Happy New Year! - MdU Black, Sinful Colors' Purple Kraze, Ulta3's Fruit Tingle, Ulta3's Citrus, BK 06, Born Pretty BP-118

Happy new year to everyone! Let's start off 2019 with a bang!

[Fireworks!]

I chose this stamping pattern because I thought it would look a little like fireworks if I added riotous colours. The result is a fun, splash of colours in any case!

[Born Pretty BP-118 stamping plate]

I did all of this on a silicone nail art mat to start off with. First, I put down a clear base on the mat and then left that to dry. Then I stamped down the pattern from Born Pretty's BP-118 stamping plate onto the clear base polish on the mat, using the pattern on the lower leftmost corner of the plate. I used MdU's Black, which is still the best black stamping polish I have ever used. It produces the cleanest, darkest stamped lines of any stamping nail polish I have ever seen.

After stamping, I added a touch of glitter from Maybelline's Gold's Night Out, just because the bottle was sitting on my desk. XD  Then I used a fine brush to paint in the different colours. I've gone into detail on the whole process in a past post here.

[Stamping plate: Born Pretty BP-118
Stamping polish: MdU Black
Nail polish colours: Sinful Colors' Purple Kraze,
 Ulta3's Fruit Tingle, Ulta3's Citrus, BK 06]

You can see the hint of gold glitter in the picture above. I applied too much glitter for the one that went on my thumbnail. Even though it doesn't look like such here, I actually couldn't see what on earth I was painting in for half of that particular nail, which is why it's a little bit of a mess. It does look like a rather pretty mess to me.

The colours used are as such:

• Sinful Colors' Purple Kraze - a purple creme polish with a pink shimmer that doesn't really show up on the nail and has a satin finish
• Ulta3's Fruit Tingle - a neon pink creme polish
• Ulta3's Citrus - a neon yellow creme polish
• BK 06 - a teal creme glow in the dark polish

For my right hand, I decided to do it all the same colours and forego the glitter for my own sanity. 

[Stamping plate: Born Pretty BP-118
Stamping polish: MdU Black
Nail polish colours: Ulta3's Fruit Tingle, Ulta3's Citrus, BK 06

Yes, I broke the nail on my index finger. :(  Anyway, I do think this looks less like fireworks but it's still a colourful and pretty mani, in my opinion.

Rippling Change - Dance Legend Wind of Change, Composure, Hex

I'm trying something new here! So this is a result of combining colour changing nail polish with dry 'water marbling' mani. What do you think?

[Ripple Changes]

I kind of love the result. And the look of it just changes all the time, which keeps it even more interesting.

So, how I started was to apply 'water marbling' on my silicone nail art mat. I go into more detail on my method in this post.  I tried a couple different colours and drew two different patterns just so I could get a feel of the nail polishes and which colours would go well together.

[Water marble on silicone nail art mat]

Here's the mani peeled off the silicone nail art mat. I chose 9 with the same colours, and one for an accent nail to see how it would end up looking on my nails. The nail polishes I used were Dance Legend Wind of Change, Dance Legend Composure, and Dance Legend Hex. It's a Dance Legend theme!

Wind of Change is a blue to purple thermal colour changing nail polish with scattered holo microglitter. Ev and I have reviewed that in the past here and here.

I can't believe I don't have a swatch and review of Dance Legend Composure. I'll remedy that as soon as I have access to my nail polishes again, because that's a gorgeous nail polish. Composure is a pale gold to medium pink thermal colour change polish with larger silver flecks.

I also used Dance Legend Hex, a dusty red to almost-black rusty red thermal colour change nail polish which you can see a review of here.

I'll go through how I paired them below.

[Dance Legend Wind of Change
Dance Legend Composure]

Here, I was mainly feeling warm, so you can see just a slight colour change. You can see a more obvious colour change in the first picture of this post, up above. For this, I have paired Wind of Change with Composure. Composure is pale gold, almost silver against my nail bed, and is slightly pink at the tips of my nails. Wind of Change is blue against my nail bed, with a hint of purple towards the tips of my nails. I love how this looks.

[Accent nail: Dance Legend Hex, Dance Legend Composure
Other nails: Dance Legend Wind of Change, Dance Legend Composure]

On my other hand, there's the same pairing of Wind of Change with Composure, but for the accent nail, I have paired Composure with Hex instead. So you can see Hex is the part that is dusty red against the nail bed and a very deep red towards the tips. The contrast for Composure against Hex is more obvious when warm.

[Dance Legend Wind of Change
Dance Legend Composure]

In comparison, this is how the mani looked when I was feeling pretty cold during the day. Everything has colour changed. The contrast of Wind of Change's purple against Composure's pink is not very obvious here.

[Dance Legend Wind of Change
Dance Legend Composure]

Here's how the mani look when it was very cold, later that night. By the way, this mani was done when it was still winter last year, so the colour change was very prominent. You can see the difference in colour between the two different polishes much more clearly now. Wind of Change's purple was very deep and Composure's pink was pretty bright as well under the colder temperature.

[Dance Legend Wind of Change
Dance Legend Composure]

Here's another daytime photo of the mani to show how different fingers can have different looks as well, just depending on which one feels colder.

This was such a delightful mani for me! :D  The only downside is that as you know, it does use a bit more nail polish to do water marbling than just plain straight application. But I don't think it made such a huge dent, and the end result is worth it!

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.

Dot Matrix - Ulta3 Spring Break, Honolulu, Tahiti, Tahitian Lime, Elianto Blue

It's time for dots! It's time for dotticure!

[Dot Matrix]

I got Born Pretty's Professional Nail Art Design Brush Set and Dotting Pen. I've been wanting a brush set for awhile now because I've seen how useful they can be but have been holding out from getting them for ages due to irrational fear that they would be difficult to use, haha. Well, never hurts to try!

[Born Pretty's 12pcs/set Pink Professional Nail Art Design Brush Set and Dotting Pen]

The set consists of 11 brushes and a dotting pen. As you can see from the first picture, each brush (except the fan-like brush) come with their own plastic protector. In the second photo, you can see the various flat brushes, fine brushes and the very tiny dotting tool.

[Nail patches peeled off a silicone nail art mat]

Tada, the results of my hard work! You can see I was experimenting with the pattern before I settled on something. So I started out by painting with my base nail polish Ulta3's Spring Break on a silicone nail art mat. Spring Break is a dark purple creme polish. Then, I painted over Spring Break using one of the flat brushes in the set above to make the yellow upside down triangle. I used Ulta3's Honolulu for the yellow. It's so much easier making a pointy triangle when you actually have the right brush for it, hahah. There's no need to wait for nail polish to dry and then mess around with tape, or do very slow careful free hand with fat nail polish brushes.

Then I used the very tiny dotting tool to dot on nail polish. It's actually so easy to do dotticure when done first on a flat mat! I had no idea, really, I'm so used to dotting on my nails directly. And I find it's so much easier to control the dots with a dotting tool that has such a small head. For most of the dots above, I used a liberal amount of nail polish to create larger dots. They went on so smoothly. I could actually do much tinier and neater dots as well, if I used less nail polish per dot, but I didn't want my dots to be that small this time. But I have ideas for next time already!

[Base: Ulta3 Spring Break (purple) and Ulta3 Honolulu (yellow)
Dots: Ulta3 Tahiti, Ulta3 Tahitian Lime, Ulta3 Honolulu and Elianto Blue]

To reiterate, the base comprises of Ulta3 Spring Break and Ulta3 Honolulu. For the dots, I used the following colours:

• Ulta3 Tahiti - a neon coral orange that looked less neon against the dark purple background
• Ulta3 Tahitian Lime - a green creme polish. There's a trend with these names going on!
• Ulta 3 Honolulu - a yellow creme polish
• Elianto blue - a mid-blue creme polish.

I was actually aiming to make this whole mani comprise of Ulta3 nail polishes but I couldn't find a suitable blue! What a shame.

[Base: Ulta3 Spring Break (purple) and Ulta3 Honolulu (yellow)
Dots: Ulta3 Tahiti, Ulta3 Tahitian Lime, Ulta3 Honolulu and Elianto Blue]

The dots aren't perfect, but I still loved how they turned out!

You can get the Professional Nail Art Design Brush Set and Dotting Pen here and you can also use the discount code above for full price items at Born Pretty!

Terrible Thursday - Revlon Emerald City, Revlon OceanChrome, Revlon Typhoon, Revlon Blue Lagoon

It's time for Terrible Thursday. I used to post my less than successful manis, which are usually created as a result of bad colour choices or just messing up a technique. So here we go.

[Sea Tiles]

It doesn't look tooooo horrible in this picture, but at the same time, it's not great. The colour choices weren't great because three of the shades don't have enough contrast between them (yeah, there are four colours at work here, could you tell??), and the pattern is a little big for my nails and uneven. The mani on the middle finger is so blah. I'll get into other difficulties and potential tips later.

[Left to right: Revlon Emerald City, Revlon OceanChrome, Revlon Typhoon, Revlon Blue Lagoon]

So my colour choices! From left to right:

• Revlon Emerald City - A lovely green polish that dries matte
• Revlon OceanChrome - A teal-ish green chrome polish
• Revlon Typhoon - A mid-blue almost-chrome polish
• Revlon Blue Lagoon - A very light blue polish with a light shimmer

It's a Revlon bonanza! 

I have no idea what I was thinking when I chose to use a matte nail polish for nail polish marbling on my silicone nail art mat. Matte polishes dry fast, so this was a spectacularly bad idea. Then, the chrome polish was just a mess for this type of mani. It didn't create sharp lines, just sort of oozed into the other nail polishes around it.

[Nail patches on Born Pretty's silicone nail art mat]

I did so many nail patches because I wanted to apply them to my toenails as well, like I demonstrated last post. But the results weren't that great this time round, to be honest.

This mani is also when I learned that it would be better if I used a base coat first on the silicone nail art mat, and then marble on top of the clear base coat for each patch. If you don't, you'll find that the nail patches have become very thin after they've dried and might tear when you lift them from the silicone nail art mat. Especially as you've dragged a toothpick through the nail polish when you were doing your marbling, which sometimes leaves lines on your nail patches that are easy to tear. A base coat will help hold it all together.

[Revlon Emerald City, Revlon OceanChrome, Revlon Typhoon, Revlon Blue Lagoon]

That last picture doesn't look too bad, but the second last... boy, the pattern is not even visible on the middle finger. Oh well, lesson learned

Anyway, the chrome nail polish doesn't actually look half bad, but I just need to pick a better combination when I'm doing this in the future.

Chocolate Covers - Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Revlon LilyChrome, Sally Hansen What In Carnation

On a very random starting note, the purple of this nail polish exactly matches the colour of the Cadbury chocolate bar wrapper, which is why this nail polish reminds me so much of Cadbury, hah.

[All nails other than the ring finger: Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Revlon LilyChrome
Ring finger: Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Sally Hansen What In Carnation]

This mani is a result of my playing around on the silicone nail art mat again. I used Sally Hansen's Purple Potion for Cadbury purple nail polish and Revlon's LilyChrome, for the silver chrome nail polish. On my ring finger, I did try something different by using Sally Hansen's Purple Potion with Sally Hansen's What In Carnation, a very pale lavender creme polish.

As you can see, the lines of nail polish when used with a chrome polish like LilyChrome are very crisp and sharp, while this nail art done using creme polishes produces a softer look, as shown on the ring finger.

Here's all the nail art mani I did on the silicone mat. I like to play around with patterns and different nail polish combination too. I basically apply stripes of nail polish and then pull through the stripes with the tip of a tooth pick. Then I leave the nail polish to dry. In the photo above, I had already peeled them off the mat, which is why they're scattered everywhere.

[All nails other than the ring finger: Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Revlon LilyChrome
Ring finger: Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Essie Private Weekend]

On the ring finger for this one, it's really quite a mess. I used Purple Potion with Essie's Private Weekend, a white creme polish. I really did muck up the creme polish nail art, I think because they were just too watery and I had applied too much of it. Also, the creme nail polishes are very thin. If you want to create nail art like this on a silicone mat, apply a clear base coat first and leave it to dry. If you don't, the nail art you created could be too fragile to handle and can split down the seams without the dried base coat to hold it all together.

[All nails other than the ring finger: Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Revlon LilyChrome
Ring finger: Sally Hansen Purple Potion, Sally Hansen What In Carnation]

I really do like this colour combination. :)  And the outcome doesn't look too terrible either!

String Art Manicure (complete with video!) - Essie, Elianto, LA Girl, Australis, Born Pretty nail art mat

Today, we have something a little different. I did an abstract art manicure using a silicone nail art mat and string art. Yes, string art. I'm bringing kindergarten level art into this.

[String nail art]

Today is an unusual post because I have a video tutorial! A first for myself, and a lot of learning to be had while making it, haha. You can watch the video here:

But if you still want to read a tutorial, here's a simple one:

1. First, paint ten patches of nail polish as the base for your decals. I just paint them wherever nowadays.

2. Get thin semi-glossy magazine papers and sandwich the silicone nail art mat between them. Paint the end of a sewing thread with nail polish and put it on the patches of nail polish. Close the paper over the thread and mat, press down with one hand gently, then pull out the thread from between the paper and the mat.

3. You got your first pattern, now! It'll look something like the pattern below. Now keep going with your choice of nail polish, and repeat step 2 several times over.

Here are some progress shots as I layered on string art patterns:

Unfortunately, one nail patch did come off and stuck to the underside of the paper. I peeled it off the paper, stuck it back on to the mat with application of nail polish beneath the patch and kept going. It worked fine up to the last round, then it came off again because I hadn't given the fix enough drying time. It was still salvageable to be used on my pinkie finger since that one's so much smaller.

Peel off all the nail patches from the mat, apply base polish to your nails and then press on these nail patches. Remove any excess bits of nail polish and then seal it with a clear top coat. Then you get the following!

[String nail art]

You can use any nail polish (although preferably, nothing quick dry for the string art parts). The nail polishes I used were:
- Essie Private Weekend
- Blue and green Elianto nail polishes
- LA Girl Hustle
- Australis Fairmont Fling
- Australis Pinot-Dah

Maybe I'm biased, but I love this string art manicure (stringnicure???). :D  It's just so bright and colourful and it looks so artistic. That's an achievement considering how un-artistic I am.

Anyway, hope you enjoy and let me know if you try this out!

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.