Painted Weave - Revlon Budding Chrome, The Face Shop GL111, Revlon OceanChrome, Australis Goth Rock

This look I'm sporting today can be achieved with stamping, or with nail art stencils, if you know what I'm talking about. Today, I'm trying out the latter.

[Painted Weave]

What is the proper name for this? Nail art vinyls? Nail art stencil vinyls? Nail art template stickers? Well, as you can see from the photo below, they've used the name 'Nail Art Hollow Sticker'. Sounds weird. I think I prefer nail art stencil vinyls. But in the end, a photo speaks a thousand words:

[Silicone nail art mat and nail art hollow stickers]

I usually don't get very crisp results from nail art vinyls when I use them straight onto my nails. So this time, I thought I would try the nail art stickers on a silicone nail art mat. The stickers were just so much easier to deal with, understandably, when applied on the flat surface of the silicone mat.

[Nail art hollow stickers applied onto the silicone nail art mat]

I cut up the vinyl based on the dotted lines they provided and stuck them onto the silicone nail art mat. I'm only using 6 pieces here because they're pretty large, so I figured that other than my thumbs, the other pieces will cover two nails each.

Side note, I really love the holo on these vinyls. So pretty! Even if they all get painted over in the end!

[Manicure in progress]

I don't actually have in progress photos since I had to move pretty fast. If you do this too slowly and your nail polish dries too much, you end up peeling off your nail polish as well from the mat when you pull off the vinyl.

So here are the steps I went through, with references to the photo above.

1. Stick the vinyl onto the silicone mat, as shown in (A). Now paint over it to cover the hollow parts. In this case, I painted over it in a gradient of colours  
2. Peel off the vinyl which leaves only the pattern behind, as you can see in (B)
3. Paint over the pattern left behind with your base shade, as shown in (C)
4. Leave it to dry completely. You will know it's completely dry when the patches of nail polish are completely flat against the mat. 
5. Peel off these nail patches from the mat carefully. Bend the mat to help the peeling off endeavour. 

[Homemade nail art patches/decals]

And voila! I did cut the nail patches into rectangles, so they would look so much prettier for my photos. :)  Then I used a clear base coat on my nails, let it dry enough to be slightly tacky and applied the nail patches on. I used a combination of stretching the nail patches and nail clippers to cut off the excess nail polish.

The nail polish I used for the mani were:

• Revlon's Budding Chrome - a light peachy chrome nail polish that rather overwhelmed everything
• The Face Shop's GL111 - a pale gold foil 
• Revlon's OceanChrome - a teal chrome 
• Australis' Goth Rock - a near-black maroon nail polish

[Revlon's Budding Chrome, The Face Shop's GL111, Revlon's OceanChrome, Australis' Goth Rock]

I do like using the nail stencil vinyls on the silicone nail art mat. I think the results are a lot neater, with crisper lines. With gradient manis and nail stencil vinyls done straight onto the nails, I often feel like the process is usually rather messy and requires quite a bit of clean up after. With the use of the nail stencil vinyls on silicone nail art mat, the mess was constrained and easier to deal with.

I just really like having these new tools to work with now!