Golden Pineapple ft. MoYou London Mexico

Hello Readers!


It's Tuesday again, which means it's time for another #clairestelle8challenge mani, and the prompt this go-round is "coral". I've been wanting to do a look where I paired an image from the new MoYou London Mexico collection with pineapple and the color coral ever since I got these plates, so this was an easy decision for me!

I just think the ring finger image sort of resembles a pineapple, in a very stylized way. I think pineapple images are adorable, so I wanted to take this excuse to make a pineapple themed mani!


So my coral polish here is the Sinful Shine "Mardi Gras", which was one of the first polishes I bought when I was really getting into polish hoarding. I think coral shades are absolutely beautiful, especially in the summertime! This polish is slightly runny, and required two coats- the first was quite streaky. Weirdly, I usually seem to prefer the regular Sinful Colors line to the Sinful Shine line- they typically seem to have better formulas, even though the Sinful Shine is more expensive!

My ring finger image, as mentioned previously, comes from this MoYou London "Mexico 01" plate. I actually used this very same image in a much more vibrant mani just a week ago, but I couldn't resist using it again for this very different look.

For my middle finger, I used the chevron pattern on this Born Pretty plate. This was actually the very first plate I bought when I started stamping, because of the variety of basic, staple images it has. I've used this plate quite a bit; if you'd like to see a full list of manis that show this plate in action, check out this page, under the "BP-L008- Basic Prints" heading.

Finally, the pineapple image on my pointer/pinky fingers comes from this Bundle Monster plate from the "Hangloose" collection (plate # BM-S408). This is one of my all-time favorites, but as it is also one of my first purchases, It's been a long time since I've used it so I was itching to pull it out again.

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.

Beach Selfies ft. Bundle Monster Kawaii emoji

Hello Readers!


Today I have a very summery mani inspired by the Bundle Monster Kawaii Emoji collection. I was trying to decided what I wanted to do, and flipping through the pin board on Pinterest I made of all my plates (because it's much easier to look through them on pinterest and really see the images than it is to look at them in real life), and I noticed the turtle image on the MoYou London Animal plate. I thought I could do a beachy themed mani with the turtles and the little camera.

I kind of imagine a beach goer stumbling upon a flock of freshly hatched turtles stumbling to the water and quickly pulling out her camera to get a shot of the amazing sight.

For this mani, I started off by painting all my nails with Sinful Colors "Mint2Bcool". I did a lot of my stamping today with Sinful Colors "Navy I Do", but also used an actual Bundle Monster stamping polish for the red stamping.

The adorable little camera image comes from the vacation themed Bundle Monster Kawaii Emoji plate. I think this is my favorite in the collection, though the fruit-and-veggie plate is a close second. I also used the little strips of tiny images along the bottom to decorate my french tipped pinky/pointer fingers... more on that later.

The turtles come from this MoYou London Animal plate. Some really cute images on here, but this is the first time I've featured it here because when I used it before it was on my right hand, thumb, and a couple of nail fails that I never published. ;)

The typography images on the pointer/pinky come from this Bundle Monster plate from the "Hangloose" collection. 

I pulled out my trusty MoYou London Frenchy 09 plate to help with the french tips. I decided to do these as decals and then place them over my nail rather than attempting to stamp the direct-to-nail, because I was concerned about messing up the placement and having to re-do it a million times.
So I stamping them once- then stamped over that a second time to get a better opacity. Next, I stamped the little images from the Kawaii emoji plate over it in white and finished it off with a nice thick layer of topcoat. When it was dry, it was really easy to peel that up and place it perfectly on my nails.

Tropical Summer Mani

Hello Readers!

Today I ventured back into the world of water slide nail decals. Last time I attempted using these I didn't realize you are supposed to remove the clear protective film BEFORE you soak them in water. Yeah, don't do that... it make the decal stick to the film. I thought you were supposed to keep it on and then slide it from the clear film. Nope. So once I figured out what I was doing wrong, I was anxious to try it again, and this time I was much more successful. Yay!

So I started with a base color of Sinful Colors "Innocent". For my accent nail, I used Revlon Gel Envy in "High Stakes" (one coater!) followed by a single coat of Sinful Colors "Green Ocean", which is a jelly polish with little flakies. I really love the way these two polishes pair together! 

Here's a shot of the base color:

After my polish was dry, I added a top coat before attempting to do the water decals. They were actually pretty easy to use when you do it right *cough cough*. I liked that I had a few seconds to move them around on my nail before they were stuck, and I also like the opacity of them. I kind of feel like they are more work than just doing a single layer of stamping, but they are also more opague than a single layer of stamping and if the decal has detailed color on it I can see why I might want to use them again. The only thing I wasn't too crazy about was trying to get the protective layer off the decals before dipping them in the water while also trying not to smudge my nail polish. Maybe next time  I will remove the plastic BEFORE painting my nails. 

For my middle finger, I used a Bundle Monster plate from the "Hangloose" collection:

This is BM-S40, "Sand + Sea". I used the bottom left image. When I first took a look at this plate I noticed the little submarine- I still need to use that for a Beatles inspired mani! Anyway, I was just going to put the seahorse charm from the Hangloose collection on top, but I thought it was a little small so I added the starfish. 

I hope you enjoyed this mani, and happy polishing!

-The Midnight Stamper

Summery Purple Hibiscus manicure

Hello Readers!

Today I have a purple summery mani using bundle monster's "Hangloose" collection, which is such a fun one for summer nails!

I actually struggled a lot with this mani, because I ordered the hangloose gift set that included the plates, some nail charms, stamping polishes, and water decal transfers.

I've never attempted to use water transfer decals before... and I may never try again. The jury is still out on that one. I wasn't actually successful at using them, and after several failed attempts I gave it up and just did some simple reverse stamping for my accent nail.

Here are the polishes I used:
-light purple: Sinful Colors "Lie-lac"
-Medium purple (stamping): Sinful Colors "tempest"
-Light green: Essie "Going Guru"
-Dark Purple: JLB #7

I also used the following plates:

Bundle monster plate BM-S407, "Tribal Waters" from the Hangloose collection, for the tone-on-tone stamping, and

Bundle monster plate BM-S406, "Fresh Scallops," also from the Hangloose collection for the center image.