Reverse Stamping Design

Hey guys!

It's been a busy couple days packing You Mix orders and balancing a 1 1/2 year old! I tried to post this yesterday, but never got around to it. So I'm posting it now! :P

Dustin and I collaborated on this idea. I knew I wanted to use a reverse stamp (a design where most of what you stamp shows up rather than what you painted on the nail first). Then I thought it would look cool with  multicolors popping out, so Dustin randomly painted China Glaze Aquadelic, China Glaze Sweet Hook and Color Club Bubble Gum (this one is scented and I loved it!) and then stamped a reverse stamp from one of the XXL plates You Mix used to carry in black.

The end result is pretty awesome! 

Have any of you tried this technique before?

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Color Club Wham! Pow! + Nail Art

Hello and happy Friday!

It's uncharacteristically cool and cloudy today, so I have a nice warm mani to brighten it up! I am pretty much obsessed with neons, especially this season because they are all over the fashion world and not just for nails anymore. I am a sucker for bright colors!

This is 3 coats of Color Club Wham! Pow! I don't think I captured the glow this color has very well. I went to the pool wearing this mani and it was amazing how bright it was in true sunlight! Too add a little something, I did an accent nail using striping tape, OPI Did You 'Ear About Van Gogh?, and a stamp.

I thought the accent nail was fun, even it if it didn't turn out perfectly. 

What are your thoughts on neons? Any favorite shades?

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the sun isn't shining but my gradient is!

Here in Newfoundland, we don't get a whole bunch of sunny days. Maybe in July and August... A week or two... But it's not too hot usually.
I've gotta keep my nails sunny, even if the sky isn't!

Woohoo! Summery gradient!
Me and some friends all decided to do gradients on this lovely Friday, and here's what I came up with.

My color combo was inspired by one of my "nail crushes" - Ivana Thinks Pink. There's nothing she does that I don't like! Seriously. Ivana, quit being so awesome!
She did this mani using China Glaze Peachy Keen and Orly Fancy Fuchsia. Hot damn, I need Fancy Fuchsia. Why don't I have it?! Jeez. I NEED IT! Her nails were glowing. Amazing.

I used the same peach - China Glaze Peachy Keen.
I tried to substitute Zoya Lo for the pink but it just doesn't look quite so hot.
It's still pretty though!
But one day I will redo the mani... Whenever I find myself Fancy Freakin' Fuchsia.

To do this gradient, I tried the new gradient tutorial that is sweeping the blog world, from The Nailasaurus.
But, I couldn't get that to work... At all. It just was not showing up with these colors.
So I went in and did it the way I'm used to, which you can see in my older tutorial here.
But I still wanted the flawless blended look you can get from the newer way, so I ended up doing that on TOP of the gradient that I did my way. And that turned out magical! It blended the colors seamlessly.

After that, I stamped the floral pattern from Konad plate m65. It's almost like a Hawaiian shirt! Haha, I love it.

I'm was going to submit this in Kayla Shevonne's Nail Art Contest but then I realized you can't stamp for her contest. Damn!
If you haven't checked out her contest already, hurry! There's just less than 12 hours left to enter.

I hope you guys enjoy this mani! I'm going to be doing lots of gradients again because I just love them and it's been too long since I've done them! I think I might even do another one later today. Woohoo!

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Nail-Venturous - Evil Barbie

I teased you guys yesterday with a closeup of this polish... And now it's time to reveal it!
This polish is very special to me because I'm one of a few lucky people who own it!

Nail-Venturous - Evil Barbie
I've said this two or three times before, but I'll say it again! Amy from I'm Feeling Nail-Venturous is one of the sweetest people ever. Who makes some of the most awesome polishes ever. And she sent me this one.
Just look at that amazing creation! Hot pink with black glitter! Ooooh, Evil Barbie, how I love you.

You could wear this on its own but I wanted to conserve polish so I layered it over China Glaze Dance Baby which was such a good choice, because it let the base color of Evil Barbie really pop!

Here's a super awful messy picture, but I wanted to quickly show you just how bright the base of Barbie is! That's one very thin coat over Dance Baby, versus Dance Baby alone.
I layered it over a few pinks on a nail wheel to decide what to use, and this one is just perfect.

Beyond the great pink color and the awesome black glitters, there is also a beautiful shimmer!

I just looooooooooove love love it. Thank you SO much Amy! You are a doll!

I decided that this polish needed some matching stamping... which finally gave me a reason to use the Barbie stamp!

I thought this mani was pretty clever!

The Barbie image is from Konad m71.
The skull image is from an unnamed plate from eBay.
The chains image is from Bundle Monster BM12.

I love that little skull!

What do you guys think of this great polish and the matching mani?
I hope you love it as much as I do!

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Sally Hansen White Veil + Nail Art

Hello everyone! 

I'm kind of apprehensive to show you this mani today only because I consider it somewhat of a fail. But I'm showing it to you anyway and I will let you guys be the judge. :)

I first layered Sally Hansen White Veil over OPI Did You 'Ear About Van Gogh? I think I sped through application of the glitter a little too fast because it's not looking so pretty. haha

And then because I just couldn't stop adding stuff, I did some stamping with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri  in Mint Sprint. The Insta Dris are great polishes for stamping!

Overall I love the color combo with the glitter, but I don't feel like it came together the way I had it in my head. Too textured for my liking. So I'm gonna say close but not quite on this one.  Hate it when that happens! :)

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Milani Photo Flash + Stamping

Hey everybody!

Today was nothing but a typical Monday that I'm glad is winding down! 

This polish is from Milani and it's called Photo Flash. This polish comes from a small collection that has matching glossy lip pencils for each shade. Cute idea! Below is 2 coats. It's got a really pretty metallic shimmer/sparkle to it.

I call flowers "typical nail art" and rarely use them on my nails. But I think it's an easy design to fall back on when there is no more inspiration to be had (which has been me lately). So that's what I did! I got bored with this pretty fast, but it is a pretty manicure. There are just too many other fun possibilities out there to do flowers (in my opinion), but for me they are fun every once in a while. :P

Do you guys have a nail art design or a polish that is your go-to when nothing else is doing it for ya?

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Zoya Arizona + Nail Art

Hey everyone! 

Yesterday was an exciting day as Dustin and I launched the new You Mix website! I never got a chance to blog about it yesterday because things were so busy, but there is a coupon code for 15% off your order that will be available until this Saturday. Also, we are having some issues with Google Checkout, so Paypal is the only current payment method. We are working to get that fixed ASAP!

So on to today's nails! I just have some summery nail art to show yall. Zoya Arizona and Sally Hansen  Insta Dri Speedy Sunburst are the base colors and the Insta Dri also serves as the stamping color for everything but the ring finger which is Konad White.

So bright and sunny and I love how the accent nail brings it all together! 

Thank you for stopping by!

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Nail-Venturous Lacquers - Floam! (+ stamping!)

I've got a great polish to show you today. I'm sure most of you are familiar with this awesome "indie polish" already but now it's my turn to show it to you!

I remember quite some time ago, a girl by the name of I'm Feeling Nail-Venturous was commenting on my blog posts. She followed me, so I followed her. Then somewhere along the way, we became friends via Facebook, and then suddenly, Amy started making frankens, and she quickly became one of the most popular "indie polish" makers around! And she deserves it, too.
I'm glad to be friends with Amy and I'm so happy for her success!
I'm also very happy that she swapped me this polish for my own franken, Rebecca Likes Cupcakes. (Amy loves frankens. All of them.)

Nail-Venturous - Floam
Check out this neon glitter! This polish is just so cool and original, I love the color combo.
Here I layered one generous coat of Floam over Color Club Twiggie but you can use it without a base color, too. I was just too lazy to do 2-3 coats of glitter. Haha!

Adding Twiggie underneath makes it a little bit brighter but I like the effect! From afar the polish looks mostly like a nice shade of neon green but then when you look close, you can see the two different colors that merge together to create the polish!
It is of course a little bit textured but 2 coats of topcoat solves it.

I haven't done stamping in a long time, so I decided to try some stamping over my Floam! And I'm glad I did because it turned out great.

I stamped this cool abstract image from Konad m65 using Wet N Wild Black Creme.

I love this mani and I am definitely going to keep it on for a few more days!

If you haven't been able to get your hands on this yet, keep an eye on Amy's Etsy store as well as on Ninja Polish. But beware of Floam-impersonaters! Hahaha. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery I guess!

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Born Pretty Store Review - Stamper & Image Plates

The lovely ladies over at the Born Pretty Store offered some products for me to review here. They also offered this 10% off coupon code for any of my followers.

They sent me their Stamper/Scraper pack. It can be found here for $2.03.

 Their plate M71, which is often referred to as the Hello Kitty plate.  

Here for $3.88 as a combo deal with a stamper/scraper.

 Their M66 plate which has 2 XL images which I have yet to fully understand how to use....

Here for $2.32

 They offer many image plates that are exact dupes of Konad images, but for a fraction of the price. They also always offer Free Shipping, no minimum purchase required. So if you are looking to expand your image plate collection for a fraction of the price, go there!

My Konad stamper is on the left, their stamper is on the right. You can see the diameter is almost exactly the same. Born Pretty stamper is just a tad smaller.

It's also a good bit shorter, but I didn't find that it made it difficult to use at all. 

The squishy silicone material that picks up the image, is a good bit firmer than my Konad stamper. That made it difficult to get a good image transfer. The stiffness of it required a lot more pressure than I normally need.

Their scraper is the typical metal piece embedded in plastic. To be honest, I HATE this type of scraper. They are impossible to clean up, and the metal digs into the image plate and leaves damage. :( I tried this one out, and it does the exact same thing, so I immediately switched to my favorite method... An old plastic credit card/gift card.

Here I used their m71 image plate and the Hello Kitty image. I just randomly stamped it multiple times across my nails. My base polish is E.L.F. Neon Pink and I stamped with Konad Black Special Polish. 

 I modeled these after this design done by RebeccaLikesNails.

Then I used China Glaze For Audrey and their m66 plate and the Cherry Blossom image. I stamped with Konad Special White Polish. I guess the benefit of having an XL image is that you can pick up different portions of the image for each nail, to change it up a bit. Or if you have extra long nails, then the image will cover the whole nail. But how do you pick up the whole XL image? My stamper isn't big enough to fit the whole thing.... I guess they make XL stampers somewhere?

Thank you to Born Pretty for providing these elements for review.

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