Stamping Grey-dient with XL O Jumbo Plate

I absolutely love the look of using a metallic version of a colour to do nail art over the 'non metallic' version of the colour. Ie silver over grey, metallic blue over a creme blue polish etc.

I had painted my nails with my favourite grey polish: Misa Grey Matters. Its a beautiful light neutral grey polish which is speckled with tiny black and maybe some silver particles. I didn't really have a plan of what I wanted to do and ended up doing the silver on grey thing :)

 

I spiced it up a little bit by doing a stamping gradient using both a dark gunmetal silver (China Glaze Awaken) and a lighter silver (Essie no place like chrome).It's kind of hard to tell in the pictures as it just looks like the light is catching the lighter silver and not the darker, but it's a pretty cool effect in real life.

I used a design from the XL O jumbo stamping plate which I bought on ebay. I think it's also availiable on the German Magno Nails website (where I have bought all of my other XL plates). To create the grey-diant (haha) I painted one half of the plate with the gunmetal silver and the other half with the light silver and then proceeded to swipe and stamp as usual.I did the same thing here, and it's a little easier to see the gradient.

What do you think of them? 

Thanks for reading :)

Chanfie

xx

Bridal Nails Special!

A Couple of Different Wedding Day Options

I recently started a wedding Pinterest board and I couldn't find many pictures of wedding nail art designs that I liked. So I decided to start trying a few different designs out myself. Gotta be prepared !

Ok first up, the most simple. This is just a milky white jelly polish (Cutex nail whitener) with a coat of seche vite top coat. This cutex polish suffered from awful shrinkage- I had to file the tips of the nails where it had shrunken back from. Better versions of this white jelly include OPI funny bunny, OPI Don't touch my tutu or Essie Marshmallow.
In 2012 OPI did a lovely collection of soft jelly shades that would be perfect for a bride. They are now available as a part of OPI's soft shades range. There are great swatches of the OPI NYC Ballet collection here by Scrangie. I recently purchased Don't Touch My Tutu, My Pointe Exactly and You Callin Me a Lyre. I also own the glitter in the collection Pirouette My Whistle which I used in a mani below if you scroll down :)

Next up I tried adding some small pearls to the base of the nails. Pearl Rhinestones for nail art can be purchased here for very cheap here on ebay

I was thinking it might even look nice to do these in the same colour as your flowers/bridemaids dresses (or do this as a feature nail only on the ring finger to be more subtle)

I cheated and copy pasted a second rhinestone on the ring finger to see how that might look.... I like it!

Next up I did some nail stamping. I kept it subtle and just did a feature nail, but I think it's delicate enough that it would be nice to have on all the nails. 

This stamp design is from the XL-C plate available on ebay here. (I have purchased XL stamp plates from this ebay seller "worldwide_buy" before and received everything fine).

I used konad special white stamping polish (available on the konad website here or on ebay here.)

If you are unsure what nail stamping is I did a big tutorial/guide/review here.  

 

Next I did a simple glitter look using OPI Pirouette my Whistle over the milky white base. Its a fine silver glitter with larger iridescent white glitters. As I said this polish is from the OPI NYC ballet collection..... they say ballet but I think they were targeting the wedding market!
 I covered the whole ring finger, and for the rest of the nails I just dabbed some around the base. 

This last one I did a few months later once I ordered a few bottles of polish from the OPI NYC ballet collection. This one is 'Don't touch my tutu', a white jelly. I also bought OPI funny bunny which is also a white jelly, but it is less sheer than the one bellow. Here is a link to a swatch of OPI funny bunny so you can see the difference (scroll down as I put a picture of it alone).

The silver stamping is done with Sally Hansen Xtreme wear in 'Celeb City' and the design is from the Mo You London Pro 06 plate. Again, if you are unsure how to nail stamp please see my tutorial and guide here. 

The camera (or me) had trouble capturing the shimmer so this photo is a little blurry unfortunately. The silver stamped with a simple and sparse floral design over the white jelly polish looked so clean and pretty. It was also quite subtle. For me, I think this may be a winner for my wedding day. I will have to try different stamps though :)

Well I hope these ideas can help someone out for their wedding day :)
I plan to keep adding to this page if I think of anything else. Please leave a comment if you have any ideas you would like me to try out or if you know of any other good bridal nail polishes  :)

More Sandwich Bag Marble and Cheeky Viva Mexico

I've been enjoying looking at all the lovely bright summery nail art that people on the other side of the world have been showing off for the last few months, and wanted to get in on the trend. 

I may have jumped the gun on the summer neons here in Perth, Western Australia... it's technically still winter, but on Saturday when I did this it was such a lovely sunny day that I couldn't resist.

At first I actually did all the nails with a marble, but I wasn't really liking it , so I redid most of the nails and kept the ring and index fingers. If you haven't been following my blog, the marble is done using a sandwich bag and I've been kind of obsessed with this technique the past weeks. I have a tutorial here on the technique. I have also used it to create a rather interesting gradient here. This time I used a glitter polish in the mix which was kind of cool, although I think it would have looked nicer with a metallic glitter rather than matte. 

Ok all the important info.....

The polishes I used were:

Bright Pink: China Glaze Heli-Yum

Bright red/coral: OPI- OPI on Collins Ave

Bright each/orange: China Glaze Peachy Keen.

The glitter polish is one I mixed up myself to match:)

The stamping plate I used was from the new 2013 Cheeky collection- The Viva Mexico plate.  

Both the images I used stamped beautifully. I stamped with the Heli-yum and OPI on Collins Ave (painted half the plate with one colour and the other half with the other polish to create the gradient effect).

Oh!!! This weekend I made an instagram account and also a tumblr page for my blog!

I got the advice from the lovely Natalia from Cats n Nails, a fellow Western Australian nail art blogger. I hope that if anyone is interested in my nail art that I will now be easier to follow :)

So far I'm loving instagram! Everyone seems very friendly, and I think I'm addicted already. 

The links should be up the top right of my blog. 

 

I made a new profile pic for various blog related things this week too! What do you think? I couldnt resist wearing some matching bright lipstick!

Thanks very much for reading :)

Chanfie xx

Sandwich Bag Marble Again!

 This Time a Vampy Gradient :)

After my last mani (here)  I was very excited about the sandwich bag marble technique. I think I mentioned that I was keen to try a gradient using the same method.

And I just couldn't wait!
Make sure you scroll down for a tutorial =D

I think the sandwich bag marble creates a much more interesting gradient than the normal sponging technique. 

I didn't have much luck capturing all the swirlyness of the colours mixing together on camera so you will just have to trust me =)

The polishes I used were:

China Glaze: Hey Sailor (bright red)

OPI: Kennebunk Port (Deep red)

Revitanail: Port wine (Metallic deep red)....mmmm Port

and OPI: Lincoln Park After Dark (Dark Purple -pretty much black!)

I think having a small amount of metallic polish really makes this marbling gradient pop! It looks amazing in the sunlight :)

I was feeling creative and edited my photos to only show the red ..  What do you think?

And here is the tutorial I have been promising forever. It seemed appropriate for the Halloween season and Bloom.com (Bloom beauty trends) kindly asked me if I wanted to write a blog post or tutorial for them :)

Notice I forgot to take a picture before I cleaned up... Don't worry- I'm not that neat!

Thanks for visiting my blog :)

Chanfie
xx

Quick Glitter Update on my Last Mani :)

Thanks to the advice from all the lovely ladies (and men?) from reddit laqueristas I decided to add glitter to my last mani after a few days of wear. Here are the results :)

Good advice I'd say!

The glitter polish is one I made myself. The names of the rest of the polishes and a tutorial on this marble-y swirly look can be found here  :)

The Sandwich Bag Watercolour Marble

Oceanic Fused Glass Nails: 

How to get a watercolour marble look with a sandwich bag

Sorry about the lengthy title for this post. I wasn't quite sure what to call this look. I got the idea from Polish and Pearls where she called this technique a no water watercolour water marble... she must have had trouble too!

So, I have heaps of pictures.... Its really really pretty and I didn't want to miss out on any angles!  I also made a tutorial, which you can find if you scroll to the bottom of this post. It was incredibly easy and actually quite fast as I just did it over the top of my last manicure (most of the nails were plain blue). All you need is nail polish and a sandwich bag (or anything similar..)

So here is the left hand: 

And the right hand. I love the middle finger here.... I think a gradient would look pretty with this technique.

and more pictures...

and more..

And then I went to the beach to take more pictures! This manicure made me think of a stormy ocean :)

 And here are the polishes I used :)

Dating a royal and Man hunt are almost identical. I had painted my nails previously with Dating a Royal (from my last post!) and it hadnt chipped yet, so I just went over the top. I used China Glaze Man hunt instead of the OPI as it's more pigmented. 

Anyway, especially with the colours I used, it reminded me of that really pretty glass jewelry where all the colours are mixed together. This is called fused glass. Here is some fused glass that looks kind of similar- it's actually a table top! The image should link to the website where I found it :)

And here is how I did these nails :)

As I said it was really fast. The actual marble/watercolour/smear...whatever you want to call it, took only  10 minutes. The clean up took about half an hour though!

Thanks for reading :)

Stamping With Cheeky 2013 Jumbo Collection Happy plate :)

Today's manicure was a quicky, but I'm really happy with how it looks. The colours go nicely together, and I really love the flowers I used. They are stamped from a new acquisition of mine, a jumbo stamping plate which is part of the new Cheeky 2013 jumbo plate collection, specifically, the plate named "happy". 

I've read a couple of bad reviews about this collection- apparently some of the designs aren't etched deep enough. I haven't run into this problem yet, and neither has a friend of mine who also ordered 2 plates from the collection. Although collectively we have probably only used about 10 different designs. 

Personally, my only gripe with the collection is the size of the images. It's the opposite problem to many stamping plate collections..... they are too big! Sure, they always fit on your nails.. but I wish they had scaled the actual patterns down (keeping the large size overall) as many of  the designs are a bit too big and chunky, with half the design going on your cuticles. There is plenty of patterns and pretty designs to keep me happy though, like these big, beautifully detailed flowers :)

The polishes I used were:

Blue : OPI Dating a Royal

Peach: Essie A Crewed Interest

Blue stamp: Konad stamping dark blue.

Thanks for reading :)

Leafy stamping design from XL-O

I did't have much time on the weekend to do anything to extravagant, so I just did some simple stamping.

I was watching the movie WALL-E while I did this...... which was a very bad choice of movie for doing my nails as it's such a visual movie with little dialect. Anyway, I didn't really have a plan for my nails, so the movie must have influenced my choice of colours and stamp design as I ended up with these leaves. 

The background colour is OPI Thanks a Windmillion

The design from XL-O is stamped with konad stamping polish in white. 

I really love full nail stamping designs that have a completed design at the edges, rather than a sharp cut-off of the design (if that makes sense). That way you can do a half nail stamp like this, which I think shows off the base colour more :)

What do you think?

Thanks for reading :)

Spotted Feather Nail Art With a Fan Brush Tutorial

The fan brush seems to be included in many of the nail art brush sets that you can buy online.  I have never quite been sure what to use it for...it works ok for sprinkling loose glitter.... but I thought surely there is more..

So I jumped on google and had a look around for what they are used for by artists. There isn't a whole lot of love for the fan brush, but some people like to use them for trees, grass and feathers. In nail art they can be used to create a stripy look like this or a gradient like this.

Anyway I was attracted to the idea of feather nail art.... without using an actual feather. A while ago Pshiiit posted a really beautiful design that she made using a really cool flat brush that I don't have anything similar to here. I tried to recreate it with the fan brush.

What do you think they look like?
I don't think I really achieved the feather look. My Fiance thinks they look like Buffalo reeds at sunset.

 The polishes I used were:

Blue: OPI- Suzi says Feng Shui

Orange: China Glaze- Peachy Keen

 I've been getting heaps of nice compliments about these nails. I think it's because these colours really pop together and the bold design stands out even from far away. 

And again, I have a tutorial for anyone wanting some more info on how to create this look/use a fan brush :)

Thanks very much for reading
Chanfie xox

How to make your own nail decals part 2!

How to make your own nail decals part 2! Paper Punch Butterflies

Whilst I was very lost at Spotlight (a craft, home-wear, fabric and party supply store) last weekend I stumbled across some of those paper punches with the little shapes. I used to want one soooo bad when I was a girl, and I finally got to indulge! I had a choice of a butterfly or a dragonfly and chose the butterfly. The dragonfly was really cool, but the wings were so small and I had special plans!

This isn't the actual one I used but I'm away for the weekend and didn't have a picture!

I have recently been stumbling across lots of pictures of a manicure with patterned giraffe shapes on each nail like this. I think they are stickers, but I thought it would be cool to make my own nail stickers/decals with different stamps and nail polish. And the shape paper punch was perfect for this.

Oh and by the way there is a tutorial if you scroll down the page!

Here is the right hand. I think they kind of look like bows (especially from a distance) . I'm calling them butterfly bows! 

 I saved all my favorite stickers for this hand as my other hand is a mess at the moment. I'm getting a home made- tattoo I made in high school removed and it's a bit unsightly. Can you tell I like home-made stuff? I think nail polish is a much healthier way to indulge myself. 

 Here they are right way up- looking more like butterflies. 

 And here is the left hand

The polishes used were:
Background red: OPI My Chihuahua Bites
Blue is a konad dark blue stamping polish
And the white is OPI alpine snow.

I used Seche Vite to make the decals coated with alpine snow and it worked well. Alpine snow alone was too flexible and it was hard to manoeuvre into the punch. 

And as promised- a tutorial. For more info on making nail decals please visit 'part 1' here

Anyway, I ordered a heart shaped punch and also an elephant from ebay to try out. I' super excited about the elephant!!