasonable.  The shipping took a while from Israel, but the designs are so unique I felt it was worth it.  The images are nice and big, and the plate itself is larger than the Konad and Bundle Monster plates I have.  In fact, the peacock feather is so large that it doesn't fit completely on my large stamper!  I tried to use varying parts of the design and mix it up, but I could stand some practice!  I stamped with Essie No More Film:

Looks nice with the new sock I'm knitting, tease tease!

It's Complicated

This is one of the most labor-intensive manis I've ever done.  But I think the result is worth the work!

I started out with two coats of China Glaze Cheers to You, from the holiday 2010 collection:  the shimmery, silvery counterpart to Midnight Kiss.  Once that was dry, I sponged the tips with Zoya Danii, then applied China Glaze Fast Forward topcoat.  Finally, after waiting about ten minutes, I stamped on the "shattered glass" design from Bundle Monster plate BM208 with Wet N' Wild Black Creme.  One more coat of Fast Forward, and then all I had to do was sit back and admire my nails for a while!

(colors are more accurate in this picture)

Blue Heaven, Blue Sky

It can be a little hard to concentrate when your nails look like this:

Let me reiterate:

Ahhhhh, so beautiful!  It's Color Club Blue Heaven - hat tip to Pam for turning me on to this collection!  I think I've found my new favorite holographic polishes:  so easy to apply, and works great with regular base- and topcoat!  I do have the aqua base coat, which I use with other holos, but I find it difficult to remove except with pure acetone.  And I'm trying to avoid that.

Here it is with some yarn:

The yarn is Blue Sky Alpacas Brushed Suri in the Agave colorway.  After I discovered this yarn a couple months or so ago, I went a little nuts and bought three balls from a fellow Raveler.  I'm using them to make my second Aura shawl (Kim Hargreaves):

I've also started another Kim Hargreaves project - a sweater - but that one will get a post of its own.  This one is my "side project."  However, it's requiring a little more attention that I'd expected:  because of all the fuzz and fluff, it's very easy to drop a stitch without knowing it, so I have to really look at what I'm doing.   Note that in my lexicon, "side project" translates as "project so simple I don't have to think about it and don't have to look at it while I'm knitting (making it easier for me to watch TV)."  So I think this has become an Actual Project.

Which means I'm not working on it all that much. 

Holiday Nails

I hadn't really planned on posting nails today, especially since I have a whopping four FOs I haven't photographed or posted yet, and three new projects going!  But I did this combo last night, and really love it:

Midnight Kiss is my favorite gold polish - I just love the sparkly finish, and the light silvery-gold shade is so perfect.  With the little black polka dots added on top, it reminds me of champagne bubbles rising to the top of the glass!

Fellow polish-lovers, do you also gravitate toward metallic polishes at this time of year?  It seems to be all I'm wearing lately!

Yesterday's Nails

I really like this stamping I did yesterday.  I think this plate has a lot of potential - it's like the "saran wrap" technique, but without the mess!

Purple Polkas

Do polka dots have anything to do with the polka dance?  Which came first?

Anyhooo . . . I did this stamping a while ago to cover up the tip wear I was getting on my mani.  I thought this one was pretty cute!

But the next time I use this stamp, I'd like to try it with two very different colors - like black and white - to give it a more Op Art feel.

Rayures

I totally stole this from nailXchange.  You can see her awesome mani here.

Unpredictable is one of the polishes from China Glaze's fall Bohemian collection.  I wish I had the photographic skills to capture the color shifts on this polish - it's truly exquisite, changing from deep turquoise to emerald to golden green.  Adding in the black stripes only makes it better, in my opinion!

Houndstooth for Fall

Gah, I think this is one of my favorite manis I've done in a long time!  I can't stop looking at it!

Incredibly, this is the first time I've used this plate!  Now I'm daydreaming of other color combos . . .

NOTD

Shortly after they were released this summer, I got three of the Sephora + Pantone Universe Jewel Lacquers.  So far I've tried two of them, and so far I'm not too impressed. 

Parachute Purple, shown above, is a deep blue-purple with blue shimmer.  It's an OK color, nothing earth-shaking.  My camera wanted to show more of the blue, but it actually leans more purple.  The shimmer is pretty subtle, although when you can see it, it's quite pretty.  My problem so far with these polishes is that the brush makes it very difficult to get a good application.  It's one of those flat, wide brushes that I always have trouble with, and the ends are just ever-so-slightly splayed to make it even more difficult. 

The other thing I didn't like about this polish is that even after a healthy coat of Seche Vite (known for the high gloss finish it gives), the finish was a little dull.  On top of all that, I got tip wear after half a day, although I really didn't do much other than type a little and put away some dishes.  I didn't even wash them, just took them out of the dishwasher!

I put on Parachute Purple last night, but by this morning I was already bored, so I spiced it up with some stamping.   I'm not sure what this image is meant to be, but I think it's kind of cute!  Here's another picture (albeit a little creepy) that shows the shimmer and truer colors (as well as the tip wear):

Have any of you nail mavens tried these polishes?  I keep searching for swatches and reviews online, but there's not much to be found.

Cranberry Cosmo

Here's the other Enchanted Polish holo I got from Harlow and Co. last month:

The holographic effect isn't as "in your face" with this one as it is with Austin Powers, but it's a gorgeous polish nonetheless.  In real life it leans a little more red-violet than what you see here.

I did the same application as last time:  Aqua Base, polish, Aqua Base, polish, Seche Vite.  My bottle of Cranberry Cosmo is a little thick, which made it a bit tricky to apply.  I'll probably thin it a little before using it again. 

Sigh.  I love holographic polish . . .

Positively in Love

That's the name of this polish, but it also describes how I feel about it:

This one is from the new magnetic collection by China Glaze, Magnetix II.  I also used China Glaze's new magnet.

It took me quite a while to jump on the magnetic polish bandwagon, but now I'm kind of obsessed with them!  So far I've only used the China Glaze ones though. 

I really am in love with this color - it's the most gorgeous black cherry shade.  All the magnetic polishes I've used so far display a fascinating chatoyancy in various lights; I think that's what I love most about them.  Another thing to love:  most of the time, I can get away with one coat of polish!  But if I don't get a good magnetic impression, there seems to be no harm done in layering on another coat for a do-over.  Topcoat adds even more depth to the effect.

How about you guys?  Magnetic polishes, yay or nay?