Mani Monday: MoYou Kaleidoscope 04 and Color Club Holo

What better way is there to start out the week then with a beautiful manicure that makes you spend the whole day staring at your nails?  This is especially true if you type all day at work like I do.  Here is what I'm sporting on my nails today:

I absolutely love this manicure, it is really stunning in person and I have gotten a lot of complements on it.  It's a skittle manicure composed of five different Color Club Holos from my collection.  Let me pause here and add that I own all 12 of the Color Club Holo line and they are absolutely gorgeous, stunning, and worth every penny!  I regret not buying them sooner.  Here is a picture of the polishes and plate I used for this mani:

Here is a closeup of the lovely MoYou Kaleidoscope 04 plate:

This manicure was a really fast one.  It only took about an hour and ten minutes for me to complete.  I started out with a coat of Gelshine Base Coat (Sephora by OPI) and cured it under the UV light.  I then painted each nail a two coats of a different color.  I then stamped a different design on each nail using my Konad Black Special Polish for stamping (the only black stamping polish I trust!).  Finally, after all that had ample time to dry, I applied a coat of Gelish Top Coat.  I carefully placed my nail gems where I wanted them, cured the polish, then added a second layer of gel top coat and cured again.  Viola!  Easy, fast, beautiful nails that have the staying power to last a couple weeks!

St. Merry by Gogo Only Stamping Plate Review

A brand new plate manufacturer showed up on Amazon a couple weeks ago.  The manufacturer name is Gogo Only and they have a released a single plate called "St. Merry". This is an extra large plate that comes in a pretty sleeve, priced at $12.99.  It has 50 full sized images and 10 single images:

 Naturally I had to buy the plate right away!  Look at all those cute designs. For only $13, this plate was calling to me.  I ordered it with my prime shipping and it arrived two days later.  At the request of many ladies, I then proceeded to make a You Tube video review.  The synopsis is that it is a GREAT plate that I highly recommend!  To see my complete review of the plate including image sizes and swatches, check out the video below:

Fall Manicure - Nail Stamping Manicure - Gradient Manicure

 

 Today I'm going to tell you how I did this simple yet beautiful fall manicure.  I used the following polishes and stamping plate:

• Nail Polish:  Kleancolor Metallic Yellow
• Nail Polish:  OPI S-age is Just a Number
• Nail Polish:  China Glaze Jamaican Out
• Nail Polish:  Konad Special Polish Brown
• Bundle Monster Plate BM-H11 from the BM Holiday Set

The base for this manicure is a simple gradient.  I am not going to give a complete tutorial here on doing a gradient.  I might post one later but you can also search -- there are many tutorials available already.  Here is a link to a good tutorial on how to do a gradient.  For the gradient I used the Kleancolor Metallic Yellow for the base (one coat), then the second color was the OPI S-age is Just a Number, and the tip color was China Glaze Jamaican Out.

After that was done I did some cuticle cleanup and waited for everything to dry.  I then stamped my nails using the BM-H11 plate and my brown Konad stamping polish.  For my fingers I used the full nail leaf image and for my thumb I used the wheat image.  Finally, I used a dotting tool with the stamping polish to fill in the empty space on my thumb. 

Viola!  This manicure only took about an hour to do.  It was really fun, and had a lovely result that got rave reviews.

Want to see more manicure ideas from me?  Go ahead and follow me, and I'll be getting more of these posts up before you know it!  I always have something fun on my nails.  And please leave comments, I'd love to hear from you!

A Starry Night - Nail Stamping Gel Manicure

I have recently fallen in love with two things -- (1) gel manicures and (2) nail stamping.

I have NO artistic ability.  Zilch.  Nada.  None.  So when I discovered these things called nail image plates, I couldn't wait to try them so that I could fancy up my ordinary manicures.  

Using a gel system is another (future) blog post.  To get started with gel, I bought the SEPHORA by OPI SEPHORA by OPI gelshine At-Home Gel Colour System 1 which included absolutely everything I needed.

My manicure begins with a coat of SEPHORA by OPI gelshine™ Base Coat.  I actually found the main color for my manicure at Walmart for only $10.  I figured I give it a try, and I wound up loving it.  It wore perfectly and lasted the full 2+ weeks as it should have.  The color is SensatioNail Color Gel Polish Ocean Sparkle, and I have two coats of that color on.  I will not hesitate in the future to buy any gel color from that brand.  The top coat was SEPHORA by OPI gelshine™ Top Coat.  I will say that I would not trust the base and top coats to any brand but OPI.  This is because you want the best possible base and top coats to ensure the longevity of your manicure.

After I finished the manicure, I cleaned it up and proceeded to stamp.  I absolutely LOVE stamping over gel manicures, because you can use nail polish remover to take off all mistakes and it will not touch the manicure itself.  I would advise that you do put a topcoat on before stamping, however -- the first time I tried a stamping manicure I did not use a topcoat first, and I think the nail polish remover was harming the sheen of the color underneath.

The nail plates I used for stamping this manicure are from the  SHANY 2012 Nail Art Polish Stamp Manicure Image Plates collection.  When I decided I wanted to try stamping, I wanted an expensive set that was well reviewed.  This set met those requirements, and was about $12 for 25 image plates.  Each plate has many images on it, with a minimum of 5 per plate.  The only problem I had with this set was that the blue plastic was hard to remove.  I wound up putting on garden gloves to rub away at the edges of the plastic.  It took forever, but I only had to do it once.

When I first tried stamping, I sadly realized that none of my regular nail polishes worked well for stamping.  So I grudgingly ordered Konad Nail Art Stamping Polish - White, and was very pleased at how well it worked for stamping. I also ordered the Konad Nail Art Stamping Polish - Black, but the white showed up better than the black.  I have since found out that the white shows up on anything (except white, of course) but the black isn't usually as pretty as the white.  Therefore, if you only buy one Konad special polish, you should probably make it the white one.  There are other, non-Konad polishes that work for stamping.  One example is Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Fast Dry Nail Color, Silver Sweep.

After I stamped the images onto my nails I let them fully dry.  I then put on another coat of the OPI gelshine topcoat, cured my nails, and viola!  One gorgeous manicure that lasted almost three weeks.  I eventually took it off because my nails had grown out too much at the cuticles.  The pictures stayed perfect for that entire time because they were underneath a gel polish topcoat.

This was only my second attempt at stamping, so I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.  It's pretty foolproof if you use it over gel.  I would hesitate to use it over regular nail polish, because I did make many mistakes that I took off with nail polish remover.  Some people say that you can put a topcoat on over your regular polish, and this helps to minimize the damage to your manicure underneath.  So if you're stamping on regular polish, make sure you complete a full manicure with topcoat and let it dry before stamping it.

Enjoy!  I hope to post many more manicure pics in the future, although they will be weeks in between because the manicures last so long.  I also plan on writing a post about using gel polish. When I get the true hang of stamping, I'll probably post some tips and tricks.  So stay posted!