May Challenges - Lace and Born Pretty BPL-030

This week's smoosh was a special editon for Mother's Day (not UK Mother's day - the rest of the world Mother's Day!) so the colours were white, glitter and our choice - I went for blue, because I love blue!!
I used OPI Road House Blues, 'Ard As Nails White Van Girl and OPI Which is Witch?
I am not sure I got as much glitter as I should have but I think it looked pretty and I liked the indigo blue with the white.
The prompt was Lace for #ggfnachallenge - the perfect opportunity to use Born Pretty BPL-030 which had been sent to me by Born Pretty for review -product code is 21816, available here
I started with Kleancolor Neon Sapphire and this worked really well with the plate - it stamped beautifully. I used a more open design as I was stamping blue over blue.This is a lovely plate with a nice mixture of mostly floral lacy designs, laid out well on the plate and because the images were basically 3 longs strips of pattern it seemed to be more flexible for longer nails. My nails are not particularly long but small images can be a real pain.
Then for my second layer I used Barry M Cotton and a more solid pattern. Cotton is not fully opaque so the blues still showed through and resulted in a  really pretty mosaic style.
I am really happy with this plate, and I have already used it again. I was also pretty pleased with the final mani.

#smooshattack

Born Pretty BPL-030 and Kleancolour Neon Sapphire

 

Born Pretty BPL-030 and Barry M Cotton

 

BPL-030

Neon stamping!

There were no challenges for today so I took the opportunity to try one of the trio of Polished by KPT thermals I got from Rainbow Connection last week.
I don't wear a lot of pink so I thought I'd try Penelope first. This is a really bright neon pink, which turns purple when cold. I read that you should wear a white base to make it really vibrant, so I started with a coat of Barry M Cotton and then added 2 coat of Penelope - wow that's pink!
This is an amazing polish, pink with a blue shimmer but reading further I discovered it is a cold sensitive thermal so it only changes when really cold, and you can't just run your hand under the tap to get the purple effect, so this will go back on the shelf until the winter!!
My family could not believe I was wearing such pink nails, and nor could the camera - the colour was amazing but the camera just could not pick it up in the miserable rain we had today, so I gave up.
A concerted effort with an ice cube yielded one quick macro shot of the thermal transition, and then I stamped over it.
I have used Kleancolor Neon Sapphire a lot, because it stamps so well. It doesn't seem to be neon, the name amuses me every time but I do like the contrast of deep blue with bright pink and I think it has worked very well here with Apipila Super Plate B.

Kleancolor Neon Sapphire and Apipila Super Plate B

 

hint of thermal gradient - Polished by KPT Penelope

July Challenges - Glitter / Patriotic

Today's challenge for #30daysofcolourchallenge was Glitter / Patriotic.
I wondered what I should do but then I remembered moving heaven and earth to get Nails Inc Jubilee, the limited edition red, silver and blue glitter, brought out for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012.
I used 2 coats which gave pretty good coverage. It has gone a bit gloopy and was very bumpy! I added 2 coats of top coat and even now after stamping and adding more top coat I can still feel the bumpy surface but it is a stunning glitter!
I stamped over it with DRK Cobogo 1 and Kleancolor Neon Sapphire. The overall finish looks good, the stamping is lovely and looks really good against the glitter but it was impossible to photograph. In the end I added another 2 coats of OPI Matte top coat and finally got a half decent picture. Note to self: don't test nice new stamping plates over bumpy glitter!
I think this looks pretty patriotic! red, white (silver) and blue covers quite a few countries so hopefully I'll get away with it!

Nails Inc Jubilee

DRK Cobogo 1 and Kleancolor Neon Sapphire

 

An InLinkz Link-up

June Challenges - Pastel / Stamping

The #30daysofcolourchallenge for today was Pastel / Stamping so I decided I'd stamp with Virtuous Polish Magdalene, a yellow pastel/neon hybrid which I thought would look good over a dark base.
I started with a base of Kleancolor Neon Sapphire, not very neon but a lovely dark blue. Not sure what went wrong but when I top coated the stamping, the yellow melted into the blue - hey presto we have green, not exactly what I had in mind! I think it looked pretty but not really pastel.
Anyway, I hadn't planned a second layer of stamping but since this went wrong I thought I'd better try again! I stamped with Moyou London Tropical 03 again and Virtuous Polish Queen Ester.

Moyou London Tropical 03
 and Virtuous Polish Magdalene

 

 

 

Moyou London Tropical 03
and Virtuous Polish Queen Ester

 

 

An InLinkz Link-up

April Challenges - Blue and Blue for Autism Awareness

I decided to try and do more challenges which might be a bit mad because it is now year end at work so I'll probably be really busy. The logic is that if I follow the challenges I won't spend ages trying to decide what to do on my nails. We'll see - I think the blog posts will get shorter (hurray! I hear you shout)
Anyway, the first challenge is #30daysofcolourchallenge hosted by @procrastinailart. This is a daily challenge and the first prompt is blue.
The other challenge I decided to try is #ukstampersapril and the prompt for 1st April is Autism Awareness, so the 2 challenges should be OK to combine since the main colour behind this campaign is blue.
I started with a base of Nails Inc Instyle Bluebell, and then I stamped a water marble design from Hehe 040 - a wonderful plate if your water marbelling skills are anything like mine!
I still wanted to stamp on top of that so I went for a subtle effect, stamping Fancy Gloss Mermaid Tales. This is a very pretty blue tealy holo, not really opaque enough for bold stamping but perfect for what I wanted. I was really pleased with how that looked.
Finally, from Lealac LLC-A I have used the jigsaw image and Kleancolour Neon Sapphire.

Nails Inc Instyle Bluebell
#30daysofcolourchallenge

Hehe 040 and Fancy Gloss Mermaid Tales

 

Lealac LLC-A and Kleancolor Neon Sapphire
 #uknailstampersapril

 

Lealac LLC-A and Kleancolor Neon Sapphire
matte

An InLinkz Link-up

March Challenge #clairestelle8march - Gems

Well, I had to cheat for today's challenge - I hope Claire doesn't mind! It was either cheat or skip this one and I have managed to do all the others so it would have been shame.
The prompt is Charms/ Nails Gems but I don't have anything suitable so I have just gone with stamped gems!
To make up for cheating I have tackled a new technique, reverse stamping (I think), where you colour the stamped image before placing it on the nail.
I started with a base of Nails Inc New York Noir. Then I chose my 3 most gem-like polishes- China Glaze Ruby Pumps, Nails Inc Emerald Street, and Kleancolour Neon Sapphire.
I splodged a little of each of these gem polishes onto all my nails except the ring fingers and smushed them around with a bit of bubble wrap.
I used UberChic Beauty UC 2-02 for the ring fingers. I stamped the diamond image with Mentality White Opaque and then carefully coloured the diamonds in with the 3 chosen polishes. Once this was dry I top coated the ring finger and stamped the coloured image (5 times until I got it right!)
The Kleancolour didn't work too well merging with the white stamped image but the Nails Inc and China Glaze seemed OK so that once top coated again you can clearly see the shimmery colour shining through.
This was quite time consuming and I am glad I only tried to do one finger on each hand but at least I tried and now know what's involved if I decide to try again.

Gems - UberChic Beauty UC2-02

 

 

January Blues ? - Kleancolour Neon Sapphire

One of my facebook groups suggested Neon week. I couldn't think of any neons that I had so I decided to use one that strangely has Neon in its name. Kleancolor Neon Sapphire is blue but as far as I can see not Neon.

It's a lovely colour, but for me not really spectacular. It applied well but took forever to dry. It's pictured here with no top coat as I needed to try out a new flakey.
I managed to get hold of Nails Inc It Girl and had been looking forward to a chance to use it. I love the effect of flakies but I have to say this combo was pretty but didn't really wow me in the way others had. It was very difficult to photograph and in most lights wasn't really noticeable at all.
I think I'll need to try this again over different blues and maybe black to get a better contrast. I think maybe it was just the wrong blue but it did leave me feeling a little disappointed - definitely January blues :(