Sunday's Stamping

Currently watching: Strictly Come Dancing

Hi girls,

Are you all having a good weekend?

My nails have been without polish for about three weeks now. At first they looked all right but now the white tips have begun to turn transparent and peel etc so they just look awful. Plus I always think bare nails are more prone to breakages and damage than painted nails. Anyway, I was going out last night and didn't want plain nails yet didn't want to redo my nails today so I settled for a bright but work appropriate colour, Pink Grapefruit by Boots 17.

Today I had more time on my hands than I had anticipated so I thought it was time to get my stamping kit out after ignoring it for so long.

Of course I struggled picking a design to stamp and a colour to stamp it with but in the end I settled for a swirly image from MASH plate m63 and Raspberry by Natural Collection.

It looks quite nice in person but unfortunately it was difficult to pick up the pattern on camera.

I then topped it off with a coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry top coat, my replacement for Seche Vite. I really hate Seche Vite now. I think it is one of the worst polishes for your health, it smells horrendous and it does not keep well. I haven't had mine for long but it's turned really stringy and is just impossible to use. I'm much more impressed with this fast drying top coat from Sally Hansen despite usually disliking Sally Hansen products. This is the first time I've tried the top coat so I don't know what its long-term use is like but so far, so good.

My only complaint really is that, like all top coats, it makes my nails too shiny to photograph well ;-) I think in the future I'm going to take my pictures before applying my top coat.

Here are two pictures taken indoors to try and make the pattern a bit clearer.

What do you think girls? Any tips for photographing shiny nails? And any tips on how I can rediscover my love for creating pretty manicures? My passion for polish seems to have diminished slightly during my hiatus...

Bye for now,
Laura

Thursday's Talons (Nail Fail)

Currently listening to: I Run Away by Britney Spears

Hello ladies,

Glad you could join me on this bright and beautiful Thursday :-) Today's talons are MUA shade 1 from Tuesday's post stamped with GOSH Holographic using a full circle Bundle Monster image plate:

I refer to this as a nail fail in today's title because, as usual with full image plates, I had to double stamp and lining up the image nicely was impossible.

From a distance, it doesn't look too bad...

....but on closer examination....

It's a bit of a mess, especially my right hand (above)

Now I remember why I never use this image plate ;-)

Have you had any recent nail fails?

Bye for now,
Laura

Thursday's Talons

Currently listening to: Talk by Coldplay

Good morning girls,

How are you today? Looking forward to the weekend?

Today I'd like to show you my most recent Fauxnad:

This was done using a Beauty UK grey shade as the base and a white manicure polish for stamping. I love how the white blends in to look like a lighter shade of grey.

Stamping my right hand was easy but the left hand caused me trouble due to the need to double stamp. I always have problems lining up the image well.

I thought these shades and this pattern were quite elegant yet subtle so I was able to wear this manicure to work.

What do you think of it?

Bye for now,
Laura

Thursday's Talons (Fauxnading Fun)

Currently listening to: Higher Window by Josh Groban

Hello dear readers,

Did you like my mattified take on Accessorize's Storm polish? I did, but I couldn't resist stamping on top of it last weekend. I chose Barry M in Pure Turquoise as my stamping colour and used a full nail image from my Bundle Monster plates, one which I hadn't used for a while and is always tricky to place well.

As you can see, the stamping didn't turn out very well and I had lots of smudges. I think the colour combination worked though.

I jazzed it up a bit more with a feather on each thumb nail stamped in a metallic blue from Collection 2000.

The feather was actually my favourite thing about this manicure. I can't believe I hadn't thought to use that image before. I think we'll be seeing it much more in the near future ;-)

What do you think of this manicure? What's your favourite Konad/Fauxnad image for stamping?

Bye for now,
Laura

NOTD (Hogmanay)

Currently listening to: Only Girl in the World by Rihanna

Hi folks,

Late last night I came back to England so today has been spent unpacking, cleaning and food shopping. The cleaning has destroyed my nails :-( I still need to paint them tonight though so they look pretty for my first day back at work. Anyway, today I would like to show you the manicure I had for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day: my ever faithful silvery purple nail polish by Polish brand MV and Bundle Monster stars stamped in black.

What did you do for New Year's Eve/Day and did you have a special manicure for the occasion?

Bye for now,
Laura

Festive NOTD

Currently watching: Mary Poppins

Good afternoon girls :-)

One of the things I was looking forward to seeing when I came home for the holidays was my nail polish collection. There were only so many bottles I could justify taking with me when I moved in August so unfortunately I had to leave quite a few behind, over 40 in fact!

For today's manicure I was tempted to use No7 in Pink Grapefruit as my base with Collection 2000 in Green With Envy as my stamping colour and the star image from Bundle Monster image plate no21.

I'm sure the star image is the one I use the most as you can never go wrong with it, no matter what length of nails you have or where on the nail you position the stamp.

I rarely use dark reds or greens because I find they're difficult to remove, stain my nails and get into all the chips I have in my nails, which just isn't nice at all. However, a couple of my nails are quite short at the moment and I think subconsciously I'd already decided to go for the big cut so I suspect after this weekend (I need "long" nails for New Year's Day) I'll be sporting ten very short nails. Aw.

Bye for now,
Laura

NOTD (Pink and Yellow Floral)

Currently watching: The Blind Side

Good evening folks :-)

I went into town this morning to look for some bargains in the sales and although I didn't come home with any treats, I did have quite a few chips in my nails so this afternoon obviously called for a new manicure :-)

I chose a floral pattern from my Bundle Monster image plates, Spitalfields by Nails Inc for my stamping colour and a pale pink shade by the Polish brand Lovely as my base. This pink is lovely. It takes aaaaaaaages to dry but is very pretty and also work appropriate. The yellow shade is pastel in the bottle but it looks almost white on top of the pink so it's actually quite a nice combination and looks like satin.

I got one new nail polish yesterday, a pink shade by No7. Did Santa bring you any polish?

Bye for now,
Laura

Fauxnad Fail

Currently listening to: Toucher l'Instant by Grand Corps Malade

Good evening girls,

Tonight I thought I'd show you the results of my latest attempt at stamping on nail tips because of course I just couldn't leave yesterday's manicure alone.

Out came my Bundle Monster kit, my stamping set and my Konad special polish in white.

What I was aiming for was a simple yet intricate white tip design.

This is what I ended up with:

(probably the most successful finger)

Now, from afar, ie in these pictures, this doesn't look too bad but in reality it looked awful. There were two problems with this manicure. First, it's really difficult to position the stamp correctly. Second, there's the usual complaint of the Bundle Monster images not being wide enough so double stamping was called for and that led to some very messy looking white overlapping. Not pretty at all so as soon as I took these photos I removed it all. Bare nails for me tomorrow :-(

Do you have any tips for successful tip stamping?

Bye for now,
Laura

PS Any tips on how to space posts and actually get Blogger to place paragraphs where you want them??????

NOTD (Grey and White)

Currently reading: ICAEW Assurance Study Manual (first exam is on Monday morning)

Good evening ladies,

Just a very quick post from me tonight as my boyfriend's just told me off for taking an extended study break.

Anyway, thank you for all your positive feedback regarding my previous NOTD. I hope you'll like this one too :-)

This was done on Thursday evening after it was pointed out to me during the day that I'd had my current manicure (the beautiful pink and white one) for three days. My college classmates are becoming cheeky.

This is my first grey polish, courtesy of Beauty UK, a random brand I found in Superdrug. I bought a lilac as well and had great plans for a grey and lilac manicure (grey background, purple hearts) but alas, the lilac didn't show up when I stamped it so I went for white as my stamping colour.

I love the colour combination although the manicure itself is a bit of a mess due to me stamping before the grey had properly dried and getting lovely smudge marks as a result.

I chose two Bundle Monster images, a floral design and lines with hearts dotted over them. It's not usual for me to mix patterns but I like this!

Bye for now,
Laura

NOTD

Good morning girls!

Here's my NOTD from Tuesday, which I've taken ages to post.

This was done using pastel pink, Konad special polish in white and a Bundle Monster image plate. Unfortunately this design was hard to photograph so I don't think any of these photos do it justice because in real life this looked amazing :-) The pattern was great, the colours were a winning combination, it went well with my outfit...

There was a downside with this design however: clean up was a nightmare. When I stamped, the image went on my nail, at both sides of the nail, under the nail and below the nail. My Essence nail polish remover pen is usually fab for stamping clean up but it was rendered pretty much useless time.

(This is the truest representation of the real colour)

Has anyone else used this design and had problems with clean up?

Bye for now,

Laura

H&M Fashionista Plus Konad NOTD

Currently listening to: Just Say Yes by Snow Patrol

Good morning girls!

Gosh, hasn't the weekend taken its time to arrive? It certainly feels that way to me, and to all my classmates. I've been at college for a week now and half-way through the week became friends on Facebook with some of my peers. I have photos of my nail art up on my profile page so this attracted lots of attention and enquiries from my new friends. I now feel under pressure to have nice nails at college hence when my polka dot manicure started to chip, I felt I had to quickly update my manicure before it got any worse.

I settled on H&M Fashionista, a beautiful purple shade which is always guaranteed to be admired (in fact I myself only discovered this polish after admiring an H&M sales assistant's nails and asking what polish she was wearing).

I wanted to Konad over it with my silver GOSH holographic polish but the polish wouldn't transfer nicely onto my stamper at all so I gave up on that idea and decided to mattify instead:

Then out came my Konad and Bundle Monster kit again so my current manicure now looks like this:

I love it. It's been a while since I've Konaded, especially using a full nail image so I'm glad I still have the knack. As usual, I just wish my nails were longer!

Have a great weekend girls,

Laura