May Challenges - Weather

Today's challenge for #clairestelle8may was weather. Now, I wouldn't want to wish more snow on us, the UK is pretty rubbish at dealing with snow and we didn't have much this year, thankfully, but I did feel a bit cheated at the lack of opportunity to stamp endless snowflakes on my nails. So, the weather prompt is clearly a sign to do snowflakes. My daughter was horrified that I was going to stamp snowflakes in May!!
I decided I'd go for a dark stormy sky so I started with a base of Leighton Denny Graycious, a beautiful dark grey creme.
Then I did a saran wrap mani, adding Leighton Denny Zero Gravity, a lighter grey creme. I love saran wrap, such a quick easy way to get a really cool effect.
Then I added the snowflakes using Pet'la Plate Flake No More and Essence Stampy 001.
Finally, to appease the outraged daughter, I stained the snowflakes red with alcohol ink, and then stamped over them with Hit the Bottle Absinthe Minded and a different image from the same Pet'la Plate. This looked cool I think until I top coated it and the alcohol ink went all funny - I probably should have top coated between the ink stage and the final stamp - that will teach me to cut corners. Never mind - it's colourful!!

Leighton Denny Graycious

Saran wrap mani with Leighton Denny Graycious
and Leighton Denny Zero Gravity

Pet'la Plate Flake No More and Essence Stampy 001

Pet'la Plate Flake No More and
Hit the Bottle Absinthe Minded

Stamping! Valentine's Mani with A England Her Rose Adagio and Moyou London Princess 14

Well of course I had to do a Valentine's mani - actually this is my 2nd one, the other one is still a secret!!
I am not really a pink kind of girl so of course I started with a black base, Nails Inc New York Noir, and then I did a red saran wrap thing over it using a dark red by Manhattan. That gave me a lovely black red marbled base to stamp over and I chose the pretty interlocking hearts on Moyou London's Princess 14 plate. I stamped with A England Her Rose Adagio and I love the finished result!
The A England polishes stamp beautifully and Her Rose Adagio gave this mani a really pretty delicate look. There was no sun today so the outdoor shots show Her Rose Adagio to be a silvery shimmery polish, but the indoor shots under the LED lamp have picked up the holo really nicely. In both lights I think it looks lovely and I like the contrast with the glossy marbled base - pretty pleased with this one.

Valentines Mani with A England Her Rose Adagio
and Moyou London Princess 14

 

 

 

Black and red saran wrap mani

A2Z Series - J is for Jewel

It is Thursday again and time for the next letter - this week it is J is for Jewel.
I had decided what I was going to do for this week and then lying awake one night I suddenly wanted to do green amber instead. I think amber in general is fascinating, but I am not a lover of yellow or orange, so when I discovered green amber it was love at first sight. I couldn't wait to double check that it is actually a jewel so I could use it for this week's challenge. A quick google search told me "amber is a jewel quality fossilized resin"
Other than stamping, the other nail art technique that I discovered and really enjoyed most in 2014 was the saran wrap mani and I was pretty certain I could do something green and pretty using that technique.
I decided to start with a dark base, so I painted my nails with A England Lady of Shalott (I know its blue but it's mostly covered up and I wanted to wear it yesterday on its own).
This morning I blobbed A England Dragon onto my nails and moved it around with the saran wrap. I then added a few more much tinier blobs of A England Holy Grail, just to add a bit of golden warmth and saran wrapped that too. Top coat and done - 5 minute mani.
This turned out pretty much as I planned and I love them! I know they are a bit darker than green amber, but I like the dark base showing through and I just love that marbled finish. The fact that the 2 A Englands are holographic and sparkle delicately just adds to the prettiness of this, I think so anyway :)

 J is for Jewel - green amber

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look HERE to see what everyone else got up to.

An InLinkz Link-up

Stamping! Pueen SE01B over a fiery saran wrap base

Today's mani is a bit of a bright one! I had a few issues with my stamping but overall I think it has turned out OK.
I wanted to stamp a fairly abstract floral pattern over something really bright, the sorts of colours I am seeing in people's lead-lighting manis, but just using ordinary varnishes as I don't have any lead-lighting polishes.
I started by painting my nails yellow!!! with Leighton Denny Brick Road. My children know my hatred of yellow and they couldn't believe it! I hate it so much I couldn't even bring myself to take a picture for my records.
I then added a few blobs of Nails Inc Atomic, and moved them around with saran wrap. Once dry I added more blobs of a dark red (Manhattan, no idea of its name but it is actually a lovely dark red), and I smushed that around. By now I'd successfully obscured most of the yellow :) Then I added a few small blobs to Barry M White just to tone it down a bit and smushed them around too.
I top coated it and then got down to the stamping. All that took a very small amount of time, these kind of manis are really quick and actually not too messy! In theory the next stage would have been quick too but I had a bit of an issue with my stamper refusing to pick the images up crisply. I was using A England Camelot which is perfect for stamping but this time it looked greyish and a bit watery.
It would appear my stamper did not like the remover I was using to clean the plate, hopefully that won't happen again. Anyway, despite lots of failed stamps on a sheet of paper I did stamp my nails, the images are a bit pale and not as crisp as they should be but that's the perfect excuse to try this again, maybe with blue, green and purple :)
I chose one corner of the Pueen plate SE01B but dotted around using different parts for each nail- I really like that sort of stamping where good placement is not vital, particularly on a mani like this one.
Apart from the quality of the stamping this actually turned out pretty much as I had planned and I am pleased with it, I really like the contrast of the 3 brights, the white and then the black stamping.
Also secretly pleased to have found a use for yellow :)

Pueen SE01B over a fiery saran wrap base

 

 

 

 

 

Saran wrap mani with Girly Bits Too Hot for Pants and A England Her Rose Adagio

Today I have done another saran wrap mani, this time with A England Her Rose Adagio over Girly Bits Too Hot for Pants.
The intention was for this to be a base for a dotticure mani, following one of Debbie Crumpet's Simples tutorials, but my dotting tools have not arrived yet, so I may have to abandon that.
I am not sure this one worked as well as my first one; the holo in both these polishes is so strong that it seems the colours have blended too well, so I can't really see the marbling effect as well as I'd hoped. It is still pink and sparkly and pretty, but the definition is not there so I think it might just look a bit messy. It would have made a great base for dots though :(
I shall have to be brave next time and use creme polishes, maybe even contrasting colours :)

Saran wrap mani with Girly Bits Too Hot for Pants
and A England Her Rose Adagio

 

  

Saran wrap mani with Above the Curve Slitheen and TarasTalons Smile

I first saw a saran wrap mani some time ago and thought how pretty it looked, and to be quite honest having decided it was a bit too complex for me, I then promptly forgot about it. However, there I was last week, watching The Crumpet's tutorial videos and I spotted one for the saran wrap.
I watched it a couple of times, and decided that yes, I could probably try that, so that is what I did today.
I had been wearing the very gorgeous Above the Curve Slitheen, and I didn't really want to take it off yet, but equally, having decided I was going to do a saran wrap mani, I wanted to get on and try it, so I thought long and hard about what I might use. I didn't want too much of a contrast for my first attempt, but obviously it needed to be apparent that something had been applied. Thinking about the warm golden glow that I could see in Slitheen, made me think that maybe gold would be a gold colour to try, but I did think it would be nice to use another holo rather than a metallic polish, and then I remembered TarasTalons Smile which I received in one of the Holohands subscriptions.
To be fair, when this arrived it was not love at first sight, I don't really like gold as a nail colour, but as it's quite a soft, almost nude gold it was allowed to sit and wait in the untried box.
As it turned out I think it went really well with Slitheen, the shimmers and holos worked well together, and I am really pleased with the result. It's quite a subtle look, but I am OK with that and I think it looks really autumnal.
What I am even more pleased about was how easy it was to achieve this look, not at all messy and now I want to try it again, maybe be a little braver with my colour choices!
Lots of pictures... this tells you I was so chuffed with this mani, I kept taking more!

Saran wrap mani with Above the Curve Slitheen
and TarasTalons Smile