Stamping plates

After seeing a bunch of blogs that had pictures of nail designs that had been made using stamping plates, I decided to grab some for myself.
I have done designs on my own nails using a tiny makeup brush, but I couldn't get much detail and my designs were limited.

With plates, though... WOW! The detail possible with plates just blows my mind. (and now, I know how they do it!) And the variety of designs! OMG! My creativity was kindof limited to ideas I got from blogs that I could replicate using my makeup brush. NOW, my creativity feels unlimited.

I ordered a starter kit by KONAD, a set of 25 plates by MASH, and another set of 25 plates by SHANY. I also ordered an organizer for the plates, some tweezers, and some little tiny flowers in many colors. My KONAD kit had the stamp, a scraper, three "Special Polishes" and two plates. It arrived on monday and I excitedly stamped up all of my nails little tiny flowers. The rest of it arrived today, and I am thrilled! I had this afternoon off, so when I was home, I tore into all my packages, pulled everything out and examined it all while putting the plates in the organizer.

First impressions, no use:
They're all so shiny!!! There are a lot of designs that I'll get to choose from, I might not need to order more plates anytime soon, if ever. The MASH plates seem slightly less detailed than the two KONADs I got earlier in the week, and the SHANYs seem to be a lower quality than both of them.

The KONADs that I used, however, didn't show all the detail once I stamped them onto my nails. The design I chose had four little flowers, and then some tiny dots around them. The flowers generally showed up fine, but the dots rarely transferred over, so while the detail was on the plate, it didn't show in the end result.

The MASHs still have nice detail, but it seems a little less than the KONADs. They still seem nice though and I'm excited to try them out. Of the 25 plates I got, over half of them seem dedicated to full nail designs.

The SHANYs... I'm a little disappointed. The plates feel... flimsy. Like when you unscrew the metal lid on a jar, put it back on, and you can "pop" the freshness seal? The plates bend and pop like that. The designs are definitely lacking in the fine details, although a few designs are more detailed than the MASH plates. For example: a MASH butterfly is just a straight on shot of a butterfly shape with the entire inside cut out. The SHANY butterflies are different angles, and have several designs within the wings.

I haven't using anything except the KONAD plates, but I am sooooo excited to have added these to my collection!


- Posted from my IPad.

Soooo craving an organizer

I'm desperately wanting an organizer for my nail polish. Right now, I don't have an organizer, and so they're all lined up on my vanity in front of my mirror. By color, so there's a little bit of organization. But nearly every night, I jerk awake to my cat skidding across the vanity and smashing into them. Nail polish flying everywhere.

So I want an organizer. First, I googled nail organizers, and they're kindof expensive. Not to mention- they're very.... boring. They're not fun or nice looking. There's no personality.
I was thinking about it more, and it suddenly hit me! I should make my own! All I'll need is some wood, screws, a wood cutter, and maybe some paint. I'm thinking along the idea of a spice rack type thing.

Here's an idea:


I don't know exactly how many polishes I have, but for sure I'll need more than what's on there. I have an idea to put like... a picture wall hanger type thing on the back and hook it to a wall so the cat can't knock it over.
I'm also thinking to put some artistic cutouts on the back piece and possibly side pieces and then paint the edges of the cutouts to make it pretty.


- Posted from my IPad.

Hunger Games Katniss (inspired) nails

This might be my first guide post, so yay!

"The team works on me until late afternoon, turning my skin to glowing satin, stenciling patterns on my arms, painting flame designs on my twenty perfect nails."
Her nails aren't really described in too much detail, but I wanted to give em a shot anyways. My initial idea for these, once I saw Chinaglazes collection, was to make a design using only colors from the collection. I also didn't want to do too formal of a design, didn't want anything too "hotrod-ish".
Here's what I came up with:

And here are the colors I used:

Left-to-right: Clear bottom coat, Stone cold, riveting, electrify, luxe and lush

1- Start off with your clear base coat.

Step 2- Stone Cold

2- Add a coat of stone cold. It's a matte, so it's going to dry really quickly. I really like that color, reminds me of a ashy sky with a lot of smoke rising into it.

Step 3- Riveting.

3- Pick a corner and add a dot of riveting. Wipe excess from brush and drag lines out from the dot in a "starburst" type pattern. (I didn't wipe enough of the excess and as you can see, it got a little gloopy. Remember to wipe excess. Better too little than too much.)
4- Go over the starburst with electrify. Wipe your brush off first- you want to use this polish just to let the gold glitter add some color to your fire. It's fine to go outside the lines that you established with riveting.
5- Add a coat of luxe and lush over everything. I really liked that, and using it over everything made me think of how a campfire will occasionally throw up giant chunks of ash. It also takes the place of a top coat.

The end result is a flickery red-orange, with specks of gold, and larger glimmery chunks on a grey background. My example on my thumb didn't turn out as good as my toes, but I'm sure you get the idea. Practice will make perfect :)

Step 4- Electrify

Step 5- Luxe and Lush

I would love to get feedback, and to see what everyone else comes up with for Katniss Nails!

Hunger Games nail polish

I'm back! It has been literally.... months and months since my last post. Got busy, got broke, etc. Hopefully, this time around, I'll be able to keep up with my posting.

To start off: My latest purchase- The Hunger Games nail polish collection from ChinaGlaze. I saw the movie preview, then read the books, and then stumbled across the collection online and was blown away. All Lacquered Up has an excellent post with amazing photographs and swatches, and after looking through that I was convinced.

I googled. Most places were fairly expensive, with the entire collection running 60-80. That was pre-release. Post-release might be less now. Anyways, I found a place that sold me two sets for a total of 84- bigdaddybeauty.com. I'm thinking I might give away the second set, contests or giveaways. They had an awesome coupon that let me get another collection of polish, and brought the grand total down to only 80. Talk about awesome!

Hunger Games collection

And here's the other collection I got: A bunch of neon, slightly sparkly colors that smell yummy.