Fluid Nail Art Friday with St. Patrick's Day Nails!

Not too long ago, I decided I was going to finally try my hand at some fluid nail art.  I've had the Dance Legend Spot Its for a while now and thanks to my awesome US nail pal, I have all the Sinful Colors Transforming top coat polishes and the Sally Hansen Color Whirl (and even the OPI Spotted Top Coat from a couple years ago) but have never used any of them.  Nope.  That's right, haven't even used them once!  Well, after watching a few fluid art tutorials (stamping and for paint wall art), I sat down and tried out the technique!  Here's what I came up with!

I made my fluid nail art from decals on a plastic lid.  The polishes that I used were OPI Envy The Adventure, OPI Green Come True, China Glaze Gaga For Green, Sally Hansen CSM Slime Scene and Savvy Knightly Armour.  Again, I had watched a few tutorials and especially when viewing Kyong Lee's on YouTube (you can google link), it seemed like you can use quite a bit of polish to make some of the nail decals, so I didn't want to use anything overly HTF or even an indie which might be a little bit more pricier to buy.  Fluid art might be a good way to use up some of the cremes that I have that haven't seen the light of day!  I added the Savvy just because I like the look of a little sparkle in my decals for interest.  For the fluid, I found I had the best results with Dance Legend Spot it; I didn't have very good results with the Sally Hansen Color Whirl.  I didn't try any others as I felt I had enough decals for my nails with what I already had experimented with.  That being said, I did formulate my own 'spotted' mix after watching some paint tutorials as I don't necessarily want black cells, or white, or whatever cell colours I have from Sinful and Dance Legend, I might want to create my own cells!  I've already tried the method (not too successfully I might add, the Dance Legend polishes seem to work the best so far of any I have used) but will share the decals I made at some time!

After applying a base of sticky base to my nails, I cut the decals to somewhat fit my nail, then trimmed and used acetone and brush to remove any excess.   I tried to pick parts of the decal that had the most interest to me, keeping in mind that I still needed a cohesive mani that somewhat matched on all nails.

The leftovers lol.

Topped with KBShimmer Clearly on Top for shine and to help adhere the decals.

With the base being green, I knew I wanted to do St. Patrick's Day nails but didn't want to cover up too much of the base because that's the highlight especially after working so hard to make them!  So stamped most nails with image from BM03 on all except accent, which is MoYou Festive 21 using MdU 1.

Topped with a final coat of KBShimmer Clearly on Top to finish.

I initially thought that I'd only wear these for a day or so but I liked how they turned out so much that I think I wore them for 3 or 4 days!  I only removed them because they started to lift but I did enjoy them on my nails while they were on!  Overall, I like the method, I think it makes for an interesting base and hope to do these more often!

Have a great weekend and thanks for looking!

Are Peach and Gray an Odd Combination?

In early sumer, I was going through a  coral/orange/peach phase.  It seemed like I was wearing these shades all the time!  This is one of many I came up with at the time.

Started with a base of Maybelline Peachy Petal.  This is two coats, with no topcoat.  I seem to recall what while I loved this colour, I had a lot of problems with this polish.  It was like there there was some type of random grit in the polish and it didn't apply well.  Whatever the grit issue was, I never experienced it before and it was only with this bottle.  I had bought this polish in early spring in the US...I bought a few others at the same time but haven't tried them yet...I sure hope they aren't like this!  My camera didn't like this polish either as these pix aren't quite accurate in colour. Such a pretty colour; but I do remember I had quite the time with the polish with whatever ailed it.  I don't think it's visible in these pix, but all I know is I had to search my stash for something to put on top of it to hid the mess.

I found the solution!  A coat of Savvy Magic Pumpkin.  This is one coat, with SV. 

Stamped using A59 using white Konad special polish.

I wanted to show a pix of the image plate.  See below?  Images like this, I never know how to use.  How exactly is it to be placed on the nail?  I turned the image what I think is upside down and stamped on my nails. Also, even though my nails seem fairly long (to me anyway), as you can see, only a very small portion of the stamped image is on my actual nails.  KarenD, this is one reason why I wish I had man hands as I mentioned in the comments of one of your posts not too long ago!

Anyway, added a few random dots using Orly Mirror Mirror and topped with SV to finish.

 

What's your thoughts?  Did peach and gray turn out OK, or is this a little on the odd side? 

Thanks for looking!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This is the long Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada and this is the mani I've been wearing all weekend.



The base colours used were Essie Barbuda Banana layered with one coat of Savvy Femme Couture Banarama (yellow nails); D2W Red Chic 2 Volcanic Lava layer with one coat of Savvy Femme Couture Orange You Happy (orange) and Miss B Rainbow unnamed brown colour.



I searched my plate stash and couldn't believe that there are no turkey image plates so during the week, I sourced all my local supply places and finally, at one store, found a couple of old packs of water decals. Stamped with Konad special polishes in Cool Red, Deep Jungle, Pastel Orange and Yellow using SdP D20 (maple leaves), fauxnad F (other leaves) and T41 (pumpkin and leave swirl above the turkey) image plates along with the water decals.



I've been having a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend...the weather all weekend has been absolutely beautiful. I had my Thanksgiving turkey dinner on Saturday as we are in the process of closing up our weekend place for the season so wanted to have Sunday and Monday free to do the things we need to do (not that we want to do it because the weather has been so awesome!). Both my parents and my in laws joined us for dinner and everyone seemed to have a wonderful time.

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians....and hopefully you will enjoy this mani even if you aren't celebrating!

Finally-WHITE Snowflakes!

Yesterdays mani didn't stay on too long! While the green snowflake looked OK, it just wasn't the look I was going for. Here's another green mani with snowflakes and sparkles.....


Savvy Garland looks gorgeous in the bottle but looks very dark and not too sparkly on my nails.




This pix was taken before sparkly topcoat....



Savvy Garland stamped with white Konad special polish, using fauxnad IP A39 (yes, this is a new to me series of image plates I just got in the mail on Friday!) Used Fingerpaints sparkly topcoat for sparkle accent on top of the snowflake.


A pix of the A39 plate.


Thanks for looking!

My Vacation Nails!

First and foremost, please accept my apologies for the sad, sad state of my cuticles. I was on vacation last week and just was not looking after them as much as I should have been! But they are slowly getting back on track. I even thought about not posting these but hey, my blog was started as a record of my stamping and this is record of the mani I did at the time. Plus we all have good days and bad, right?

This was a quick mani of a couple polishes I found on sale at Sally's for $2.79 each! First was two coats of Nina Ultra Pro in Sweet Nothings. Then layered with a coat of Savvy Purple Potion. This collection of very sheer and sparkly polishes are great to use for layering and add an extra something to the mani. The last pix was a quick indoor picture so not that colour accurate but wanted to take a quick one before layering the Savvy polish over it.

Stamped with fauxnad IP A19 using Konad white special polish. The stamp barely fit my little tiny nails especially my pinkie! I so envy those bloggers who have larger and longer nails. But on the bright side, a lot of the full nail image plates that they say don't find on their nails generally fit mine so I guess there is some benefit in having teeny nails!

Thanks for looking!