Black & White Butterflies

I was trying out several different designs to do for Berry Polished's Black and White Nail Art Competition. As the name suggests you can enter a design but only use black and white nail polish. One of the designs I decided to try was black and white butterflies.

I started off with a Ulta3 Base Coat. I then applied 2 coats of Ulta3 Lily White to all nails but my thumb and ring finger. For those I applied one coat of BYS Black Satin. Once dry I used Black Satin and a small nail art brush to drawn butterfly wings on my index, middle and pinkie fingers and then a small dotting tool and Lily White to draw dots. Then for my ring finger I used Lily White for the wings and Black Satin for the dots.

I wanted to do something different on my thumb so I stamped with the flower design from M26 and the butterfly design from M20 in Konad Special Polish White.

Butterfly Design from M20 (Image from ICNA)

Flower Design from M26 (Image from ICNA)

Finally I topped it all off with Ulta3 top coat. Ooh and then I smudged a nail which I tried to fix :'( Lol and I broke both sides off my thumbs!! :'''''''(

But here are the photos anyway :)

Black & White Butterflies in Artificial Light

Black & White Butterflies in Natural Light

Black & White Butterflies in Natural Light

Black & White Butterflies in the Shade

Black & White Butterflies in the Shade

I don't like how this turned out. My white wasn't opaque enough against my black and I was too impatient to let everything dry completely between each step. I think these butterflies look better on longer nails where I can make the outline of wings thicker so the dots fit on better.

Autumn Leaves

Since we are supposed to be in Autumn (anyone else still dealing with high temperatures? O_o) I got the idea in my head to do some Autumn leaves on my previous manicure. It was the picture below from Konad Stamping Nail Art that inspired my design, of course my nails are NOWHERE near THAT long!!

Konad Design from KONAD

So with that in mind I scoured through my Konad plates until I found the design I wanted to use. I used the leaf designs on Konad plate M20.

Konad plate M20 Image from ICNA

I only stamped half the design on each nail alternating either the big leaf or the small leaf. Then I moved onto the next colour and again alternated which leaf I used. I kept doing this with a new colour until there was no room left - so there are fewer colours on y pinkie compared to my thumb. All up I used Konad Special Polish Gold, Yellow, Blue, Light Grey, Dark Purple, Gold Brown and Green for each successive leaf. Lastly I used Konad Special Top Coat to seal my design.

So what did it end up looking like...

      Left Hand

Autumn Leaves in Artificial Light - Left Hand

Autumn Leaves in Artificial Light - Left Hand

Autumn Leaves in Shade/Natural Light - Left Hand

Unfortunately it was overcast the following day so I have no photos in full sunlight.

    Right Hand

Autumn Leaves in Artificial Light - Right Hand

Autumn Leaves in Artificial Light - Right Hand

Autumn Leaves in Shade/Natural Light - Right Hand

I'm happy with how this turned out :) I wanted it to have multicoloured leaves on the brown background and that's exactly how it looks. I also found it useful to see which colours turned up on the brown for when I want to stamp on similar dark colours. My pad of paper had a large amount of mess left over after stamping so many times!!

Konad Stamp Skittles

I hadn't stamped for awhile and decided to try a few different stamps out on my manicure. I wanted full, bold designs nothing will small delicate lines that might not transfer. So with that in mind I chose 5 designs from Konad plates M15, M24 and M54. I used Konad Special Polish Blue on my thumb and ring finger, then on  my other fingers I stamped using Konad Special Polish Green.

The plates I used:

M15 Images I used on my index and middle fingers (ICNA)

M24 Images I used on my thumb and ring fingers (ICNA)

M54 Image I used on my pinky finger (ICNA)

These photos were taken in artificial light.

Stamped in Special Polish Green and Blue from Konad Image Plates M15, M24 and M54 in Artificial Light

Stamped in Special Polish Green and Blue from Konad Image Plates M15, M24 and M54 in Artificial Light

Then the following afternoon in the dwindling light I took these photos. Oops I forgot to include my thumb!

Stamped in Special Polish Green and Blue from Konad Image Plates M15, M24 and M54 in Natural Light

Stamped in Special Polish Green and Blue from Konad Image Plates M15, M24 and M54 in Natural Light

For me this was a good opportunity to try out different stamps. I actually really like the blue stamped on this colour even though the green stood out more. I can't wait to use the design on my thumb in white on black nails!

Nude Accent with Flowers

It was getting late at night and my nails were still bare because I'd been swatching. I didn't want to leave my nails bare *GASP* so I decided to do a simple design .

I wanted to go with a bare nail look to save time but my nails are slightly stained so instead I applied Konad Regular Base Coat and then a thin layer of Maybelline Sheer Ballet Pink. Once that was dry I used scotch tape for one hand for a red accent across my nails in Revlon Revlon Red and then I freehanded the others. Once that was dry I used the flower image from Konad image Plate M31 and stamped it onto my nail. Then I stamped half the image again onto my nail. I cleaned up my manicure and added a coat of Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat and my trusty Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Quick Dry Drops.

These photo's were taken in artificial light once my design was dry. Sorry about the crappy lighting but the white flowers kept getting washed out.

The following day I took photo's of these before it started to chip. From previous experience I know that Maybelline Sheer Ballet Pink only lasts about a day before it starts to chip.

I love how simple this design is!! I think it looks amazing with the small splash of vibrant red against the delicate flower stamps. Although I keep wishing that I has added just one more flower across the edge of my nail along the red. I'll probably end up doing this design again when I need a quick manicure but add the flower across the top because it was really driving me nuts! That's not to say I don't love this design as it is because I do!

Maybelline Party Blue Glittery Gradient with Geometic Design

So this was the final design I ended up with after using my Maybelline Party Blue manicure and the gradient that followed.

Using the simple gradient design I stamped the geometric design from Konad Image Plate M25 in Konad Special Polish White don the centre of each nail. Wanting something glittery I used BYS Starlette applied to the top 2/3 of the nail and then added a nice thick coat of Seche Vite Dry Fast top coat.


Unfortunately I only have photo's of this in artificial light.

 

  

I really love this design! I know there's a lot going on but every part of it calls to me. I love the blues, the glitter, even the geometric stamp that you can just see! If I was to do this design again I would use a three colours gradient as the base and then apply the glitter to the entire nail.

Maybelline Racy Red and M65

When doing my tutorial on Konad Stamping I used Maybelline Racy Red as my base colour. This was the Konadicure I did for the tutorial. I used Konad Special Polish Black and Konad image plate M65. I used the diagonal full nail pattern highlighted in the image below.

Konad Image Plate M65 from ICNA

I stamped the image in the black onto each of my nails and then removed all the excess polish I got on my fingers and around my nails. Then I finished it all up with a coat of Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat. For a few of my nails I turned my hand when I stamped the last section onto my nail so the lines aren't straight. Luckily though it still looks fine from a distance.

The following photo's were in artificial light. It's good that I photograph my right hand because the stamp on my left hand kept refusing to fully stamp so there is an area with no image. Since I already had a top coat on from my Racy Red manicure I removed the stamped image and tried stamping again, only for it to fail again in the exact same area. So I reverted to my "meh good enough" approach :)

These ones were taken in sunlight, lots of sunlight!

 

I really like this Konadicure and it was so easy to do. This stamp transfers very easily and cleanly, quite surprising for a full nail stamp. Usually with full nail stamps it can be a little trickier to get the whole stamp to transfer. I love the red and black combo, the two colours just contrast so well. I like that you can still see the actually base colour as opposed to the stamp overpowering the original base colour. I love the colours and the pattern of this design and it goes so well with my wardrobe!

Color Club Revvvolution and M78

I wanted to try stamping a holographic nail polish on top of my Color Club Revvvolution but first I had to refresh my manicure. The sides of my nails were absolutely destroyed because I had to keep changing the attachment on the vacuum and the stupid clip/button thingy you have to press decided it didn't like my pretty nails and kept pulling the polish off! So to begin I did lots of touching up on my manicure and then left it to dry completely. Once it was dry I stamped each nail with a full nail design on Konad Image Plate M78 in Color Club Worth The Risqué.

Konad Image Plate M78 from ICNA

I am still amazed at just how little nail polish I had to apply to the image plate. I'm not sure if this is normal for all holographic nail polishes but there was practically no waste, which of course made me very happy since I love my holographic nail polishes! After stamping each nail I applied a nice thick coat of Seche Vite Dry Fast top coat and was done.

The photo's below were taken that night in artificial light after I was finished.

 Color Club Revvvolution with M78 in Artificial Light

Color Club Revvvolution with M78 in Artificial Light

The following morning I took photo's of my design in the sunlight.

 Color Club Revvvolution with M78 in Natural Light

 Color Club Revvvolution with M78 in Natural Light

Hmm although I love the silver holographic on the black holographic for some reason I don't like the design I chose to stamp. I chose this design because I wanted to still be able to see the black holographic underneath, instead of a full nail design where the silver covered the entire nail anyway. On the plus side now I can't wait to wear Color Club Worth The Risqué!

Revlon Iced Mauve and Angled Accent with Flowers

I wanted to play around with a few different techniques to build a nail art design on my Revlon Iced Mauve manicure. To begin with I decided to do an accent angle and I chose to use Maybelline Colorama Dark Plum as I thought it would contrast nicely with Iced Mauve. The design needed something more to it, and to help cover up the shoddy lines I made for my accent nail, so I decided to stamp it. I wanted a design that was long enough to cover the join between the two colours and decided on a flower design from Konad Image Plate M25. So I stamped that image on each nail in Konad Special Polish White. One coat of Seche Vite to make sure I didn't drag my stamped image and it was done!

I took these photo's in artificial light just after I finished so the top coat was still slightly wet.

 

 

Then I took these photo's just as the sun was going down so there wasn't as much sunlight as I would have hoped for. Actually there was only one small spot in my backyard that had a single beam of sunlight shining through!

Wow I love this manicure! I can't wait to mix and match the nail polish colours and the Konad design. There are endless possibilities to this design and I would love to see it in blue. So next time you see it will probably be a blue version!

Chi Chi Glamourama with a Holly Design

I finally got around to doing a design on my Chi Chi Glamourama manicure. I had decided on doing a holly design on my nails and began flipping through my Konad plates. My plans came to an abrupt halt when I realised I didn't own a plate with a holly design. So I decided to improvise and used a nail art brush with Maybelline Express Finish Racy Red to draw the holly berries and then I stamped the leaves from the rose design on Konad plate M25.

Konad Plate M25 from ICNA

I chose racy red because I wanted a vibrant red that would easily stand out against Glamourama. For the berries I used the nail art brush to dab sets of three dots on my nails. Using Konad Special Polish Green, I stamped the leaves using the smaller side of the Konad Double Sided Stamp. Over and over again! If you don't have M25 you can find the same rose design on Konad plate S1, however any leaf design would be fine. I used a coat of Seche Vite to seal the design.

I took these photo's the next morning in the sunshine.

Chi Chi Glamourama with Holly Design in Natural Light 

 

 Chi Chi Glamourama with Holly Design in Natural Light

I love this design! It's so strange because I wasn't a huge fan of Glamourama on it's own but once I added the holly design suddenly I loved everything about it. To me it really screams Christmas and I am so glad I decided to do it!

China Glaze Holly-Day and M3

Today I decided to add a Konad design to my Holly-Day manicure. I knew that I wanted to add something to my design but wasn't sure whether I wanted to add a glitter top coat, draw a design or stamp a design. In the end I decided stamping would be the easiest way.

I chose the scattered star design on Konad plate M3 to stamp over China Glaze's Holly-Day.

Konad Plate M3 from ICNA

I used the smaller side of the Konad Double Sided Stamper to stamp the design on each nail in Konad Special Polish Gold. I wanted the stars to curve around the top area of my nail and chose to stamp the design in the same location on each nail instead of trying to do an inverted design on the opposite hand. After stamping I applied a coat of Konad Top Coat since I didn't want to risk smudging my design.

 

I waited a few minutes and then took these photo's in natural light.

China Glaze's Holly-Day with Konad M3

 China Glaze's Holly-Day with Konad M3

Although I like this design I think it's a bit subtler than I wanted. The gold stamping was very light, however, when the sun hit the design at a certain angle the gold would really show through. I like the stars but I wish that they stamped brighter like in the second photo.

China Glaze Velvet Bow and M64

I decided to add a Konad design to my Velvet Bow manicure to make it more festive. So of course when Christmas shopping I managed to scratch off some of my polish whilst looking around Priceline. So I went ahead and stamped my nails with the criss-cross design on Konad plate M64. I can't remember whether I bought this plate from ICNA, a good website for fellow Aussies after Konad items, or KonadNailArt, where I've bought Konad from before .

Konad Plate M64 from ICNA (International Creative Nail Art)

I haven't stamped my nails for some time and must say I am a bit rusty. Most of them weren't too bad except for the thumb of my left hand where I managed to get the design completely on one side. Using the Double Sided Stamper Set I stamped the design on every nail in Konad Special Nail Polish White and then fixed up my manicure where I scrapped off my nail polish. I sealed the design with Konad Top Coat and used the Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Speed Dry Drops to make it dry faster. The only annoying thing about stamping my nails is the long time it takes the Konad Top Coat to dry because it is so thick to stop it from dragging the design. Finally to top it all off I managed to scrape the middle finger of my left hand pulling off my nail polish, stamp and topcoat - FRUSTRATING! This was not one of my best days! I did a bit of a hatchet job to "fix" the finger I ruined by removing the section of top coat and polish I scraped and repainting it. So unfortunately my Konad stamp just abruptly ends on that nail.

Anyway here is the end product, flaws and all! I took this photo in artificial light after stamping it.

Velvet Bow with M64 in Artificial Light

I took this photo the day after I did the stamping and lucky it wasn't as overcast as it has been lately so I at least had some decent light to work with.

Velvet Bow with M64 in Natural Light

I like this design a great deal, to me it looks like a bunch of Christmas presents all wrapped up sitting under a Christmas tree!