Nail Polish Play

Tag: HKGirl

Unexpected Stamping on a Neon Watermarble!

Hi guys,

Two posts in one day you ask? Well I do have a lot of catching up to do 😀 This is going to be a looong post with the neon watermarble first, a review of sorts for the Born Pretty Store 6 piece watermarble tool/ dotting tool all in one and followed up with some winter themed nail art (hint!). You’re welcome to skip all the text and just get right to the pictures if you like!

I was inspired to do a watermarble with these specific colours by a post I saw on my good friend Parul’s (Precious Pearl Makeup) instagram account – here.

Here’s a look at the watermarble I was talking about:

Part 1 : The watermarble!

This is literally only the second time that I’ve attempted a watermarble so be kind! I was going for that floral petal pattern and I think I’ve somewhat achieved that to some reasonable degree.

Here’s what I used:

The Basics :

Basecoat – Orly Bonder

Sally Hansen – White On to make a white base for my watermarble

Liquid Latex for easy cleanup with everything! (watermarble to stamping)

Glisten & Glow – HK Girl Top Coat

6 pc Nail Art dotting tool/ watermarbeling tool from BornPrettyStore : I was really curious about this tool so picked it up with my own money. Here’s a closer look at the tool and a mini review!

Part 2 : The review!

Mini review of the Born Pretty Store 6 p.c. Nail Art Dotting Tool / Watermarble tool :

So this is a new offering from Born Pretty Store and promises to be an all in one! The product listing says it’s a 6 piece set, but as 2 are already attached to the tool itself, you actually get 8 nibs of different sizes from the largest to the smallest.

The smallest pin is what is being marketed as a watermarble tool. To be honest, I was a little disappointed that it had a tiny pinhead and not a complete pointy end similar to the pure colour watermarble tool. Though this doesn’t seem to affect the actual watermarble as much as I thought it would. You do need to clean the tips after every single drag which can be annoying. This is because polish builds up around that tiny tip and it can lead to a mess if it’s not cleaned. On the other hand, this is true of any tool you use for your watermarble, so it’s not something that’s unique to this tool as such.

Now, if you look at the rest of the fitments, I’m really impressed. It has dotting tool heads of all possible sizes and everything can be accommodated inside the barrel of this tool. It’s very neat and everything is very compact. If I’m going to travel, all I’ll ever need for most kinds of nail art is this tool.

It’s made from good quality materials and all the different pieces fit perfectly. It’s not very finicky to use and it really would’ve been perfect in my book if BPS had only given it a proper needle tip for the watermarble tool. So on the whole I’d give this a 4 out of 5 🙂

You can purchase this tool here, and use my code NPPQ10 to take 10% off on this and any other full priced items on BornPrettyStore!

Now, back to the watermarble itself. All polishes used by me are from NewU. As you may know if you follow me on instagram, these marble like a dream! They’re also very pocket friendly so you don’t need to feel guilty about dropping polish in water! Here are the colours I used:

No. 96 -French Blue

No. 94 -Carmine Pink

No. 95 – Green Apple ( more chartreuse I should say)

No. 119 -Grapefruit

No. 122 -Burgandy Brown (clearly neither burgundy nor brown, but I don’t make the names ha ha! P.s.- Yes, I know it’s ‘Burgundy’, but it’s spelt Burgandy on the bottle)

No. 114 – Mango Tango

Procedure:

The process is quite simple , I applied white nail polish on my nails to make the neon(ish) colours pop. Then I generously coated everything with liquid latex. I seriously wish I could liquid latex everything on my table every time I have to do a watermarble as somehow polish always ends up where it shouldn’t! Then I dropped drops of polish one at a time to make a nice (somewhat) bullseye.

Then leaving the first two rings alone ( they will be dry by now) and starting from the third ring I used my tool to draw a line inwards to make the petal pattern. Then I chose an okay spot and dunked my finger in, waited a few seconds and used a cotton swab to clear up the leftover polish from around my nails. I did not remove the liquid latex barrier immediately. This is because the polish is still wet and you risk damaging the design itself. So I finished another nail and then removed the latex barrier from the earlier nail. I then used my clean up brush and acetone to deal with any stragglers left behind.

This is the finished result:

There’s still room for improvement I know, hopefully I’ll get there soon.

I also did a watermarble design on my right hand, and like before it turned out better on this one!

If only my index nail was not broken 🙁

Random closeup of my right hand thumb, looks sort of like an alien blood orange 😀 :

Part 3 : The design!

Moving on to the next part , I am participating in a couple of challenges on Instagram this month – one is a nail art competition by the stamping company HeHe plates and the other is the “Weekly Nail Art Challenge” (or #wnac2015) hosted by MissBellaTracey (@missbellatracey on instagram), Lacquerstyle (@kgrdnr on instagram) and Simplynailogical. I decided to submit this next design for both prompts as there’s nothing in the rules anywhere saying I can’t 😀

I decided to go with a slightly unusual choice of design and stamped some snowflakes on my super bright watermarble. I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d even like the end result,but surprisingly I do.

Here’s what I used to create the stamped design:

Black Stamping Polish – Nail Matinee brand – This is an indie brand from India and you can contact Nisha ( the creator) on Facebook

I did face some minor issues (polish was drying a little too fast) with this particular batch of polish, but I’ve been assured by Nisha that the current batch doesn’t have this issue.

Matte Topcoat – Inglot – I swear by this topcoat as it makes everything perfectly matte in one coat. No fiddling with multiple coats trying to matte your manicure. I bought this from the Inglot showroom in New Delhi so unfortunately I don’t have a link for it online.

Konad White Stamping Polish

XL Gold stamper from FabUrNails

Festive Plate 2 – MoYou London

I randomly picked out snowflakes in black and white stamping polish and placed them on my marbled nails. I then sealed it with glossy topcoat first and waited for everything to dry ( which hardly took any time as I’m a fast dry topcoat addict :D). Why glossy topcoat you ask? Well, matte topcoats (at least the one I have) drag the stamped design, make a mess and ruin your manicure. I have just painstakingly made a watermarbled design! No way am I going to risk making a mess!

Once dry, I added one coat of the matte topcoat to mattify my design. I have heard reviews of matte polish not lasting long but I must disagree. I’ve already had this design on my nail for a week and a half as I type and it’s still as fresh as the day I painted it!

Glossy version first:

Looks good, but I feel like something is missing..

And another glossy one:

Now for the matte magic:

Woah! <3 I personally love the matte look! It’s as if the design became more alive somehow!

Here’s more matteness:

Random closeup of dwarf thumb on my left hand ( when will both hands have perfect length nails 🙁 )

Phew! That was a long post! Kudos if you’ve read this till the end!

What did you think? Matte or glossy? Like the snowflakes on such a crazy bright background? No? Why not? Let me know!

See you next post!

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December 4, 2015
Aztec Tribal Stamping Decals with MoYou London Explorer 26
Hello!

I had some time over the weekend so decided to get my hands dirty with stamping decals. I love stamping decals, they befuddle people 😀 Many times it has you wondering “How on earth did she do that?!”. Though I love them, I’m a little lazy when it comes to making the decals. These decals were originally intended for my mother. I went ahead and made extra and decided to use them.

Since I was making decals, I decided to make them as colourful as possible and settled on an Aztec/Tribal print from one of my MoYou plates – Explorer 26. This is probably my favourite collection out of all the ones that MoYou London has released! Such beautiful prints from all over the world!

Here’s all the polishes I used:

BarryM – Elderberry & Almond , They ship to India vis UPS, Shipping is expensive yes, but when you’re a nail polish addict, it’s all part of your obsession 😀 , and you get your BarryM’s in 3 days flat! All the way from the UK, beat that!

OPI Is Mai Tai Crooked? & That’s Hula-rious from the Spring 2015 Hawaii Collection. I bought these when I was on holiday in Russia, so I’m putting links to Amazon here.

Innisfree Eco Basecoat and No.6 – the cheerful yellow that is nameless because Innisfree gives numbers, how sad 🙁 Both were purchased from the Innisfree store and so I don’t have an online link for you, sorry!

HK Girl Topcoat from Glisten & Glow purchased from www.color4nails.com

Konad Black Stamping polish

I used 5 XL Gold stampers from FabUrNails. These are awesome to make decals on! The cap holder is sturdy and sits well.

Here’s a behind the scenes look:

Here’s the steps I used to make my decals:
1. Pick up the image on your stamper with black stamping polish.
2. Use a dotting tool or a toothpick and all the colours you want, and fill colour in the individual details. You need not be very neat as the black stamping polish camouflages most of the overlaps.
3. Wait for everything to dry and cover the entire decal with white polish. I did this so that the colours would pop more.
4. Once the decal is dry, peel it off the stamper. How do you know if your decal is dry? Well, it shouldn’t stick to the stamping head and should ‘pop’ right off. If it’s pulling when you try to peel, it’s clearly not ready and you risk tearing your decal.
5. Use a pair of nail scissors and cut the decal into a size that will fit on your nail leaving a little bit extra to wrap under the free edge of your nail. This sort of ‘caps’ the nail and makes your manicure last longer.
6. Now apply polish on your nail and wait for it to be almost completely dry. When it’s very very lightly tacky, place your decal over your nail and press down gently to get it to stick to your nail. Press down gently or you’ll end up smudging your nail or tearing the decal or both.
7. Wrap the tiny amount of extra decal under the free edge of your nail and smooth out by pressing or using the back of your nail art brush like a rolling pin.
8. Apply topcoat and wait for it to dry. Once it’s dry, clean up the mess around your cuticles with a clean up brush and polish remover. That’s it!
Here’s the finished result:

That’s part of my front yard in the background 🙂

Some more pictures!

Here’s my thumb too :

I leave you with this macro taken in the sun, what do you think?

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September 8, 2015
Illusion Stamping Nail Art with MoYou London Illusion 5

Hello!

Today I’ve got one of the new MoYou London Illusion Plates! The stamping world has gone crazy with most recent releases featuring illusion prints of one form or the other. MoYou London jumped on the bandwagon a little late ( Hello B Loves Plates!) but they’ve come out with spanking irresistable designs!

Anyway, as usual, here’s the plate:

This is plate number 5 from the Illusion Collection.

I love everything about this plate, right from the swirly eye-boggling designs to the Pin Up girl – Elle.

Here’s the stuff I used for my design:

Basecoat – Orly Bonder

Glisten & Glow – HK Girl Top Coat

So Lacque Glossy Nail Enamel from Bourjois – 06 Adora-Bleu

White Stamping Polish – Konad White

Liquid Latex for easy cleanup with stamping

FabUrNails XL gold stamper set

A.S.P Manicure Saver Cotton Claw for cleaning the stamping plate

Procedure:

1. Start off with basecoat and paint two thin coats of the blue polish ( Adora-Bleu).

2. Apply two thin coats of liquid latex around your cuticles. This is to protect your skin from the polish while stamping and makes it much easier to clean up. I use two coats because the latex film becomes thick enough to pull off in one clean sweep. One thin coat tends to tear halfway around the nail.This dries super fast (<1 min) so don’t dawdle while painting it on your skin.

3. Using the white stamping polish, pick up the pattern and stamp on the nail. Once you’ve stamped all the nails, use tweezers to pull of the latex barrier.

4. Some minor cleanup can be done with a flat brush.

5. Topcoat to seal your design. That’s it!

The finished look:

In the sun. The colour looks a little bleached cause it was so bright when I clicked these!

Here’s a macro :

That’s it for this post! What did you think of this design? I’m tempted to try something with holographic polish next.

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June 10, 2015
Born Pretty Store Review – Tribal Fish Stamping Plate BP-66

Hi everyone!

I’m back with another review today, this time of one the round plates from Born Pretty Store. Roughly, 75 plates have been released in this series till now, and all of them are pretty good.

The plate I have today is Fish Leaves Nail Art Stamping Template Image Plate BORN PRETTY BP66, item ID: 20039. A new feature with these plates is, they also come with a sleeve. Unfortunately I’ve forgotten to click a halfway decent picture of it, though it’s got the exact pattern as the rectangular plates. You can see the sleeve here.

This is what the plate looks like:

As you can see, this is a buffet style plate, so the design is good enough for pretty much any nail length. The plates come with the standard blue film, which I’ve removed. This has an interesting mix of designs from the art-deco ish pattern, to the ‘Do Not Cross’ police line. My favourite of course are the tribal fish, they’re too cute!Many enthusiasts admire the sporty charm of the replica patek philippe aquanaut, known for its bold lines and versatile style for daily wear.

Here’s what I used to create this manicure:

Sally Hansen –Diamond Strength Basecoat

Glisten & Glow – HK Girl Top Coat

Konad – Black stamping polish

Shop eighty4 Pastel Neons in – Cotton Candy, Candy Mint, Powder Puff & Pale Leaf . I picked up the complete set of these pastel neons, you can get them here.

FabUrNails XL gold stamper set

A.S.P Manicure Saver Cotton Claw for cleaning the stamping plate

I wanted a neon colour for this nail art but not a ‘proper’ neon, so I used pastel neons. Here are the steps :

1 . Apply basecoat on all your nails.

2 . Paint Powder Puff (pastel neon blue) on your index and middle finger. Paint Pale Leaf (pastel neon yelllow) on your pinky and thumb. Paint Candy Mint (pastel neon green) on your index finger.

3. Use Pale Leaf to stamp the leaves & vines on the blue nails. Next use Cotton Candy ( pastel neon pink) to stamp the same leaf design over the blue nails. Switch up the pattern so that it doesn’t completely overlap. Now use black stamping polish to stamp the tribal fish pattern on the blue nails.

4. Stamp the vine pattern on the remaining fingers in black.

5. Topcoat and it’s done!

The finished look ( my right hand looked better than the left, does that happen to you too?):

Trying to hold all the colours!

A closeup of the fish:

So final thought? This etching is excellent on this plate.I didn’t have any trouble picking up the images.Overall, I think it has an interesting mix of images. This plate is available for purchase at Born Pretty Store and you can use my coupon code NPPQ10 to get a 10% discount! See you next post!

June 5, 2015