Stained Glass Windows - Sally Hansen, Ulta3, Born Pretty

I unearthed these photos from when I decided to do a fancy stamping+painting mani. I'm pretty amazed at my past self's dedication, haha.

[Stained Glass Windows]

It doesn't look too shabby, does it? I was going for a stained-glass-ish look and I think it turned out pretty well.

[Born Pretty Stamping Plate BP-L052]

Here's the stamping plate I used, which is Born Pretty's BP-L052. It's one of my favourite plates, and I've used other patterns from it before. I chose two patterns to use, both which I have highlighted above.

So, let's run through the process. I started by stamping on my silicone nail art mat.

I used Australis' Jeanie in A Bottle, a navy blue nail polish, to stamp my base patterns. You can see, I was pretty messy with my stamping. :P And I was experimenting with colours. You can see where I started painting in parts of the stamped pattern.

Tada! I finished painting all the bits that I thought needed painting. Looks terrible, doesn't it?

The thing to remember is that this is the back of your mani, so you don't have to strictly paint within the lines. You can paint on top of the lines, just make sure you don't go outside of them too much. It looks pretty terrible from the back, but it'll look nice once flipped.

You also don't have to make sure everything is painted over. Remember, the base colour that you paint on your nails will be visible if you don't paint over everything, so you can use that instead to fill in the rest of the gaps. I also painted a plain gold swatch of colour on the upper left corner. You'll see what that's for later.

The nail polish colours I used:

• Sally Hansen Crush on Blue - Pastel blue creme nail polish
• Sally Hansen What In Carnation - Pastel purple creme nail polish
• Sally Hansen Barely Blue Bell - Pastel teal creme nail polish
• Sally Hansen Right Said Red - Red creme nail polish
• Ulta3 Honolulu - Canary yellow creme nail polish

I broke that streak of Sally Hansen nail polishes! What a pity!

Once everything was well and truly dried, I peeled off all the stamped patches from the silicone mat, turned them over, and tada! Homemade decals! They're looking better already, aren't they?

I usually stamp extra, as you can see here, so that I can discard the ones that didn't turn out so well. You can see a couple aren't looking too great so they'll go to the bottom of the pile.

On the top row, you can see one gold swatch and another yellow swatch. So I painted those on the mat so I could figure out which would go better as a base colour for all my stamped patterns. I decided the yellow was far too bright, yech, and the gold was a much nicer match.

[Sally Hansen Gilded Lily]

Then, I painted all my nails with the gold nail polish I tested earlier, which was Sally Hansen's Gilded Lily. I have to say that I love this nail polish and have used it a lot since I bought it. It's this soft gold colour, the microglitter just a touch bigger than normal which makes it so very shiny. Application is easy and smooth, opaque in two coats.

Nothing else to do but to apply the homemade decals!

When applied, they look matte, which to be honest, I love the matte look! It looks even more like a painting, less like nail polish. And doesn't the matte gold look divine? But I don't think the mani will last without a top coat to seal in the decals. Alas!

Topcoat goes over and there you have it, the finished product! It's still one of my top favourite manis that I have ever done.