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).

Crumpets Nail Tarts: Under the Sea

Hello Readers!


It's Friday again, which means it's time for another 26 Great Nail Art ideas post, and this time around the prompt is "water". An appropriate prompt for the beginning of summer, am I right?

I decided to take this opportunity to use the cute octopus images on the MoYou London "Animal" plates, because I've been wanting to use them forever!

So I started this mani with two fingers painted with "Cinderella" (3-4 coats) and two "Let's Playa" (two coats).

As previously mentioned, the octopus images come from the MoYou London "Animal 01" plate. I've previously used the flamingos and the colorful fish on this plate, but have never tried out these adorable octopi so I was excited to get to do that!

Of course, I had to use the Bundle Monster + Twi_star plate for the water pattern on my middle two nails. I've been using this plate a lot lately, especially for that specific pattern. It's so darn useful- not only can it make water ripples, but it's also great for making an easy marble look.

So then, let's talk about the middle finger. I decided to do a composite here of some different stamping images, and this time I figured it would be easiest to do this off of the nail. This is because the images with long, skinny lines are really easy to warp when stamping them onto your curved nail, and I really didn't want to have to deal with wiping them off and re-stamping, especially since I had the water patteren stamped onto my nail.

So, here's how I created this look. First, I stamped the "Under the Sea" phrase from the twi_star plate onto my silicone mat. Normally I wouldn't stamp images with words onto my mat, because if you are reverse stamping the image will end up backwards, but since I wasn't filling the images in at all it didn't matter.

Next, I took one half of the double line image and stamped it above the phrase, the below the phrase. The middle space in the double line image (second image on the top row) wasn't quite wide enough to fit the phrase, which is why I stamped the top and bottom halves separately.

Finally, I simply added topcoat to all of that, and when it was dry I applied it over my nail in one piece. Much easier to do that stamping on the mat than on the nail- because when you stamp onto the mat you can just stamp straight down without worrying about warping the lines or having them fold on you.

So, I really wanted to try using the chameleon flakies from Born Pretty that I recently reviewed with a masking technique. So after my nails were completely dry, I put liquid latex over the middle part of my middle nail and sponged some flakies onto the top and bottom portions. It's kind of hard to tell, because the flakies have a subtle effect over light polishes. I want to try this again another time over a dark polish though, as it seems to have worked even though it's hard to see.


I hope you enjoyed this oceanic look for today's Crumpet's Nail Tart's post! Be sure to check out the link-up below for more water themed looks!

An InLinkz Link-up

City of Rome ft. MoYou London Scandi

Hello Readers!


Today's #clairestelle8challenge prompt on instagram was one that really made me stop and think, browse through my pinterest board of the stamping plates I own to find inspiration, and even do light research on google. I knew I wanted to choose a specific city for the "cities" prompt, rather than doing a generic city look, but I had no idea which city to choose!

In the end, I was inspired by the Colosseum image on my Scandi plate to base my mani after the famous city of Rome. I decided to pair my images with a marble pattern you might expect to see there, as well as a flower popular in Roman mythology as well as the city itself: the poppy.

I started most of my nails with two coats of Sinful Colors "Snow Me White". On my ring finger, I have 4 coats of "Cinderella" for my base.

The Colosseum image comes from the MoYou London plate "Scandi 03", which has a lot of great landmark buildings from around the world. I've used a few of them already in previous manis; the Golden Gate Bridge, La Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, and some of the textures, so I wanted to choose something I hadn't done before.

My poppies come from a Bundle Monster plate, from the blogger collaboration collection. This is a really gorgeous plate that I've also used a ton of; one of my favorites was this spring daffodil look.

To get the marble texture, I used a different Bundle Monster plate from the Blogger Collaboration plate; this time the Twi_Star plate with all the mermaid stuff. It's supposed to be a kind of water texture, but I thought it would also be perfect to do an easy marble look.

I finished the look off with a couple of studs. I hope you enjoyed this look! If you'd like to see more city themed manis, you can find them on the #clairestelle8may tag on instagram.

30 Days of Color Challenge: Treasure Chest

Hello Readers!

Because I was inspired by the theme, and because we are encouraged to make as many nail art looks for each prompt as we desire for the 30 Days of Color Challenge group, I decided to do a second mani for the prompt "jewels". I thought it would be fun to use some jewel toned polishes for this prompt, and I also thought the a little bit of treasure would fit in with the "jewel" theme.

I used two untried polishes for this: The green duo-tone, which is a new polish from the Kandee Johnson line called "Mermaid Tail", though I think it looks a lot like "Kameleon" from the Kylie Jenner line, I don't own that polish so I can't really do a close comparison. The other untried is the JLB "Creme Burlee", which I used to fill in the treasure chest.

I have to admit, the name of the "Mermaid Tail" polish was a big inspiration here. It is a perfect mermaid polish, after all, so I felt compelled to use it with a mermaid theme. And for literal mermaid tails, on my middle finger. This polish has a great formula; I could have probably gotten away with just one coat but I put on two anyway.

The two plates I used for this mani are both from the 2016 Bundle Monster/Blogger Collab collection, and they are two plates that seem to be made for each other. The treasure chest image comes from this plate, in the bottom left hand corner.

And the mermaid tails and silhouettes come from this plate. I've been wanting to use that mermaid tail image for quite some time now, so I'm pleased I finally got around to it.

Be sure to check out some more jewel-themed manis in the link-up below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Little Fishies with *new* MoYou London Animal Collection

Hello Readers!

I'm so excited to be playing with MoYou London's *brand new* animal collection because it is absolutely adorable and you know I love playing with cute images. Today's mani focuses on the beautiful fish. I just fell in love with these fish, mostly because of the tiny little patterns on their sides.

The details on those little swimmers! I can't stand it. 

I find myself reaching for my white as a base so often. I decided to use a sort of muted color palette for this mani.