Before & After: Inspired by my phone backdrop

Hello!

So I've decided to just admit that this month has already managed to get away from me, and jump forward to the next '12 Days' challenge so I can at least give the illusion of being on top of something.

On my phone, I have an app on my phone that shows trees in a wintery scene as my background, and a couple of the trees are decorated with little Christmas lights on them. Santa and his reindeer fly by occasionally, and that becomes more frequent as Christmas gets closer. Since I don't get snow where I live, this is my way of having that snowscape in my life, and I decided to do a manicure to honor that.

I promised you that today I would be doing a review of the half-bead microbeads I showed you yesterday, that Born Pretty Store sent me for review. These are a 100% improvement over the full-sphere ones, because they are only half of a sphere each:

Born Pretty Store half microbeads

This makes them a lot easier to work with, because they don't roll around everywhere if you dump a few of them out of the container; they also are easier to apply and don't stick up as much as regular microbeads. And while I've never had too much trouble keeping microbeads on because I tend to cover well with topcoat, the increased contact area with you nail keeps these on longer than normal microbeads.

For my manicure, I started with the same polish as yesterday, China Glaze There's Snow One Like You; I was very pleasantly surprised after yesterday's post to find out there are a number of you out there that like this besides me! :)

China Glaze There's Snow One Like You

China Glaze There's Snow One Like You

 Then I free-handed some simple trees on three of the nails with Glittering Garland, a dark pine green jelly with gold shimmery bits; I drew an outline of the trees with a small art brush and then filled in with the polish brush itself. I finished by decorating my tree with the half-beads:

 

You can see how the flat side of the beads changes the look and the dimension over full-sphere beads; sometimes you might want the other look, and it's always good to have choices! :)

I've been really into having nail art on three of the nails lately...I like the negative space that the plain nail gives, and I think it looks cool when the fingers aren't placed right together: 

What do you think? I'm definitely a symmetry girl, but the symmetry issue is solved because the two hands together make it all look symmetrical, even if each hand isn't, lol. Yes, I have more...let's call them quirks...running around in my head than you can even imagine, and a need for symmetry is one of them!

As always, you can use my code for 10% off your entire purchase at Born Pretty Store; I am not an affiliate, but when I checked yesterday, I had enough purchases with a code that Born Pretty Store will be sponsoring a giveaway, so stay tuned for that as soon as I hear back from them!!!

Hope this manicure helps to keep your spirits bright. :)
M.

Before & After: Winter Wonderland

Hello!

If orange is the new black, can 'one day late' be the new 'on-time' for nail art challenges?? Pretty please?

No, I really do just need to get my act together.

Well, today's yesterday's challenge theme for my Crumpet's Nail Tarts Christmas Winter Challenge is 'Winter Nature (Landscapes, trees, frost..)', so today I created for you my version of a Winter Wonderland.



I started with this most controversial of 2013 Holiday Polishes, China Glaze There's Snow One Like You. This is a white, glittered, textured conglomeration of a polish that takes the idea of texture to a new apex or nadir, depending on your personal preference. I admit, I am one of the few who truly love it--it looks to me like drifts of snow and makes me feel like my fingertips have that tree flocking stuff on them. I personally think it looks best with a generous coat of topcoat over the top, to smooth it out a bit:

China Glaze There's Snow One Like You

China Glaze There's Snow One Like You

China Glaze There's Snow One Like You

Next, I stamped over it using Barry M Silver Foil and Bundle Monster 407:

Finally, I put little half-beads as accents for the circles on the design; these were sent to me for review from Born Pretty Store, and I will be doing a more complete review of them tomorrow. If you're interested in buying them in the meantime, I have a 10% coupon code (MCL91):

Later on, we'll conspire

As we dream by the fire

To face unafraid, the plans that we've made

Walking in a winter wonderland. :)

I wasn't sure how this would come out stamped over texture, but I do sort of like the way it makes the light shine off of different parts of the trees, almost like it's being lit by moonlight or something. And what do you think, better with the beads, or without? I think the beads add a little special something.

Hope you're enjoying your winter wonderland, whatever it might be looking like. :)

Hugs and loves,

M.

Before & After: What happens when Rudolf drinks too much...

Hello!!

So I'm part two holiday challenges this month, and I'm already behind on two of them. But it's for a good reason--I'm made some really good progress on my book and should have a complete first draft in a week or two. Woo hoo!

Today's theme, which is for The Twelve Days Of Christmas Nail Art Challenge, is festive colors/glitter.

I started with Jessica Touch it, a gold-silver blend textured polish with glitter for extra glimmer:

Jessica Touch It 

Next I added a layer of Shirley Ann Nail Lacquer Rudolph Ralphed, which I just got in her Black Friday sale; it's a mix of gold, red and green glitters in hex and square shapes. Inspired by the name, I decided to add the little Rudolph who had just ralphed it all over my fingers--I figure, he must have been drinking too much at the annual North Pole Christmas party:

I stamped the reindeer with Konad Black, and China Glaze Passion and Brownstone (I layered them to get the shadaowed effect), and Bundle Monster plate H01. I added a red stud for the nose and two black rhinestones for the eyes.

Look at that little dickens! Cute as a button! Well, at least he looks a little bit sheepish about getting glitter everywhere...sigh...;)

Hugs and love, and don't forget to check out the other manis below! :)

M.

Review: MoYou-London Christmas 01 (and how to use collage-style plates)

Hello!

Have you heard of MoYou-London's stamping plates?

I'm pretty sure you have, because they've been getting a bit of exposure lately, and they're awesome. I was just able to place my first order of MoYou-London plates, and I wiped out my Christmas present money doing so, before I even got it.

But I don't regret it. I love the style of so many of the images, but more than that, I adore the innovative direction they're taking with their plates--by creating a wide variety of what I'm calling 'collage-style' plates.

Before I say more, here is the video I made of Christmas 01, from their Festive collection; I talk more in the video about the ways I think these plates can be used and why I love them so much:

Okay, so, now back to why I think the collage-style plates are the next new direction in stamping. When you first look at them, especially if you're fairly new to stamping, I think they can be wildly intimidating, so I want to walk you through some reasons why you should love them and pet them and kiss them and hug them. Wait, that's kittens. But you get my point.



Here is what the plate looks like:

And a little closer up:

Scary, right? It's okay, I know what you're thinking. Yeah, that's cute and all, but it's not like I can get the collage onto my fingertips. That gingerbread house wouldn't fit on my whole hand! How could that possibly be useful??

I would like to convince you that not only is this just as useable as a regular plate, it actually offers you a bunch more possibilities than a regular plate. The main skill you need to use this style of plate effectively, other than just the basic scrape-and-stamp skill,  is the ability to isolate images. I have a tutorial on how to isolate images that you can find here. I have that tutorial condensed into a single image here. And if you'd like to see my tips on aligning stamps you can find them by clicking here.


So what can you do with them? Among other things you can:

1) Isolate images, for example, those cute little presents up there, or that adorable little gingerbread guy.

2) Build scenes that are in perfect proportion, for example, have Santa and his reindeer flying across your nails, or have a snowman at the north pole scene.

3) Select areas of the collage for full-nail patterns, for example, the stars in the sky or the trees on the gingerbread house.

4) Select areas of the plate to stamp that have two images and create a patchwork look in a single easy stamp; for example, you could stamp the area of the house that has the snowflakes and the chevrons for one nail, the trees and the chevrons for another, etc.

5) In the case of this plate, you can use the border to make candy-cane stripes across your nails (how cute would that be for French tips?!):

Different collage plates have different opportunities for play, but you get the idea. And I'm sure there are tons more besides these.

What's that you say? That it sounds good in theory, but you don't believe it can actually happen? Well, let's take a look at two looks I threw together quickly for you. I literally threw some stamping over the polish I was wearing (Shirley Ann Nail Lacquer Not Your Mama's Cranberry Sauce) in a few minutes, so imagine what you could do if you were being careful, lol... :)

For the first look I did a simple stamp with China Glaze Passion (a gold polish), using the image from the center of the Christmas tree. This one took under a minute to stamp, no lie:

As you can see, in my hurry, I actually picked up my image too closely to the edge of the tree--there was plenty of room for me to have avoided that--and I got tree edge on my nails. However, as you can also see, it really didn't make too much of a difference, and next time I'll just be a bit more careful. :)

For the next look, I first used the snowflake images (the ones above the reindeer on the plate), and then stamped Santa and his reindeer over them. Notice that there isn't enough area where the snowflakes are to get a single image of them that will cover the whole nail; so I had to stamp each nail twice to cover them. Too much work, you say? It still took me only about 3 minutes to do the entire manicure:

(As you can tell from the index finger, I initially tried stamping Santa and his deers in gold, but it didn't show up very well...grrr...)

So there you go, two fun, cute manicures in no time flat!

The moral of the story is, don't let these collage-style plates frighten you away. If you can do even just basic stamping and you can use my technique for isolating an image, you can do tremendously cool things with these plates. And of course, if there are any questions you have about them or any tutorials you want me to do with them, let me know. :)

I hope you've enjoyed this, and that I've taken at least a little fear out of these sorts of images for you. :)

Hugs and love,
M.

(The plate in this review was purchased with my own money.)

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Hanukkah!

I'm currently spending time with my family, but I wanted to show you my Thanksgiving and Hanukkah manis!  I'm not Jewish and don't celebrate Hanukkah, but I wanted to do a mani to say Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate it!  Get ready for a crap ton of pictures!

First, for my Thanksgiving mani, I did a jelly sandwich using one of Lynnderella's Thanksgiving Twinset polishes Punkkin Pie in between layers of Colors by Llarowe Coconut.  Then, I attempted a pond mani using stamps from Red Angel plate 121 sandwiched in CbL Coconut and Elevation Polish Cascade.  For stamping, I used Essie Good as Gold, Essie Penny Talk, and China Glaze Passion.

The idea in my head was lacking in execution.  Coconut is technically a jelly, but it's a bit too opaque for jelly sandwiches and pond manis, unless you're using super beyond sheer layers, which I even attempted to do. Cascade was a perfect polish to work with as it wasn't too thick, streaky, or hard to handle.  It also handled the pond mani quite well!  

All of the polishes I used for stamping are metallics, so they stamped really well with great image pickup and transfer.  The Essie Mirror Metallic collection is my go-to non-Konad special polish for stamping.

Punkkin was a bit of a surprise because it has a bit of a yellowish tint to the base, which comes out strongly since I used it over and under white.  Like most Lynns it's a thick glitterbomb packed to the gills with all sorts of colors, sizes, and shapes of glitters including some really sweet hearts!  It definitely requires the dab method, but almost all of her gorgeous polishes do, so I'm used to it.  You can get Colors by Llarowe at Llarowe's shop, Elevation at her store, Lynnderella at her store, Essie and China Glaze at Beauty Supply stores and drug stores, and Red Angel plates on Amazon.

Next is my Hanukkah mani!  Let's take a look at Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer Ma'oz Tzur by Candlelight, which is a black polish with a purple flash and a rainbow of micro-flakies.  I wanted to go with a nontraditional color combination that wasn't the normal silver and blue you usually see for Hanukkah.  Ma'oz Tzur is a liturgical poem traditionally sung during Hanukkah after lighting the festival of lights.  The thought behind this color scheme is to capture the flickering of lights in the darkness.  This is two coats with one coat of Gelous and one coat of KBShimmer's Clearly on Top.

Dry time is typical, and it goes on smoothly without clumping despite being packed full of pigments.  Ma'oz Tzur by Candlelight is a limited edition from my Holiday Limited Edition Collection and is currently up on my store right now.  Don't forget, I'm having sales all weekend, and Ma'oz Tzur will be a part of that sale!

So, what do you have on your nails for Thanksgiving and Hanukkah?  I hope everyone who celebrates has  happy and safe holiday!