Golden Triangles - Mundo de Unas Black, Born Pretty stamping plate BP-L040

So here we continue the stamping mania!

[Golden Diamonds]

The base used here is More Nail Polish's Coinage, which is still my fave gold glitter polish ever! It's just chock-full of a variety of gold glitter, with some red and silver glitter too. I have reviewed it here before, and used it for some of my favourite manicures.

I used Mundo de Unas' Black with stamping plate BP-L040. The pattern I used was the third from the right in the second row.

[Born Pretty stamping plate BP-L040]

[Base: morenailpolish Coinage
Stamping: Mundo de Unas Black, Born Pretty stamping plate BP-L040]

Stamping over with Mundo de Unas' Black was easily done and resulted in clear, crisp black lines.

To better capture the shininess of the glitter, I took the following blurry photo under halogen lighting.

[Base: morenailpolish Coinage
Stamping: Mundo de Unas Black, Born Pretty stamping plate BP-L040]

Overall, it's a simple but pretty mani.

Dune Buggy - Dance Legend Bow Conversion Wind of Change, Mundo de Unas Purple, Born Pretty BP-L050

These days, I rarely leave a colour on without doing something else over it! So here's what I did over last week's polish...

[Swishy!]

This one reminds me of sand dune patterns!

[2-3 coats: Dance Legend Bow Conversion Wind of Change]

Recap of my base shade - Wind of Change, a thermal colour change polish with scattered holo particles that dries matte from the Bow Conversion collection available from Dance Legend.

[Born Pretty BP-L050]

The pattern I used was from Born Pretty stamping plate BP-L050 which was generously provided by Born Pretty for review! This one came in a super cute Christmas themed cardboard sleeve with the usual blue protective film.

[Born Pretty BP-L050]

And a whole bunch of cool patterns to use! The one I picked is on the top row, second from the right. You can see that the pattern is finer and closer together at one end and then spreads out at the other end. So I decided to place the denser side along the nail bed end.

[Bottle to nail: Mundo de Unas Purple (stamping); Plate: Born Pretty BP-L050;
Base: Dance Legend Bow Conversion Wind of Change (2-3 coats)]

The stamping polish I used was Mundo de Unas Purple, which as you can see in the bottle, has separated a little. I was a bit too lazy to shake it up thoroughly which I later found makes cleaning up a bit harder! So that's a lesson for next time!

[Base: Dance Legend Bow Conversion Wind of Change (2-3 coats);
Stamping: Mundo de Unas Purple, Born Pretty BP-L050]

I haven't got a photo to show this, but my idea going in was that when the thermal base darkens to purple in the cold, the stamped design blends in, whereas when it's warm (and therefore lavender) you can see the stamp pattern much clearer! 

As always, the stamping plate was of good quality and I had no issues at all picking up the design, even fine details. I quickly stamped a few designs that caught my eye on some paper, so you can see that even fine lines are picked up easily!

If you're interested, you can find the plate here, as well as tons of other stamping and nail art supplies at Born Pretty. Happy stamping!!!

Cold Space - Dance Legend Bow Conversion Wind of Change

Hello! Today I'm reviewing a polish from Dance Legend, and it's got a whole bunch of cool features packed into one bottle!

[Bottle to nail: Dance Legend Bow Wind of Change (2-3 coats)]

This is Wind of Change from the Bow Conversion polish range that you can purchase at Dance Legend. You can already see the colour difference between the bottle (cold) and my nails (warm)!

[2-3 coats: Dance Legend Bow Wind of Change]

So not only is it a thermal polish, it is also a soft matte creme finish with very fine scattered holographic particles! This was 2-3 coats on fairly long nails and you can still see a bit of VNL (visible nail line) in the photos, although this is less obvious in real life.

[2-3 coats: Dance Legend Bow Wind of Change]

So what about that colour change, hey! Here I grabbed an ice cube to show it off, as you can see...! The colour change is very rapid and fairly sensitive. Although purples/pinks are fairly common thermal polish shades, I like how this one has three pretty distinct shades (lavender-pink-purple) as the temperature changes!

I just looked on their website to check the polish name and saw that they now have thermal AND UV changing polishes in this line! Whoaaa, thermal, holographic and UV allll in one. Four colours (and a rainbow) in a bottle~ wow!

Rainbow Wings and Petals - Born Pretty Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat, Australis, Revlon, China Glaze, Mode, Essence, Color Club

It was Mardi Gras around here, with lots of partying on the streets, so I decided to go for rainbow colours on my nails, achieved through dry marbling on the silicone nail art mat!

[Dragon wings on one hand...]

[...flowers on the other.]

When it comes to dry marbling, I don't mean that I did water marbling with nail polish on the surface of a pool of water and then transferred onto a plastic surface to be applied later. In this case, I directly applied nail polish on the silicone nail art mat, and used a toothpick to quickly draw through the streaks of colour to create the effects you usually get from water marbling.

You can see the result of my dry marbling in the picture below. There are two tiny flowers I did for experimentation too.

[Born Pretty Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat]

Here are some tips for dry marbling on a mat:

1. Experiment, experiment, experiment!
2. Apply two to three thick coats of nail polish on the silicone mat.
3. Don't use thin coats or quickdry nail polish or old nail polish that is naturally drying out. You need the nail polish thick and wet enough to work with.
4. The watery nail polish worked best for me but required more layers.
5. If you want an effect that closely resembles water marbling, curve the nail polish streaks you're painting down. If you look on the left of the mat, most of the streaks are straight. But towards the right of the mat, you can see that I have started curving my nail polish streaks. It's to create the familiar water marbling flower look.
6. Leave your nail polish to dry on your silicone nail art mat for a couple hours at least. At first, the nail polish will look very thick on the mat. But as it dries out, the nail polish flattens to the silicone mat. It also becomes very easy to peel off the mat.
7. Paint your base coat before applying the newly made dry marbling patterns onto your nails. If you press firmly on the edges of your nail bed, you can peel off the excess nail polish easily.

That's all I can think of for the moment!

[Dry marbling: Australis Mexican Madness, Revlon Mad About Mango,
China Glaze Yell-O-Neil, Mode Hook Me UP, Essence Choose Me!, Color Club Eternal Beauty]

Let's run through the nail polishes I used to get this colourful effects. The nail polishes are:

1. Australis Mexican Madness - Pink creme
2. Revlon Mad About Mango - Salmon pink creme
3. China Glaze Yell-O-Neil - Yellow creme with gold shimmer
4. Mode Hook Me Up - Light blue creme 
5. Essence Choose Me! - Blue-green-gold shimmer
6. Color Club Eternal Beauty - Purple holo

The same nail polishes were used on both hands, except the marbling is different, that's all.

[Dry marbling: Australis Mexican Madness, Revlon Mad About Mango,
China Glaze Yell-O-Neil, Mode Hook Me UP, Essence Choose Me!, Color Club Eternal Beauty]

I noticed that the marbling is a lot smaller compared to actual water marbling. That probably just depends on the individual doing the dry marbling and how far apart you want the lines on your pattern.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the results. I always thought water marbling was too messy for me after I tried it out a couple of times. But doing this on a silicone mat? Thumbs up from me! I don't think I need to go into detail about techniques since there are so many videos of water marbling. The same-ish theory applies, only you don't use a bowl of water.

I'm pretty delighted with what can be done with a silicone mat and I'm looking forward to trying it out even more.

DIY Duo - Born Pretty Silicone Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat

If you haven't already seen it, remember to check out Jme's awesome stamping decal using her Born Pretty silicone nail art mat! 

[Born Pretty Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat]

Today I'm doing a quick comparison between the large and small mats that you can get from Born Pretty. 

[Born Pretty Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat]

Both come in a sturdy cardboard cylinder for protection with a cool geometric design on the outside. They are labelled as "Born Pretty Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat". There are also a few suggestions on how you can use them, such as for testing colour combinations, doing reverse stamping and making your own stamping decals.

[Born Pretty Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat]

When you open the cardboard cylinder, the mat is rolled up inside within protective plastic. You can just remove this plastic and discard it, it's not necessary to keep it in my opinion.

[Born Pretty Small Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat]

As mentioned, this is a silicone mat, much like baking mats that you can find. The top surface is a smooth matte while the underside has a glossy finish.

[Born Pretty Small Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat]

Here's a standard OPI bottle in comparison to the smaller mat which measures 21cm x 15cm. It comes with five clear nail outlines and five black ones along with a clear and dark circle for testing your nail polishes on.

[Born Pretty Big Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat]

Here is the larger mat in comparison, with the same OPI bottle. This one measures 28cm x 21cm and is shown here still in the protective plastic. As you can see, you get 10 clear and 10 dark nail outlines to work with in addition to a couple of extra outlines.

[Born Pretty Small Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat]

And here are the two mats in comparison to each other. In my opinion, if you're doing a lot of decals at a time, the larger one would probably be more convenient but otherwise the smaller one should do just fine! As Jme has already said, you don't strictly need to follow the outlines given so any part of the mat is fine to use!

Once again, these were generously provided by Born Pretty and you can find them here!

Mosaic Tiles - Elianto, Born Pretty stamping plate BP-L003, Born Pretty Ya Qin Au polish, Born Pretty Nail Art DIY Stamping Mat

I have new manicure things to play with, which quite delights me! Have you all have tried out a silicone nail art mat? This is the first time I'm experimenting with one, and I'm quite liking it so far.

[Pretty, pretty packaging!]

Here, I have a stamping plate and a silicone stamping mat to review. The silicone stamping mat is kept in a plastic packaging and they're both rolled up inside the sturdy tube.

The tube is a pretty good protection for the silicone stamping mat, but I was worried it would result in the mat being bent in one way or the other from its prolonged time rolled up. But the mat is actually a lot softer and more flexible than I realised, and it lies completely flat when unrolled.

[Born Pretty nail art DIY stamping mat]

This is one of Born Pretty's smaller silicone stamping mat, which is 21cm by 15cm in size. As you can see, the mat itself is rather basic, with five nail outlines on each side, in clear and in black, depending on what colour you plan to use on it. The mat itself is semi-transparent, so you can get a vague impression of how the mani will look if you peek at the underside of the mat while you're working with nail polish on the top surface.

[Born Pretty silicone stamping mat]

So, I started by painting over the nail outlines with my clear topcoat. Your first layer on the mat will be your topmost layer when you apply the homemade decals to your nails. As you can see, I did an extra five patches so I could do all ten nails at once. You don't really need the outlines to be honest.

The topcoat does cause the mat to curl up as it's drying. This is temporary and the mat goes back to being flat once all nail polish is removed. I also got distracted and wandered off to do something else for several minutes so by the time I came back, the topcoat was so dry, they were starting to peel off from the mat, as you can see from the photo above. Oops...

[Born Pretty Stamping Plate BP-L003]

I forgot to actually take a photo of the mat once I stamped on it. =_= What a dumb mistake... So in its place, you can have a look at stamping plate BP-L003 instead. The stamping pattern I chose is on the first row, first pattern from the right, and I used a Ya Qin Au stamping nail polish, an unnamed dark teal shade from Born Pretty.

If you look at the photo below, you can see that there's mostly no nail polish outside the areas where I painted the topcoat, which is unusual (for me anyway) when I'm stamping. Usually the stamping goes beyond the intended area of stamping because the pattern on the rubber stamp tends to be bigger than my nails, to ensure full coverage. But in this case, I'm stamping onto a silicone mat and nail polish from the rubber stamp doesn't adhere well to the mat directly. It adheres well to other (dried) nail polish, which is why you need to use a coat of clear polish before you start stamping. Also, you don't have a coat of nail polish as a base, I'm not sure you could lift the stamped pattern up completely from the mat.

[Stamped and hand painted on Born Pretty silicone stamping mat]

In the photo above, the decals are basically done. You can't see the stamped pattern very clearly in the photo above, because I've mostly painted over them with coloured nail polish, to create a mosaic look. I have used nail polish Elianto S02 (a green creme), an unnamed blue creme from Elianto as well, and an unnamed Born Pretty stamping nail polish of a dull fuchsia shade. I basically used whatever I had close at hand at that moment and most nail polish will work for this. But I don't actually recommend painting using stamping nail polish as they tend to be very thick and get too gloopy too quickly.

[Base: Elianto S02, unnamed Elianto blue, unnamed Born Pretty fuchsia
Stamping: Born Pretty's Ya Qin Au unnamed polish, Born Pretty BP-L003]

I think I achieved a rather nice and colourful mosaic look here.

[Base: Elianto S02, unnamed Elianto blue, unnamed Born Pretty fuchsia
Stamping: Born Pretty's Ya Qin Au unnamed polish, Born Pretty BP-L003]

I could have coloured in two colours and used the third colour as a base on my nails, to achieve the same result. I kind of just thought about it now, oops... I painted my usual clear base nail polish and then transferred the homemade decal to my nails before the base completely dried out. As the decals were larger than my nails, I did have to cut them where necessary and remove excess with nail polish remover on a cotton bud. Once all of this homemade decals were shaped to size, I painted over them with my quick dry top coat, to provide a nice glossy look and ensure the decals stay on.

So let's talk about my thoughts about using the silicone mat for stamping and colouring in...

First: The Name

I actually prefer calling this a silicone nail art mat rather than a nail art DIY stamping mat. While I have demonstrated stamping and then colouring in the pattern, there are a lot more potentials uses with this mat that doesn't involve stamping at all. That's why I feel the name silicone nail art mat is definitely more suitable, but Born Pretty does call it a silicone stamping mat on their website and a nail art DIY stamping mat on its casing so that's the naming convention I'm using for this post.

That important part done... :P

Second: Fun on the Mat

After trying it out, I'm pretty excited about the silicone mat and I'm looking forward to experimenting with it! While I really like the result of my first decal made using the mat, I would have to say that this one took a lot longer than I expected. Painting in all those little squares and triangles was very arduous. I still really like using the mat but next time, I'm going to choose something that doesn't require me to paint in every last millimetre of the decal.

But I really can't wait to try out some interesting stamping and colour mixes, or even just other type of nail art using this mat.

Third: In the end...

I was worried about the work I needed to put into cleaning up the mat, but it's actually so easy! In one of the photos above, you can see the leftover nail polish that were in three big blobs within the outlined palette on the silicone mat. That's a lot of nail polish and on any other surface, it would have been a pain to get off.

In this case, I pushed against the blobs of nail polish from beneath the mat, and all the three blobs peeled off easily. Any specks or splatter of polish on the mat was cleaned up using a piece of sticky tape to pick them all up. So cleaning really was one of the easiest part of the day.

I have some ideas I'm interested to try out on the silicone mat now! :)


Now, if you're interested in buying some stamping plates or mats, you can use the discount below at Born Pretty.

You can find the stamping plate I reviewed here, and the silicone mat here. The silicone mat came as a set of two, and Ev will be reviewing the other one, so stay tuned!