Mani Re-do: Jungle Animals with Bundle Monster "Fuzzy and Ferocious"

Hello Readers!


Today's prompt at the #clairestelle8challenge over on Instagram is "re-do and old mani". This was an interesting prompt for me, because it's probably not something I would ever choose to do on my own. I decided to re-do one of my very first (actually my second) attempts at reverse stamping. Click this link if you'd like to see the original, but I'm warning you, it ain't pretty. You may need to scrub your eyes with bleach after viewing these nail fails. (I'm redoing the second mani on this link, not the first one.) I'm happy to say, however, that since that post almost a year ago I have learned so much and grown so much as a nail artist.

What I didn't know at that time, is that Sinful Colors "Call Me" is a terrible polish to try to stamp over. It eats whatever color you put on top of it. I also was in dire need of some lotion. ;)

So, I decided to re-do the mani with some of the same colors and themes, but more like how I would approach it now.

I really liked the monkey and flower images, so I decided to use those and then do some tropical foliage as a frame.

My base purple color is Sinful Colors "Lie-lac", which I applied two coats of even though it was looking pretty awesome at one coat and I probably could have left it there. I also decided to try stamping with the Sinful Colors/Kandee Johnson "Mint Chip" polish, and was pretty pleased with how it stamped.

Nail Fails: Learning from your mistakes

Do you ever have a great idea in your head, but it doesn't come out quite the way you envisioned it in your mind's eye? As someone who is pretty brand new to the world of nail stamping, I expect to make mistakes. The most important thing to me when evaluating my designs is to see the flaws, and to also see how I can avoid the same mistake in the future.

I have a couple of what I personally consider to be "nail fails" for you today. These are designs  I was excited to try out, but for different reasons I wasn't pleased with the end result.

Here is the first one:

Polishes used: Sinful Colors "Tempest" (light purple), Sinful Colors "Yolo yellow", Sinful Colors "Mardi Gras" (coral/orange), Sinful Colors "Poisonberry" (deep purple), Essie "going guru" (light green), Sally Hansen Xtreme wear in white (for stamping)

This was inspired by all the gorgeous advanced stamping people are doing with the more abstract patterns. I was excited to try it out, but the end result just isn't very pleasing to my eye. I think part of it is the open spaces on ring finger design that just look a bit empty to me, and the other part is the fact that I used a white polish for my stamping polish. When I filled it in, I found that white polish is not very forgiving. My mistakes were really obvious, where a black polish would have hidden them a bit better. I think there's something a little off about the color palette I chose, too. 

Here's the plate I used:

My second nail fail was one I was a bit sad about, only because I spent so much time making this mistake. 

I really love Bundlemonster's Fuzzy and Ferocious collection, so I was excited to use BM-S165, Jungle animals.

Polishes used: Sinful Colors "Call me" (dark purple), Sinful Colors "Kool as a Kukumber" (light green) Sinful Colors "Yolo Yellow", Sinful Colors "Tempest" (light purple), and Revelon Gel Envy "High Stakes" (dark green)

The adorable elephant! That swimming hippo! I thought that Sinful Colors "Call me" would add depth and round out my color pallette. Unfortunately, I didn't consider how dark that polish is and the fact that the black stamping on top of it would get totally lost. I also haven't tried advanced stamping over a dark polish before, and I have now learned that it's not the best idea. The lighter polishes have a hard time popping out with dark polish behind them. You could use a white polish underneath to help that, but the black details would still get lost against the dark background.

I did really love how the stamping over the light green (which is Sinful Colors "Kool as a Kukumber") turned out.  I was tempted to remove just the purple nails and keep the green, maybe paint them in the purple and yellow from the flowers, but in the end I decided to just try something completely different for my next mani.