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.

Nail Crazies Unite: Anti-Valentines

Hello Readers!

Today's post is for Nail Crazies Unite, and the prompt is "Anti-Valentines", which is kind of a funny one and I had to think about it a little bit  before I arrived on what I wanted to do. I was actually browsing the internet for Anti-Valentine's themes when I stumbles across grumpy cat, and remembered that I have a grumpy cat plate (which I have actually used before in a grumpy cat mani last year), and he would be perfect for a little bit of Valentine's Day Bah-humbug spirit.

So although I wasn't feeling this mani when I put it on, it ended up being quite fitting for my mood the next day as I was awoken in the middle of the night by a dreadful "drip...drip....drip" sound and now there's a clean-up crew in my house, sawing giant hole in my bedroom ceiling to repair damage caused by a leaky pipe leading to the upstairs bathroom. So you could say I'm definitely feeling in a "grumpy cat" mood today. Related: I am exhausted.

I started off with Sinful Colors "gogo girl", which is a really lovely crelly-pink polish. I added some light pink with a dry-brush technique before adding some stamping in black and my reverse-stamped grumpy cat. 

The large broken heart image comes from the MoYou London Geek collection plate, one of the ones that features random emojis. I've used this plate quite a bit, so if you want to see the varied looks it can be used for, check out my *mostly* alphabetical plate index. 

The smaller hearts are from MoYou London Hipster-13. I thought they were such a perfect match for the larger broken heart image. 

Finally, good 'ole grumpy cat is from a Bundle Monster plate, from the Fuzzy and Ferocious collection (plate #BM-S162). 

Be sure to check out some more grouchy, anti-valentine manis in the link-up! I can't wait to see what the other ladies come up with!

30 Days of Color Challenge: Channeling Rarity

Hello Readers!

Today marks the start of a new week, so a new prompt in the 30 Days of Color Challenge! This week's prompt is "jewels". Now, I guess this can be interpreted a few different ways, and I like that. I thought of using those little nail rhinestones for this prompt, of going with jewel tones, or of using jewels as a theme. Since I like to do themey, quirky manis I decided to go with jewels as a theme and eventually decided to theme the mani around one of the My Little Ponies, Rarity.

For those not familiar with the show, Rarity is a pony who loves her shiny things, especially gems and jewels! I went off of her color scheme and tried to play up the sparkles a little bit. Here's a picture of the pony herself for reference:

from deviant art

New Year's Eve Nails

Hello Readers!

Instead of doing fireworks for this year's New Year's Eve mani, I decided to go with a black and white them and an emoji to represent the occasion and add some color. While I love how the design worked out, unfortunately I had a little technical difficulty that didn't come out until it was too late to re-do them, so here they are anyway:

I chose the kissy face emoji to represent the midnight kiss for good luck, but I think I overcompensated the fact that I was putting him on a dark background by putting on too much yellow polish and unfortunately... it leaked! Ha ha I don't think I've had this particular problem before, but I can't re-do it now so let's pretend he is so overcome with holiday cheer he just can't contain himself.

Here's a quick look at my color palette for this mani:

I decided to use Konstellation for a bit of a variation on a basic black. I love this satin, micro-shimmery polish! I used a matte topcoat to seal those nails since I wanted to preserve the matte finish of the polish. 

Let's kick off the plate show-and-tell with this *actually* New Year's themed plate from Bundle Monster's Winter Holiday collection. Oh my gosh I love this plate- it so full of cute. I just used it as collage-style full nail images, but these images would also be easy to isolate and a lot of them would be useful for more than just new years- the balloons, clock, party hats, etc. 

I took my numbers for the "17" from this font plate from MoYou London. I used my nail guides to make isolating out the numbers I wanted super easy. 

My kissy face comes from this MoYou London plate from the "geek" collection. I made a decal on my stamper head, and then added color to the little heart after stamping it onto my finger since the heart stamps solid. I haven't really attempted that technique before, but it was surprisingly easy to do. 

I also used this plate from MoYou London's hipster collection, to stamp the bow background behind my emoji. I figured bow ties were a classic New Year's look.

So are you all excited for the New Year? Do you have any big plans for 2017? Any big plans for tonight? I'd love to hear about them! We are having a couple of friends over for board games to ring in the New Year tonight, so I am excited for that and always excited for a fresh start! 

Challenge Your Nail Art: Presents

Hello Readers!



For today's Challenge Your Nail Art prompt, "presents", I decided to go with kind of a toy theme to represent what you might find inside of a present, especially a child's present.

For this mani, I started off with my favorite navy blue polish, "Navy I Do" by Sinful Colors. This polish is a one-coater and I love how it stamps, too!
I used BMC "Jungle Mirage", which is a stamping polish, for most of my stamping here.

My inspiration for this mani came from this MoYou London dupe from Aliexpress, which has a kind of nutcracker theme but what really inspired me was all the sweet little toy images. I only used the little teddy bear from the plate, but it was where the idea started:

I thought my teddy bear needed a frame, so I used one of my favorite MoYou London plates to make it a little frame. I tend to use this plate more for the 3 frame images at the bottom than for the alphabet, although the alphabet is very fun and useful as well!

My bow also comes from a MoYou London plate, this time the adorable emoji themed plate. I was kind of surprised that this is one of only two bow images in my plate collection! Looking at the mani now, I realize I placed the bow too high on the ribbons (which I stamped with MoYou London Holy Shapes 05) and it looks a bit "off", but oh well.

Finally, my airplane and car images come from this Born Pretty Store plate, which features a lot of really fun and quirky images.