Tag Archives: Glitter

January 15, 2014

Pink and Purple Cherry Blossom! Moyou Stamped Decal Nail Art

By Ruth

I have been making stamped decals again! 😀 this time I used images from two of my Moyou plates, 01 and 02 from the Suki Collection.

The polishes I used!

  • Barielle Shades – Grape Escape
  • Color Club – Ulterior Motive
  • Revlon – Sweet Revenge (the pink one from the duo)
  • Barry M – Shocking Pink
  • Sally Hansen – Ivory Skull
  • Revlon – Calla Lily
  • Konad Special Polish – Black
  • Color Club – Topcoat
Pink and Purple Cherry Blossom

Pink and Purple Cherry Blossom

I started off by making the flowers, you can find how I made them here.

I used Grape Escape and sponged on a little Ulterior Motive on the tips as the base colour, when that was dry I applied the flowers using the Color Club Topcoat like glue! 😀

When that was all dry,  I applied a couple more coats of topcoat to seal all of my decals in! In some places on my nails there must be at least 6 layers of polish, it feels really thick like Gel! It took ages to dry, about half an hour :/

Cherry Blossom

Cherry Blossom

I really liked making the cherry blossom decals, even tho the tiny flowers where a bit fiddly to paint! The time it took to get them all on my nails was rather a lot longer than I would have liked, then getting them to stick was a pain! I think that it’s because I made them to thick, but I’m going to have to try out some other clear polishes to find the best one for decal making! 😀

This is still quite a new technique to me, practice makes perfect and all that! 😀

10 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Nail Art, Nail Stamping

January 14, 2014

Jess Nail Polish Part 2! The Glitter Swatches Breathless, Ibiza and Disco Diva!

By Ruth

Here are swatches of the last three Jess nail polishes I picked up, these ones are some of the glitter polishes!

The Jess nail polish collection is only available at Poundland for the bargain price of £1 a bottle!

You can find my swatches and reviews of some other Jess polishes here.

Breathless with Black undies

Breathless with Black undies

The first polish I have to show you is called breathless, it looked absolutely stunning in the bottle, pale blue with iridescent micro glitters…

Unfortunately on it’s own it was not nice, it made my nails look yellow :/ so in these pictures I applied two coats over Black Magic from Revlon!

Breathless jess nail polish

Breathless

I rather like how this looks, the glitter takes on a coppery/gold to pinky/purple colour shift! (much better than the nicotine stain yellow) So over black this is really pretty! This polish smells bad! Full of chemicals but as it only cost £1, I think I can let it off!

Disco Diva Jess Nail Polish

Disco Diva

This polish is called Disco Diva, it’s a mix of lilac and holographic glitter with larger Holographic Hex glitters, in a clear base. I think that this polish would look much better as a topper.

But I was curious as to how many coats it would need to be opaque, this is three coats, not quite opaque but very close!

Disco Diva Jess Nail Polish

Disco Diva Jess Nail Polish

The main problem I found with this polish was getting the large glitters out of the bottle, it was almost impossible!

Most of the glitter had settled to the bottom of the bottle and as there are no mixing balls it took rather a lot of shaking lol!

I have to say that there is a fair amount of glitter in the formula and it applies really easily, (after all the shaking and poking about for the big glitters) but like all of the Jess polishes I have tried this one also smells bad while it’s drying!

I think Disco Diva would be a nice polish for a glitter gradient.

jess nail polish Ibiza

Ibiza with black undies

Finally this polish is called Ibiza it’s a dark blue glitter with a smattering of holographic glitters in a clear base.

I have to admit when I opened the bottle for the first time I was really disappointed with the amount of glitter it looked very sparse,  but on application I was very surprised on how fantastic it looks over the black!

This is two coats over Black Magic from Revlon.

jess nail polish Ibiza

jess nail polish Ibiza

This is my favorite out of the three polishes. I think that this one is very much worth the £1 that I payed for it! 🙂

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Swatches

January 13, 2014

Stamping Decal Tutorial

By Ruth

This is how I made my Panda stamped decals!

Things you’ll need

  • Something plastic, I use the lid of a cotton bud box, but anything plastic, shiny, transparent and flexible (that you don’t mind covering in nail polish) should do.
  • Clear nail polish or top coat, make sure it’s not the fast dry stuff or you won’t be able to remove your decals from the plastic! I used Color Club Top coat.
  • Stamping stuff! plate, stamper, scraper and stamping polish. I used BM-424 from Bundle Monster and Konad Special Polish In Black
  • Thin nail art brush.
  • nail polish (one coat/high pigment polish works best) I chose Ivory Skull From Sally Hansen
  • Acetone.
  • Fingernails! 😛
  • And quite a bit of time.
cotton bud lid + nail polish

cotton bud lid + nail polish

Start off by painting squares or rectangles of clear polish directly onto your plastic surface, you want them to be a little bit larger than the image you are going to be using, then leave them until dry.

Sorry about the rubbish picture! My camera really protested about photographing clear stuff on clear stuff :/

stamping

stamping

Stamp the image you want to use on to the dry polish rectangles! I find it easier to hold my plastic lid upside down and line up the image by looking through the polish.

I have found that the best kind of image to use for making stamped decals are ones with an outline and not a huge amount filled in.

paint by numbers

paint by numbers

Now you can start colouring in! Using a thin brush you’ll want to very gently dab the polish on, if you use brush strokes you can smudge the stamped image :/

If you are worried about doing that you can add another coat of the clear polish on top of the stamp and leave it to dry before painting it.

Oh and keep your Acetone close by, the thin nail art brush will dry out really quickly!

see the bits i missed

see the bits i missed

I like to hold mine up to a light source to check for bits I missed and then add a few more dabs of polish to cover them!

With this technique you’ll end up with a decal that’s the opposite way round to the image on the stamping plate.

trim off the extra polish

trim off the extra polish

When your decals are dry (I leave mine for at least a couple of hours) they should be easily removed from the plastic, I peel them off with my nail but you could always use tweezers.

Then with some scissors carefully trim off the excess clear polish.

stick it on

stick it on

To stick your decal to your nail I like to press mine on to almost dry polish and very gently press it down, then add a coat of  topcoat to seal it in. But be really careful, as you won’t be able to reposition the image once it’s on your nail,

Here’s a picture of it all finished!

Panda Nails

Panda Nails

My original pink panda post is here

I hope I have managed to explain this technique clearly enough! 🙂 but I’ll be more than happy to answer any other questions about it!

18 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Nail Art, Nail Stamping, Tutorials

January 7, 2014

Pink Panda! Stamped Decal Nail Art.

By Ruth

The weather has been so horrid recently, all grey and miserable. So I decided that painting some bright sparkly nails would cheer myself up!  😀

Pink Panda Nail art

Pink Panda Nails ( and yes my hand is upside down)

I don’t think that you could get much more bright and sparkly than this! 😀

I started by making the Pandas using the Stamping Decal technique, using Bundle Monster Plate BM-424. Using Konad special polish black and Sally Hansen-Ivory Skull along with my Color Club topcoat.

While they where drying I applied two coats of Essie-Tour De Finance, followed by one very thin coat of No7- Sparkling Silver, I only have a tiny bit left and this polish was discontinued years ago (cries) but I have found the closest Polish like it, Fairy Dust from China Glaze!

Pink panda and Bamboo Nails

Podgy Panda On My Thumb

I used more of the top coat to stick the Decals to my nails, lucky it’s not a fast drying one, as I had to poke them around a bit to get them into the right place! And then squash them a bit to get an annoying bubble out from underneath :/

The Bamboo image was also on Bundle Monster Plate BM-424 and again I used Konad SP in black.

I still haven’t found a better black stamping polish than the Konad one. I know that Moyou have recently brought out a range of stamping polishes but I haven’t seen any good reviews :/

Panda Nails

Panda Nails

I finished them all of with another coat of Color Club topcoat. Amazingly it covered up all the little crinkles and fingerprints from my poking and squishing!

After having a play about with the stamping decal technique I really think it’s something I’m going to be doing a lot more of! It’s so much fun and it’s really opened up a whole new dimension to using stamping plates! I might even write a tutorial about it… But I think I need a bit more practice first! 🙂

9 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Nail Art, Nail Stamping

January 2, 2014

New Indie Nail Polish! Belle Glamour.

By Ruth

It’s not often that we get new indie polish makers here in the UK, But here is one! These polishes are from the new indie brand Belle Glamour.

I came across Belle Glamour on Facebook because Catriona was looking for people to do swatches and reviews of her new polish collections, in return for a discount…  Mmmm Discount on shiny polishes, how could I possibly refuse? Originally I was only going to get a couple, but a couple kind of turned into six. Oops!

After ordering the polishes they turned up within a few days! which seeing as I ordered them over Christmas was wonderful. They where really well packaged, all individually wrapped up in bubble wrap and tissue! And Catriona has been amazingly helpful!

These polishes are available for pre-order at  www.catrionascosmetics.weebly.com  and the shop will officially be opening on 24.01.2014. for more info you can sign up for the mailing list here!

There is also a Belle Glamour Facebook page Here and you can also follow on Instagram and Twitter with @mrscadrysdale and on Tumblr with Belle-Glamour.

Belle Glamour Midnight

Midnight

The first polish I have to show you is called Midnight, It’s a lovely metallic frosty black, This is two coats with base coat, and the application was a breeze!  It wasn’t streaky and there was no dragging at all!  I did find that the formula was a little thicker than I am used to but not so much that it was a problem in any way.

Belle Glamour Coven

Coven

Isn’t this such a cute polish! This colour is called Coven. This is three coats with base coat, with the first coat of this polish I was thinking that there wasn’t much pigment in this polish, but it built up really nicely and evenly with the next two coats, I think this will be the perfect polish for layering or some ‘pond’ nail art. I think that the Shimmer and the subtle holographic glitters make this polish really rather lovely.

Belle Glamour Matte Topcoat Over Midnight

Matte Topcoat Over Midnight

Here is the Matte topcoat over Midnight, this isn’t a flat matte, I found that this has more of a satin or wax finish, I think the closest product I can describe this to is the Latex varnishes from Illamasqua! This makes me really rather happy! 😀 I really do like the finish of this top coat! the application was really nice, very smooth, it didn’t smudge or move the colour underneath at all and it didn’t crinkle or go bubbly, also it dried really quickly.

Belle Glamour Bloody Roses

Bloody Roses

Bloody Roses is a wonderful Foxy metallic red, this was three coats with base coat, like Midnight, Bloody Roses is a tiny bit thicker than I’m used to, but it was wonderful to apply, it’s really well pigmented and the colour is simply stunning! This is three thin coats with base coat.

Belle Glamour Broken Hearted

Broken Hearted

Broken Hearted is a really cute glitter topper, it has black bar glitter and matte red hearts it also has a slight shimmer but my camera didn’t pick that up, this is one coat over nude from Barry M. I did have to dig about in the bottle a little bit for the hearts but I always find that’s the case with larger glitters. It was really easy to apply and there is a good amount of glitter in the mix! It also dries quickly and is very glossy 🙂

Belle Glamour In The Barrel

In The Barrel

In The Barrel is a lovely silver/gunmetal/pewter metallic pearl, and again the application of this polish was wonderful! there was no dragging or streaking and it dried really quickly! This is two coats over base coat.

I think these polishes are lovely, I’m looking forward to the Belle Glamour shop opening (yes i will be buying more) and I’m really looking forward to what Catriona comes up with in the future!

9 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Swatches

December 30, 2013

A Little Nail Art Round Up! My top 5 Posts Of 2013

By Ruth

Here’s a little round up of my five favorite posts of my first year of blogging. Well I’ll say a year but I have only been blogging for just over four months lol!

I have added a link in the title of each picture if you would like to see the whole post 🙂

Starting at the beginning…

 Glittery Owls

Glittery Owl

MoYou Suki 01 plate over Barry M Pink Silver Glitter polish

This was my very first post and I still absolutely love this! Well apart from the terrible clean up 😀 Pink silver glitter is one of my favorite Barry M polishes to stamp over!

Blue and Purple Rose Nails

The finished blue and purple rose nails.

Blue and Purple Rose Nails.

This is another one I love, I’m hopefully going to be redoing this in another colour 🙂 Well if I remember!

Halloween Nail Art

Halloween Nail Art

Halloween Nail Art

I love Halloween and this has been my most popular post! Way more popular than I ever thought! 🙂 So a huge thank you to everyone that shared it! 😀 But lets ignore how painfully dry my poor hands are in the photo, and that dreadful watermark lol!

First Attempt At Braided Nail Art

Braided nails!

Braided nails!

This was my first attempt at braided nails and it’s a technique that I really enjoy! next year I’m hopefully going to be doing a lot more like this! And maybe even a tutorial! 😀

Matte Cherry Blossom

Matte Cherry Blossom

Matte Cherry Blossom

And finally the matte cherry blossom nails, It reminded me how much I love my matte polish!

Looking back through these five pictures I can see how much my photography skills have improved, as well as my photo editing/watermarking, as well as the overall health of my hands and nails 🙂 Not too bad for four months! 😀

I would like to say a huge thank you to all of my fellow nail art bloggers for all of your help and advice, and to my wonderful followers and visitors (and stalkers?)  for taking the time to visit my little corner of the internet!

I hope that 2014 brings you all manner of good things! 🙂

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Nail Art, Nail Stamping