Vintage Floral ft. MoYou London Trend Hunter 11

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I have another fairly simple mani for you today, which I ended up liking quite a bit.

This mani was inspired by the plate I used for it, which is one that I hemmed and hawed over quite a bit before I finally bit the bullet and bought recently:

Moyou London Trend Hunter 11

I really like a lot of the MoYou London Trend Hunter collection, but I wasn't sure about this one. However, I ended up using an image today that wasn't even one of my favorites from the plate and I like it, so I am happy I ended up buying it after all and am looking forward to playing more with it.

Make Way! Moana nails ft. Bundle Monster Polynesia

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I'm really excited about today's nails. Honestly, this sort of mani, where each nail has a completely different design yet they look ok together, really intimidates me so it's not something I've attempted often. So I am so pleased that these turned out- I am just really digging this look!

Anyone who has seen Moana (and if you haven't, GO WATCH IT on Netflix because it is amazing) probably recognizes the themes on this mani. When I recently received a bunch of the Bundle Monster Polynesia plates in a grab bag Moana nails was one of the first things I thought of. That boat is a perfect Moana boat!

Polynesia BM-XL119

Also that swordfish pattern in the lower left corner is adorable. But these are not swordfish nails, no no. I immediately saw that boat and thought it would be the perfect centerpiece for a Moana mani.

Polynesia BM-XL109

My pointer finger hibiscus comes from the buffet plate from the same collection. I love buffet plates in theory, though honestly they often end up collecting dust in my collection. I guess it's more work to pick out images from them and figure out what you want them to do.

Polynesia BM-XL115

My pinky nail, of course, represents Maui's tattoos. The movie wouldn't be complete without a mini-Maui tappity tapping.

MoYou London Sci-fi 10

My middle nail is for measuring the stars, not giving the sky a high-five. I need to use this plate on more manis, so here we go. Though I still need to use those adorable kitschy space images, especially the cats.

There you are- some summery island nails and probably my favorites that I've done in a while.

Purple Daisies ft. MoYou London Flower Power

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Today's mani leans a little more traditional with a floral theme, and a chance to try out one of my newly acquired MoYou London plates.

I did this mani for a "chevron" prompt for Clairsetelle8 on instagram. I thought it would go nicely with the floral, but now I'm just not sure about the line going through the daisy paired with the chevron pattern. Maybe it's because the chevrons are horizontal and the line is vertical that I feel like it isn't quite meshing the way I want it to.

Anyway, I did a little gradient in purple and stamped a floral image from the Bundle Monster BM-XL112 plate, part of the Polynesia collection. My chevron is from a MoYou London Tropical plate, which I can't seem to locate the photo of.

Pink Dragon ft. Bundle Monster Around the World

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Today's mani is a simpler design, with the prompt "Far East" in mind. I wanted to do a softer, pinker far east mani rather than going for bold reds and golds this time... kind of like the lovely soft pink cherry blossoms of China.

My dragon comes from this Bundle Monster "Around the World" plate featuring China (sorry about the cloud on this plate- living in the Mojave Desert has perks like normally cloudless skies, but it's been a rainier summer than usual).

Side note: as I was painting tonight, my 7 year old watched me and asked to be included. So he now has the yin yan stamped onto his ring finger nails and is quite pleased about it.

The background of these nails has a tone-on-tone pink thing going on, with a kind of floral-esque pattern from this Bundle Monster plate. I was originally going to stamp the bamboo, but I didn't like how the starker lines contrasted with the dragon and though the floral would give the softer look I was going for.

Barn Cat ft. MoYou London Animal

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Today's prompt is "farm life", and no farm is complete without a cat in the barn to chase the mice away from the food! 

My inspiration for this mani started this newer MoYou London Animal 14 plate- so many cute cat images! I'm a cat person for sure, so I couldn't help picking this up to add to my vast library of feline images.

 My ring finger nail started out white with the cat face stamped over it and "meow" below, but it felt a little too simple so I painted a swatch of yellow onto my mat and stamped the face over it, waited for it to dry and used scissors to cut a straight line under it and apply it over my nail.

 Then I stamped a vine pattern from MoYou London's Mother Nature 16 plate on the seam between my yellow and white polishes. I'm thinking now it might have been better in gray instead of blue, or maybe just left out altogether. 

My little mouse faces come from the MoYou London Animal 08 plate. I really love the animal collection- they have so many stinkin cute images! I've already used the turtles on this plate as well as the bunnies on the tree trunks. 

The image for the hay stamped behind my mice comes from a Bundle Monster plate, BM-XL17. This was one I got in the grab bag sale recently, and it's a good one. I feel like this image in particular (bottom row, second to last) would also be great yarn or spaghetti. I also love the cascading line image (2nd image on top row). 

Final plate to show you- this one is from the newer Bundle Monster "Botanicals" collection, and in fact I used a different woodgrain image from this on my last mani as well. 

Seattle-Inspired nails ft. Bundle Monster Botanicals

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Today's mani was done for an Instagram challenge for "vacation" nails. I decided to commemorate the summer vacation I took with my family to Seattle earlier this season.

Seattle, to me, is a beautiful mesh up of nature and city. I wanted to represent a little bit of each on this mani, so I have the woodgrain pattern to symbolize all the beautiful trees and forests we saw on our trip, and the gray and silver for the bustle of traffic and the city.

So, this mani starts off with a beige base (Sinful Colors Beaches and Cream) with a woodgrain pattern from this Bundle Monster "Botanicals" collection plate. This plate is one of my favorite in the collection- I find myself reaching for wood grain patterns quite often so it's nice to have some new ones to play with!

For the half gray/half wood grain nails, I decided to do the entire gray half as a decal on my silicone mat. I've done a kind of dip-dyed nail effect before, and it's one of my favorite manis, but I wanted to try adding a little detail to the seam this time.

So I started by stamping the straight leaf pattern from MoYou London's Mother Nature 14 plate onto my mat.

 My next step was to paint a large area next to the leaf pattern with gray polish. I used the MoYou London Holy Shapes 05 plate to help me get a straight line to start, but then went over it with the nail polish brush to make sure it has good opacity. The leaf pattern has leaves on both sides, so I made sure to paint over half of the leaves since I only wanted them on one side of the gray area.

Next, I stamped the third pattern on the top row of this Bundle Monster plate that I got in the 20 plates for $20 sale recently. I thought that it had a bit of an industrial feel to it.

Finally, I used another of the Bundle Monster Botanicals plates to add Washington's State flower, the Rhodedendron. I always have loved seeing the beautiful Rhodies up in Seattle- just one more thing that makes that area so gorgeous.

Macarons in Paris ft. Moyou London Scandi

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Today's nails have a Paris theme to go along with an instagram "travelling" challenge. I thought it would be fun to put my favorite french treat along with the iconic tower to represent the romantic destination.

I know I'm not the only one with a soft spot for macarons. Yuuuuum!

Those cute macarons come from one of my favorite Bundle Monster collections, the "Kawaii Emoji". I'm surprised to note that I haven't actually used this image before, though I have used this plate.

The Eiffel Tower image comes from another favorite, the MoYou London Scandi 03. I love all the different looks you can make with this- you could make a totally different mani based on each image! I've used this so many times in so many different ways, and I just never get tired of it.

Finally, I used the classic MoYou London "Holy Shapes 05" plate for the stripes. I did make a decal with this stamp as the base, but I found that the light purple polish I used to stamp it in wasn't quite opaque enough to hide the other polishes I painted behind it. So, I used my clear stamper to stamp over the lines with the purple polish a second time and that worked out really well. I think it also helps a lot with these straight line images to do decals because it's really easy for lines to warp when you stamp them onto your nails, and much easier to get them straight with a decal.

Wild West mani ft. MoYou London x Amit, Bundle Monster Botanicals

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Today's mani was inspired by a prompt on instagram for the Clairestelle8 challenge, which has always been one of my favorites. The prompt is "Wild West", which was timely because I've been itching to try out some of the cactus images on my new plates. Apparently I'm a sucker for cacti, because I bought 3 or 4 plates that were full of them recently.

I mean, they're a popular trend right now, but I mostly love them because there are a lot of cacti in the desert where I live. So it always seems appropriate to me.

My ring finger image is from this Amit/MoYou London plate (01) that has a lot of cactus images. I seriously love the little cow skull on this image though! Definitely unique to my collection.

For my pointer/pinky fingers, I colored some of these gorgeous cactus buffet images from the Bundle Monster "Botanicals" collection. I had been eyeing this collection ever since I've been getting back on the nail art wagon, but what made me pull the trigger was that Bundle Monster was having a 4th of July sale and also has plate grab bags- 20 XL plates for $20- and I wanted to see what came in it!

In case you're curious, it was mostly the generic XL image plates with XL versions of the older round plates, along with quite a few plates from the Polynesia collection and a few blogger collab plates and an around the world plate- at least that's what came in mine. I did get an accidental duplicate but I contacted customer service and they're sending me one to replace the duplicate; I was really pleased with the customer service.

Finally, my middle finger image is from MoYou London Hipster 16. I've had this plate for a while, and I thought that it would be a perfect source for a pattern to go along with my theme.

Rose Quartz nails ft. MoYou London Explorer 33

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Today's nails are a rose quartz inspired look, because ever since marble nails became all the rage I've wanted to try to do a rose quartz version.

This was a super easy mani to do, thanks to the newest MoYou London Explorer plate.

This plate has two different marble images designed to be layered together. 

I also used the Mandela 19 plate- I love all the bead strands on this one- like so many necklaces for your nails!

Painted Pebbles with Nail Art Supplies

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Today's post is a little- or, I suppose, a lot- different from usual. My kids keep finding painted rocks all around town, and it is so much fun! I had an idea to make my own painted rocks, but with a twist- using nail polish and stamping plates.

These were super fun and easy- basically you just do everything backwards on the back of a clear glass pebble. It was fun to play with some of my new images without having to do a whole mani based on them, and without having to worry about letting my nails dry. 

Here's a look at a few of the plates I used for the main images:

The cactus comes from the Amit X Moyou London 01 plate. There are a lot of images on this plate that would be perfect for making pebbles. I actually was going to also do one of the little carniverous plant, but my 7 year old really wanted to paint that one so I let him do it. 

The adorable llama comes from the newer MoYou London Explorer 33 plate. Love love love the llamas on this plate! I'm also planning on using the marble set of images for a mani very soon.

My unicorn comes from MoYou London Hipster 21. Some very cute unicorn and star images on this plate.

The dino and rainbow are both from MoYou London Hipster 19. I mainly bought this plate for the avocado images. I'm a sucker for food manis.

The galaxy image is from MoYou London Sci-Fi 10. Loving this plate- it has astronaut cats! The space image was also the perfect size to fit on one of those pebbles, so I was happy to get to use the whole image since it's too big for a nail.

Pikachu comes from a MoYou London plate from the "suki" collection, and the silly face emoji is on one of the emoji plates in the "geek" collection.

I used a few other plates as well for backgrounds, and a lot of glitter polish since I figured it would be fun on these pebbles and heaven knows I don't use it that often on my nails, since it's such a pain to remove unless you use a peel-off basecoat.

Tropical Night Sky ft. MoYou London Tropical, Bundle Monster

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Today I have yet another mani that uses the MoYou London "tropical" collection- with summertime being in full force I feel like I keep reaching for these plates!

This mani was inspired by one that MoYou London had done and posted in Instagram. Though I  think they went with a lighter blue, which made it a bit easier to see everything going on with the mani.

This mani starts out with that gorgeous star image from the Bundle Monster + Kelli Marissa blogger collab plate. I love all the gorgeous galaxy images on this plate!

I stamped palm fronds from this Bundle Monster plate from the oldie-but-goodie "Hangloose" collection. Such a simple, but versatile plate.

Finally, I stamped the "good vibes only" phrase in gold over the top of everything. I only wish it was a little bit more readable- it's kind of hard to tell what it says! Those more delicate words probably wold work better with two polishes that highly contrast each other.

A Hawaiian Shirt style mani ft. MoYou London Tropical

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Today I am posting details of this summery mani I put up on instagram a little bit ago:

I think since I've been away so long, I was hitting a little bit of a creative block. I wanted to do some nail art, but had no idea what to do. So I decided to look for inspiration in my collection of patterned papers that I use for scrapbooking/cardmaking. I found a beachy paper that inspired this look.

This mani starts with the MoYou London Tropical 33 plate. I love all the fun phrases on this plate! They make such a good focal point for a mani. I actually used the tiny stripes first to add a little bit of detail to the background.

Next, I pulled one of my favorite images from the tropical 17 plate. I had to do some image isolation for this mani, to get the little palm trees a different color than the decorative strips on the end of the image. I found that wrapping a little piece of packing tape around self-closing tweezers worked really well for getting into the tiny areas of this image to pick up the parts I didn't want to stamp.

After I did the finicky part, I went back to the first plate to stamp the "chill" image.