NCU/ Nail Challenge Collaborative: Neon

Hello Readers!



There's nothing like neon polish in the summetime, am I right? Well, apparently two different challenges think so too, as they have overlapping "neon" prompts that I'm going to go ahead and combine today.

I thought it would be fun to do some neon double stamping with black over the top. I think the neon backgrounds look a little bit like beach towels.

So for my green polish, I used two coats of this brand new Sinful Colors polish, which is part of their back to school line, "#Get Bright". Love this unique color!

So I started my stamping with this Bundle Monster + Sloteazzy blogger collab plate. I just used the Bundle Monster stamping polishes from the neon collection to stamp over the neon green color with the watermarble patterns.

The nautical images come from the MoYou London "Sailor 16" plate. 

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to check out more neon manis in one of the link-ups below!

An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

Artichoke nails ft. MoYou London Cookbook

Hello Readers!



Today's nails are inspired by an image from the MoYou London Cookbook collection that I've always thought was lovely: the artichoke on the vegan plate.

Growing up, my Dad always loved eating boiled artichokes when they came in season in the springtime. While they weren't my favorite food in the world, I enjoyed spending that time with him tearing off the leaves and dipping them in copious amounts of mayonnaise before scraping off the meaty bit at their base. Such a weird food, but kind of fun to eat together!

I started this mani with a couple of coats of the cream JLB polish, except for my middle finger, which got two coats of "Sew Psyched".

The large artichoke comes from the MoYou London plate "Cookbook 14", which has lots of veggie and grain images. I did use this plate once before, to make a fun pizza themed mani. I've been wanting to pull it out again and put it to use, because I love the quirky images.

So for the big artichoke, I made a decal and colored in the image with two shades of green. This is such a large image, I felt it needed to be given some extra detail with shading. So to do this, I simply started with the dark green by adding it to the base of each artichoke leaf. After that was dry, I took the light green and applied it all over the back of the image with the nail polish brush, then used my trusty toothpick to fill in the edges of the image.

The image on my pointer/pinky fingers is off of this Bundle Monster plate from last year's Blogger Collab collection, by the blogger Tanya Wish. This is one of my all-time favorite plates, and I have used nearly every image on it. They are just so detailed and lovely, and many of them work really well for reverse stamping!

Finally, the image on my middle nail is from another Bundle Monster plate, this time from the "Secret Garden" collection. I wanted some typography on that nail but I wasn't feeling the "vegan" typography image on the MoYou London plate for this mani, so I reached for this one.


Have you ever eaten an artichoke? Are you a fan of the prickly veggies, or do you prefer to stay far away from this unusual food? Let me know how you feel in the comments!

Simple Sunday 6/35/17 ft. MoYou London Mexico

Hello Readers!


Today's Simple Sunday is kind of a light summery mani inspired by the MoYou London Mexico plates and some new Sinful Colors polishes that I spied at Walgreen yesterday. It does have one stamping decal, so this type of look is a good one to go for if you are new to reverse stamping.

Also, some holo on the cheap here.

So the "Quick Study" Sinful Colors polish is part of their back-to-school collection. It seems super early for a school themed collection, but I was not complaining to find new colors! It's a matte polish, and you can see how it dries on the swatch of it above, but I did put on a glossy topcoat for my mani. This was a bit streaky on the first coat, but looked perfect on the second.

As for the LA Colors "Fairy Dust", yes it is a holo that I found at the Dollar Tree. I did have to sponge this on to get full opacity- on the swatch stick you can see what it looks like with two coats, no sponging.

Here's a quick look at the new collection. I grabbed up the periwinkle and that fabulous bright green, as well as the purple. They also put the basic black and white with the collection, which Sinful Colors has been doing a lot lately. I might have to go back to Walgreens this week to pick up the pink and the peach, because I'm really liking the ones from the collection that I got.

Here's another look with different lighting so you can see the holo effect from that polish.

So the ring finger image is a decal made from this MoYou London "Mexico 03" plate.

I also used MoYou London's "Minimal 01" plate, because I figured the linework style of the arrows on this plate would mesh well with the fine lines of the Mexico plate. Also, I realized that I've only used this plate one time before and I felt I needed to remedy that.

Some Pig- Inspired by a book ft. Bundle Monster Fuzzy and Ferocious

Salutations, Readers!


For this month's #clairestelle8challenge on instagram, the final prompt is to be "inspired by a book/movie". I felt I just had to represent my 4-year-old's favorite book right now, Charlotte's Web. I grew up watching the animated movie based off of the book, but didn't read the book itself until I started reading a chapter to him before he went to bed each night.

 We stopped reading for a few months, but a couple of weeks ago we were at the dentist. Our kid's dentist lets them pick out a book from a very nice selection as a reward for getting their teeth messed with, and there in the bookshelf was "Charlotte's Web".

I tried to tell him that we already had a copy at home, but he insisted upon bring home his "favorite book", and we've been reading it again ever since.

So, my mani is based on the unlikey friendship of the little pig and the wise spider.

I started off this mani with the LA Colors "Fresh" polish, and then added some clouds with a makeup sponge to give my characters a bit more of an interesting background. To do this, I cut off a tiny corner of the sponge and held it with self-closing tweezers. Then I sponged on some white polish in cloud shapes, and finally added a tiny bit of silver polish with the sponge towards the bottom of the clouds.

My little pig comes from this Bundle Monster "Fuzzy and Ferocious" plate. I used my lint roller to lift off all of the little elements around the pig to just get the animal himself.

The little spider comes from another Bundle Monster "Fuzzy and Ferocous" plate, this time with lots of bugs. I made a really simple decal with the image.

Finally, I grabbed the spider web image from this Bundle Monster plate from their original holiday collection. For the pointer finger, I added lettering to represent the words Charlotte spun into her web to save her little friend. I'm not great with hand lettering, but I figured it didn't really matter in this case since it was supposed to look as if a spider wrote it.


Are you a fan of this classic children's book? Or were you too busy reading other literature as a child and skipped this one over, as I did? Let me know in the comments!

Crumpet's Nail Tarts: Going on Holiday

Hello Readers!



It's Friday again, and this week's prompt for Crumpet's Nail Tarts is "going on holiday". I immediately was drawn to tropical or beachy themes for this mani, although I suppose "on holiday" could mean any location!

Still, I've been wanting to use these unusual beach images from MoYou London's "Scandi" collection forever.

I started this mani with two coats of light blue, and then sponged on a simple gradient. When sponging on a gradient with a flakie polish like "Better Sedona-ed", it's important to use a barrier to protect your cuticles such as liquid latex. Seriously, those flakies are near impossible to remove from your skin later! Speaking of flakie polishes, I spied the entire collection of Sinful Colors "Stoned Crystal Shimmer", including the hard-to-find "Super Cooper", at Kmart the other day. *enabling wink*

I made decals from this plate, "Scandi 01", of the adorable ocean and surf bus images. There's something about that shark in the water that just tickles my funny bone every time I see it.

I normally use a toothpick to fill in my decals, but to get those super tiny ones I had to resort to using a sewing pin.

The little waves come from "Scandi 03". I love how they included coordinating background patterns in this collection! So convenient.


Thanks for stopping by today! If you'd like to see more holiday themed manis, be sure to check out the link-up below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Nail Challenge Collaborative: Tropical Neon

Hello Readers!


This month's prompt for the Nail Challenge Collaborative is "neon". I was a little bit stumped at first as to what I wanted to do, but finally I decided to take my inspiration from instagram user Clairestelle8 and layer black stamping over a neon base.

I also thought it would be fun to break out one of my MoYou London Tropical plates because they have some great full nail designs for layering.

I decided to do a technique I haven't played with a whole lot- smoosh manis.

So, to do this I started with a base of white. I just used my go-to white, Sinful Colors "Snow Me White". Next, I put little dots of the 3 neon nail polishes all over my stamper head and smooshed them onto my nail. A barrier of liquid latex really helps when using this technique- it can get a little messy!

Finally, I used an image from the MoYou London "Tropical 17" plate and stamped over everything with black stamping polish. Again, I always like to use liquid latex when working with black stamping polish because it is a pain to clean off your skin!


This was a fun and fairly easy mani to do, and a great way to get a colorful look without spending 5 years filling in 10 full nail decals! Hope you enjoyed it- and be sure to check out the other neon manis in the link-up below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Simple Sunday: Pink Teacup Nails ft. MoYou London Trend Hunter

Hello Readers!


For today's Simple Sunday, I am dabbling into the realm of water decals. It's fun to combine water decals with simple stamping for a quick and easy, yet detailed, nail look.

I think it kind of looks like a pink teacup. Very girly for this week's Sunday mani.

This look is super simple to achieve- just simple stamping for the pinky and pointer finger, and water decals for the middle two. I did put a white base under the water decals to help them stand out.

If you've never used water decals before, they can be a little bit intimidating but the process is fairly simple. First, remove the clear plastic sheet from the top of the decals, and drop the decal in a bowl of water for about 20 seconds. Next, slide the decal off of the paper backing and apply it to your nail, smoothing out any wrinkles. Use a brush with acetone to clean away any part of the decal that went over your skin, and apply a topcoat.

The stamp on my on my pointer/pinky fingers comes from this MoYou London "Trend Hunter 13" plate. I thought it was a fun twist on polka dots and perfect for a "teacup" look.

Clairestelle8: Inspired by Fashion ft. MoYou London Mexico

Hello Readers!


Today's post is for the 3rd #clairestelle8june prompt, "inspired by fashion". In case you weren't aware, this month the #clairestelle8challenge on instagram is being sponsored by picture polish, who will pick a winner and award them a $150 shopping spree on their website. Pretty cool!

Side note: I broke a nail while rock hunting (boohoo!) so I'm rocking a shorter mani now.

So for today's mani, I did a search on pinterest until I found a fashion look that inspired me. Here is my inspiration piece:

From Anthropologie

It's been a little while since I've done a mani inspired by fashion, but doing this I was reminded how much fun it is to do. There are so many great ideas in the fashion world that translate easily to nails!

For this mani, I first painted my pointer/middle fingers with a nude polish. My ring and pinky got a bright orange to match the skirt.

To get the look of the stripe down the middle of her shirt, I decided to piece together a couple of images on my silicone mat. I started by stamping the diagonal parallel lines on this MoYou London "Holy Shapes 05" plate, then painting the outside of the lines with my Sinful Colors "Navy I Do" polish.

Next, I stamped one of the thinner lines from the MoYou London "Holy Shapes 19" plate right in the middle of the two lines.

The pattern on my pinky and ring fingers comes from this MoYou London plate from the Mexico collection. It seemed like the best match to the skirt that I had in my collection.

Nail Crazies Unite: Watermelon ft. MoYou London Tropical

Hello Readers!


I'm so excited for this week's Nail Crazies Unite challenge, because the prompt is "fruits" and food manis are my favorite! Also, I've been itching to do a watermelon mani ever since summer started, so my direction here was easy to arrive at.

Sweet, juicy, summer fun!

This mani began as two coats of Going Guru on all but my ring finger, which got 3 coats of Boom Boom. I love the Sinful Colors foil polishes for stamping, so went with "Queen of Green" to stamp the watermelon pattern on with. To make "Boom Boom" a little more juicy, I added a flakie topper.

My watermelon pattern comes from the MoYou London "Tropical 08" plate, which features so many fun fruit images! But, my slice is borrowed from a different company...

My sweet little watermelon slice is from Bundle Monster's fruit-and-vegetable themed plate from the "Kawaii Emoji" collection. The little faces on this collection just kill me!


I am certainly looking forward to seeing lots of fruit themed manis this week! If you are too, check out the link-up below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Summer Shenanigans- Rock Hunting Team Mani

Hello Readers!



Today's post is something kind of silly and fun, and definitely different. Every year in my city, and local gym puts on a rock hunting extravaganza when school lets out for the summer. They hide 3 engraved rocks over the course of a month or so, and give out clues and then send the whole city out to find them. Whoever finds the rock wins $5000, or $10,000 if they are wearing an official "rock-hunting" shirt.

The rock hunt is winding down now, with only one rock left to be found, and people are swarming all over the nature trails of the city in red shirts hunting for it. My rock hunting buddy and I decided it would be fun to do rock hunting manis for good luck when we go on our search this week.

So, this mani might not make a lot of sense to people not from my city, but I will explain. We have a lot of red rocks in my area, so the pinky/pointer fingers represent all the rocks we are going to be shuffling through and turning over in search of the lucky one. The middle nail represents the quest to decipher the tricky clues given out by the hosts. The ring finger is a representation of the rock itself, which is roughly triangular shaped and has the logo of the gym engraved on one side (the face-down side, of course) to let you know when you have found it.


The orange color on this mani is Essie's "Taj-ma-haul", which my bottle is sadly becoming super thick and gunky from use. I think it's time to invest in some nail polish thinner to fix that little issue. Still, I managed to get it on my nails. The black is Sinful Colors "Konstellation", to add a little shimmer and fun.

I freehanded a decal for the rock shape. I didn't want it to be a perfect triangle since the actual rock is rough-sided and not perfectly shaped, so that it looks like a regualar rock when you see it in the wild. They don't want the game to be over too quickly! But I stamped a triangle onto it from this MoYou London "Holy Shapes 19" plate to represent the engraving.

The equations/chalkboard images come from this school-themed Born Pretty plate. It reminded of that meme of the confused/thinking lady, which feels a lot like us trying to figure out the clues:

Totally everyone in this city right now.

I wish I could take credit for the decision to use this plate, but my friend, Emily, had this awesome idea to use the rocks from the Bundle Monster/Twi_Star mermaid plate for this mani. I love this idea!


Wish us luck today! Hopefully this tribute to the rock hunt will be our "lucky charm" (wink wink... lucky charm is one of the mysterious rock clues this week, ha ha).

Simple Sunday 6/11/17- Purple and Silver ft. Moyou London Kaliedoscopic

Hello Readers!


Today's Simple Sunday is a very simple and more subtle look. Originally I was going to try stamping with the Born Pretty metallic polish from last week over this deep purple color, but unfortunately I found that while the polish worked really well for the bold lines on the butterfly image last week, it wouldn't pick up the tiny details on the images I wanted to used for this mani.

So after trying with all my different stamper heads, I gave it up and switched to a Bundle Monster silver stamping polish.

I started this mani out with the gorgeous, rich OPI color "Do You Have This Color in Stockholm?" I love how shiny this polish is!

My french tip image comes from this MoYou London plate, from the "Kaleidoscopic" collection. I've used it to do french tips before, and I just really love the shape of the images to put it to this purpose.

I hope everyone is having a beautiful Sunday! I love hearing about your lives- let me know what you have going on this weekend in the comments!

Inspired by my Job: Motherhood Mani

Hello Readers!


Today's post is the second for the #clairestelle8june challenge, and this time around the prompt is "inspired by your job/hobby". At first I latched on to the "hobby" part, and had a bunch of half-formed ideas, but nothing really jumped out at me until I decided to shift focus and create a mani based on my job.

I am a stay-at-home-Mom, and at first I had no idea how to make a mani based on that. Being a stay-at-home-Mom is so many things. So many small things wrapped up together into a bundle of mild chaos. In the end, I decided to run with that idea and represent some of the many elements of my day-to-day life with this mani.

It's band-aids and boo-boos and conflict management between siblings. It's lullabies and 50 repetitions of "Mary Had a Little Lamb". It's keeping calm in the face of poop on a daily basis. It's frantically googling the structure of an atom for inquiring minds who *neeeeed* to know. It's wonderful and exhausting and I wouldn't trade it for the world.


And, much like motherhood, this mani was a jumble of... many different things, ha ha.

I started by painting all my nails with the Sinful Colors blue, which was pretty awesome at two coats. Then it was time to get to work on stamping and decals...

So for my first finger, I used an image from one of the Bundle Monster "Kawaii Emoji" collection plates, because I figured band-aids and crying faces were a perfect representation of my daily life with two rambunctious boys and their toddler sister.

Now, behind the decals on both my pointer and ring finger, I added the sunburst design from this Bundle Monster + Nailstamp4fun plate. I actually did this on the silicone mat that I was using to work on them instead of adding it to my nail, and it was probably easier that way just because I was already doing the decals and it's easier to stamp onto a flat surface than onto a curved nail.

I simply stamped the design onto the "back" of the decal after filling in all of the images.

The music design comes from this cute Born Pretty Store plate. I actually stamped this upside down on my first try because I wasn't paying attention and thought it was just notes, which don't really have a "right side up", but upon further inspection, I saw the treble and bass clef signs and those do have a right side up. So, I had to remove the stamping with my clean-up brush and acetone and stamp it again.

The poop emoji comes from this MoYou London "Geek Collection 13" plate, which has a lot of cute and fun images! I was a little sad when I realized that they did the poop emoji in a solid state (heh) instead of a line art image, because I was hoping to fill it in. I did still fill in the eyes and mouth, of course added the background. I felt like it still needed something though, and wanted to add some kind of phrase. I had no idea what, so I searched through my plates until I found something suitable...

...which ended up being from the Bundle Monster "Time Machine" collection. I just used the top part of one of the "keep calm" phrases. This nail now makes me chuckle; it's just so appropriate because Motherhood is nothing if it's not dealing with poop. Lots and lots of poop.

So then, my final image- the atoms- come from this Born Pretty school-themed plate, which is a newer plate from the Born Pretty site. Just some simple stamping on that nail.