MoYou Pro 14, 12 and Kitty 02 Mix and Match Stamping

Hi Everyone,
I hope you have been well.
I'm back from holiday which is slightly depressing but I've missed my blog, Fiance and puppy dog (in no particular order)!

I can't seem to stop myself from using my MoYou stamping plates....I hope I'm not being too boring. I think I need to push myself to do some hand painted designs...I always enjoy it, but it's just so easy to quickly stamp something!
For these nails I used 5 different stamp designs which were a little bit similar- all floral and finely detailed.

Pinky to thumb the designs are from Kitty 02, Pro 14, Pro 12, Kitty 02 and Pro 12. Sorry that you can't really see the thumb- I didn't get any good pictures and they are chipped now!
For the ring finger I used the reverse stamping technique on my left hand (tutorial here) so that the design was mirrored.

The polishes I used were:

Picture polish sky- which I have swatched below- it is the most perfect baby blue with the slightest hint of mint. The formula was very impressive too. Probably the best Picture Polish I have used so far. Has anyone else used Picture Polishes before? What do you think of them? I think they have the most perfect colours but for the non glitters, I've found the formula of some a little gluggy (Coral reef and honey dew were like this). All in all though I will continue to buy them as they have such stunning colours and most have a good forumla :)

For the stanping I used a konad  polish - Its just called dark brown, and it seems to have a hint of burgundy. 

Thanks for stopping by :)

Stained Glass Homemade Nail Decals With MoYou London Explorer Collection Plate 03

Hi Everyone :)

I'm incredibly happy right now for so many reasons!

-I'm on a weekend trip in the Margaret River wine region.

-We just found a lovely family to rent our house that I have worked so hard to clean and garden the last few weeks.

-My friend and I just got nail mail from MoYou London!!!

-I have used a plate that I had been frothing over for a month!!!

-I love my nails right now!

Now in the interest of eating food and tasting delicious wine this will be a quick post! I have only 2 pictures of this mani currently as I had to take them down here (we are south of home, so I keep saying down) without my usual set up and I don't even have a mouse on the laptop!

So I didn't plan them as stained glass. I just painted my nails with a new polish of mine- Picture Polish Citrus and decided these colours might go well together. The other polishes are:
-Turquoise: Sally Hansen Xtreme wear in The Real Teal
-Lime Green: Essie the more the merrier
-Yellow: China Glaze Lemon Fizz
-Stamped Dark Blue: Konad stamping polish in dark blue.

I made the decals using this technique. 

I will have to post a few more photos when I get home as I really like these!




Thanks very much for visiting and have a great weekend!!!

Dandelions at Sunset :)

 These nails I'm posting today are actually for a few weeks back. My partner and I recently purchased a house and we got the keys last Friday so I have spent a week gardening and cleaning like a maniac. Digging in the dirt and scrubbing for hours with bleach isn't great for nail health and nail polish so I haven't done any nice manicures! I have somehow managed not to break any nails though!!! I was so worried I'd break my 1.5 year no break streak! *Knock on wood*

Anyway,  I didn't manage to post this particular manicure at the time I was wearing it as that was in the week lead up to our engagement party and I had heaps of stuff to do! (I did have time to make my nails nice....just no time to post on the blog). I think it's a winner though!

 

 I first painted my nails with Essie Tart Deco and then used a makeup sponge to make the gradient with Tart Deco, OPI Atomic Orange and China Glaze Heli-yum. 

 The dandelion is from a MoYou London plate- Kitty collection 02. I actually have 2 MoYou london plates with dandelions (also Pro 06), but the Pro 06 dandelions are too big to fit on my nails =(

I've wanted to do dandelion nails for a very long time. I think they are so pretty and I love having the little seeds flying off on the adjacent nails. 

I used Konad stamping polish in black :)

 

 I managed to take a quick picture of Essie Tart Deco by itself before I sponged on the gradient. It was so beautiful I wanted to show it off alone. I have been searching for years for this exact colour coral polish: not quite pink, not quite orange and slightly pastel. Holy Grail!!

 

 

I hope you have enjoyed this post :)

Thanks for visiting xx

Home Made Floral Nail Decals With MoYou You Stamping plates

 My good friend from uni let me know about this competition the other day which is held by MoYou London. You just had to do a mani using one of their plates and submit a picture to there facebook account. This is the fourth one, and they seem to be regular- so if you have some MoYou stamping plates make sure to keep an eye on their facebook page for the next competition! The prizes are always more stamping plates from MoYou London. 

 For these nails I used the "make you own decal" technique  using a flower design from the MoYou Pro collection XL plate 6.

Polishes Used:
The base colour is China Glaze Lemon Fizz
The green is OPI Fly
The Darker Pink is Sally Hansen Fruity Petutie (from the complete salon manicure range)
The Lighter pink/orange is Essie Tart Deco
The black is Konad stamping black polish. 

I think these are by far the best decals I've ever made. I'm pretty proud of them :)

Here is the tutorial I made a while back for the make your own decal technique. I recently revamped it! The full tutorial post is here.

Thanks for reading

Chanfie xx

Remembrance Day Poppies

Today as a tribute to those who have fought and lost their lives in war I have painted red poppies on my nails.  

Red poppies were among the first to flower in the devastated battlefields of northern France and Belgium in the First World War. The vivid red of the poppy also signifies the blood spilled from fallen soldiers.

In England in 1919, the British Legion sought an emblem that would honour the dead and help the living. The Red Poppy was adopted as that emblem and since then has been accepted as the Emblem of Remembrance (ref).

 For these nails I first painted my nails with China Glaze Re-fresh Mint. I really like the colour of this polish, but I found it really gluggy and thick. I had to add nail polish thinner to the bottle every few nails.

I then used acrylic paint and some fine brushes to paint the poppies. 

It took me about 3 hours to do. I actually considered giving up and not doing my right hand. 

I'm glad I finished them though :) I really like them, and will probably keep them on until they chip.

Have you ever given up and not painted your non dominant hand?

Thanks for visiting :)

China Porcelain Nails :)

So you may (or may not have) noticed an increase in the number and hopefully quality of my hand painted nail art recently. Lindsay from Wondrously Polished kindly gave me some advice on good brushes to use for nail art. I had previously been using just the cheap brushes available on ebay, which were ok for when your starting out, but aren't quite as fine as you can get. She suggested a brand called La Corneille which make liner brushes in sizes as low as 18/0 and 10/0. I haven't the foggiest what the sizes mean (perhaps it's 1/18th of an inch?... oops that was an oxymoron) but the 18/0 seems to be the smallest brush size I've been able to find anywhere. Anyway I ordered some from an American website (here) as the brand seems to be available only from American websites. The brushes were cheap (About $3-4 USD each) but I got hit bad on the shipping which was $21.00USD.  I have since found other brush brands that make brushes that small, so if I need more I'll get them from Australia for a bit cheaper.

Anyway, I have another hand painted design to share with you that I'm very happy with :)

As usual I had only a vague idea of what I wanted to do- something blue and white like China Porcelain. I contemplaited trying to paint dragons on my nails and gave up on that idea and decided on a floral. I actually used a stamp first (I took some pictures, but they weren't that great so I decided not to post them). I then decided to try recreate some Helen Dardik style flowers, which I guess aren't very Chinese, but they look cute in my opinion. Here is her blog....if you are ever feeling uninspired in the nail art department have a browse ;)

I feel like I should also say I first found Helen Dardik's website and art through a nail art blogger Try My hand who did a bunch of really amazing nail art based on Helen's work.

 The polishes I used were:

OPI Alpine snow (as the feature nail and also a base under the blue)

and Essie Bouncer It's me! for the blue nails and to paint the flowers.

I feel I need to write a small spiel on the Essie polish..

First of all it is the most amazing, vibrant, neon, blue polish I own (and I have quite a few).

However, as I said I had to layer it over the white polish to make it 'pop' and I needed about 4 coats to cover the white. So I did all this and when I woke up in the morning the top layer had shrunk leaving a rim of white around the blue at the edges of my nails..... meaning I had to remove all the white with a brush.....what a headache!   And yet it was worth it. Anyway I guess my point is use it/buy it at your own risk!

 

Thanks for reading or looking at this post :)

Lilly Pulitzer Floral Nails

We are technically almost a whole month into Spring here in Perth, but it's been raining almost constantly with storms and such. On Saturday however, the sun was out and I felt inspired to do a Springtime floral manicure.

 I did a quick hunt through my Pinterest floral inspiration board and found a lovely Lilly Pulitzer floral print which I will post down the bottom of this page.

For these nails I first painted my nails with OPI "Funny Bunny'. This is a white jelly polish which builds to opaque in 2-3 coats. For me, at 2 coats I could still faintly see the nail line, but it looked.....nice.

In fact, I think I might prefer it to opaque creme white polish (I use OPI Alpine snow). It's not as stark white- it just looks so clean and jelly-ish!

Here's a pic of it before I painted the flowers.

Anyway, back to the flowers....

Over the white base I used Essie "A Crewed Interest", Revlon " Lilac Pastelle" and a little bit of China Glaze "For Audrey" to paint a messy base for the flowers (I kind of painted roses). I added a little bit of acetone to the brush when I did this to thin them down and make them more like watercolours.

Next I used a short striping brush to paint the flowers in a darker pink (This was a custom mix of a creme white polish and Seche Vite "Rendezvous" thinned with nail polish thinner).
They weren't too hard to paint to be honest as they are meant to look a bit messy.... which is good for me!
I started in the middle and worked my way to the outer petals. 

I then used a short spotter brush to paint the flower centres in Misa "Office Polish-tics".

The picture below was painted with my left (non dominant) hand. Not as good as the other hand, but I'm improving- practice makes perfect!

Oh and last but not least I filled in the background with some more acetone thinned China Glaze "For Audrey". (When I say acetone thinned, I mean I dipped the brush first in acetone, and second into my polish).

I really really love this manicure. It looks even better in real life when your not looking so close up!

I keep trying to pick my favorite nail- It's a toss up between the pointer finger on my left hand and the thumb on the same hand! (above)

This picture above is probably the best one, but I took it a day after I had finished the manicure, and the pinky nail seems to be all scratched. I really need to find a thin fast drying top coat for re-freshers before taking pictures. All I have is seche vite which can cause shrinkage when used on dry nails (and is also very thick). Does anyone have any suggestions?

And here is the print I used as inspiration.... or can I just say I copied it?

http://blog.lillypulitzer.com/2013/02/07/a-print-worth-celebrating-lucky-charms/

Thanks for reading :)

Chanfie
xx

Chunky Blue Handpainted Flowers

I did these about a week ago and wasn't very happy with them so took a few quick pictures and tried something else. They don't seem to look so bad in this picture (the only one which turned out!) so I decided to post it.

The background polish I used was OPI I don't give a Rotterdam. This is a really pretty colour, but I think it would benefit being layered over something else (maybe a medium blue or white). It took 3 coats for this opacity, and there was still some slightly bald patches.

I painted the flowers using a flat eyeliner type brush first in OPI Eurso Euro

 (how bright and awesome is that blue?!).

I then coloured this in with a finer brush using OPI thanks a windmillion. In the centre of the flowers I used OPI fly, and a little bit more thanks a windmillion.

And that's it for these nails!

Engagement nails!!!! Pink and Red Poppies

I have a very exciting post today!!!!

I haven't been able to post anything for the last month as I have been on holiday in France. Anyway, so after about 2 weeks with plain nails I was very very keen to do some nail art! (I managed to have fancy nails on the holiday for about 2 weeks and then gave up)

Anyway from the title you may have deduced that I got engaged while I was on holidays. So of course I felt the need to do special engagement nails.   

You may wonder what poppies have to do with an engagement....

We were staying the night in a hilltop village in Provence called Bonnieux, and went for a walk to the top of the town/hill after dinner. There was nobody else around and the view of the countryside and the neighboring town Lacoste was amazing. Right over the edge of the path there was lots of poppies growing, and there was a plant that had pink poppies instead of red. I hadn't seen this before, and was taking pictures. They weren't working out very well, so I turned around to ask for my Fiancés better camera. He was down on one knee......

I’ve never been so happy in my life.

I used a tutorial for poppies I found on Paulina's Passions nail blog found here: http://paulinaspassions.com/poppy-flower-nail-art-tutorial/

The background colour is OPI "Did you hear about van gogh" - It was the first time I've used this polish. I really really love it. Ill be purchasing a backup.

The red is Konad special red

The pink poppies are a mixture of revlon Tuscan sun and Rimmel Ash Rose

And the black is Konad special black 

(I find the konad polish good for nail art as they are so pigmented)

Simple Watercolour Flower Nail Art

I've been seeing a lot of pretty floral nail art on reddit lately (probably as it's Spring in the northern hemisphere) and wanted to give it a try myself. As it was my first time free-handing flowers I looked far and wide for a uncomplicated floral print/painting to inspire me.  I found this beautiful watercolour floral painting that looked adaptable to nail art on Etsy by Ilse Bernthal called "Blooms 7 blue". Pretty huh? Clicking the image should take you to the store.

To get a water colour look I first spotted the polishes I wanted onto a plastic dish, and filled a little dappen dish with pure acetone. I then dipped a small paint brush in the acetone (natural hair as synthetic brushes can be dissolved by acetone), then into the polish and swirled the brush on the dish to get a 'watery' consistency (adding more polish or acetone depending on if I needed more pigment or to dilute respectively). I then painted  swirly, circle-ish shapes that kind of look like flowers. Most of the flowers have 2 different polish colours (the second was used minimally around the outside of the circle/flower) and then an orange dot in the middle. I'm incredibly happy with how it turned out- I cant stop looking at my nails...I do wish I used a pastel blue as the background though.

The polishes used were:

Background: OPI Alpine Snow

Flower colours:-

Magenta: Sally Hansen Xtreme wear "Brick Wall"

Purple: Sally Hansen Xtreme wear "Purple Potion"

Dark Blue: Sally Hansen Xtreme wear "Blue it"

Periwinkle blue: Sally Hansen Xtreme wear "Pacific Blue"

Turquoise: Sally Hansen Xtreme wear "The Real Teal"

Orange: Sally Hansen Xtreme wear "Sun Kissed"

These will hopefully be the last cell phone pictures I use! I ordered a proper camera today- hoorah!! This next picture is especially blurry, but the sun was going down and its the best picture I got of the right hand =(

I took another picture with better lighting a few days later :)

Thanks for stopping by :)

Gals fairy plates

 So I recently purchased the Gals Fairy stamping plates and so far I have used them 5 times. The images are etched well and are easy to pick up on both the Konad stamp and also XL stamp (This stamp is squishy and sometimes doesn't pick images up well ). My Only gripe is that if you have long nails they are too small - hence the feature/accent nail look below.
I have been in love with stamping a small abstract design/flower etc in the lower corner of my nails lately (I was originally inspired by chitchatnails). I think its especially great when doing a black and white manicure... for some reason using a whole nail design stamp on white is too busy for me- but I have seen plenty of pictures of other peoples nails that look great!

Essie a Crewed Interest stamped with Essie no place like chrome.The design is from gals stamping plate GA36.

OPI- You're such a Budapest Stamped with Essie- No place like chrome (Design from Gals Fairy plate GA35)

Opi - Casino Royale stamped with Essie Penny Talk with a design from a Gals fairy nail stamping plate GA35

Scotch tape mani for an Under the Sea party. OPI: Fly background stamped with China Glaze for Audrey and Konad special polish in dark blue. Image from Gals GA30. Glitter polish is home made

Gals fairy nail stamping plates GA34. Opi Alpine snow, konad special polish black

A collection of my past nail art!

So here goes... my first post. I decided to dump a pile of my older pictures to give this blog some body. As you can see I absolutely love nail stamping! I have a rather large stack of stamping plates including lots from konad, Magno nails, Dashica Beauty Shop (Big sdp plates), some from Bundle Monster and Gals (Which I think is part of Cheeky). I also really enjoy trying new techniques, I'm currently dying to try a water spotted manicure!
 I apologise as some of the pictures are quite grainy or slightly blurred - when I took them I never imagined I'd one day be posting them on a blog (I'm also cringing at my sad cuticles in some of these pictures! I actually only recently started using cuticle oil regularly)

Essie Jazz stamped with Sally Hansen Insta Dry in Sonic Boom. Design is from Big-SdP-A. The picture is taken from Bunker Bay, Naturaliste, Western Australia.

This took forever. I used a sally hansen salon manicure polish called Jaded and it was very thick but un-pigmented.... meaning it took years to dry and every time I did something I kept smooshing it. I was on weekend holiday and it was the only colour I brought with me (BIG mistake haha).  Once dried (the next morning) I stamped with Essie Penny Talk (Image from A53).

OPI Black Onyx stamped with China Glaze Devotion (And vice versa on the ring finger but with Konad special back).  Design from Big Sdp-O

OPI Berlin there done that stamped with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White on. I then used a dotting tool to add the different colored spots. There is China Glaze for Audrey, China Glaze Peachy Keen and A Revlon polish Ill have to look up. Stamp is from Big SDP A

The gradient is made up of OPI Dulce De Leche, Sally hansen xtreme wear grey area (more of a taupe than grey) and Sally Hansen Xtreme wear Flirt. A design from XL-C is stamped over the top in Essie- Penny Talk

This is actually one of my first attempts at nail art from about a year and a half ago! The flower is from magno nails XL-E and is stamped with konad red. The black rhinestone is a cheapy of ebay.

Opi Thanks a windmillion, OPI fly (I think) and OPI dating a royal stamped with China Glaze Passion with a design from XL-B. Wish I had a less blurry picture of this one =(

Ill have to do a big search through my polish stash to get the names of all the polishes for this one.It was done by painting the nails white, then using a dotting tool and going nuts with lots of colours.

China Glaze peachy keen and OPI Elephantastic Pink. Used scotch tape and a striping brush to create the diagonal division. Stamp is from big sdp-I.

Opi A-Taupe The Space Needle stamped with China Glaze Delight. The dots are CG for Audrey and OPI Thanks a Windmillion. Design from big sdP-I

Opi ski teal we drop stamped with China Glaze for Audrey. The stamp was Plate A48. Amazing what some natural light can do for my photography skills!

This one is Opi Black Onyx, stamped with both Essie penny talk and China Glaze Magical- unfortunately my cell phone picture didn't really pick up the shifting colours. The design is from XL-N (from magno nails)

The marbling effect was done by spotting different colours onto white and swirling the wet polish with an acetone soaked paintbrush. The nail stamp is from magno nails :XL-N. 

Claw hand! I noticed this knocking about on the Nails Magazine Pinterest "Best of  Nail Art Gallery" along with a few others. I was kind of flattered, but also sad- they didn't have my blog watermark so it's kind of anonymous =(
Oh well lesson learnt. For this I used OPI Stranger tides (I think) and stamped with a gold stamping polish from magno nails and konad dark brown. Both of the images are from XL-D :)

This gradient was made using OPI skull and glossbones, China Glaze For Audrey and OPI Fly. The glitter is a homemade polish.

This one is soooo long ago I cant remember what polishes I used sorry. I do know however that the glitter is Sally Hansen Xtreme wear Disco Ball.

This one is OPI road house blues stamped with a design from XL-A with konad special white.