Guilded Planets

Hello Readers!

Today I have a manicure that has been in the back of my head for a while, begging me to try it, but I have been so busy doing a million other manicures that I haven't actually gotten around to trying it, until tonight. This mani was inspired by one I saw on pinterest, which was from More Nail Polish.
Here's my take on it:

I used LA Colors "Wired" for my base coat, and then applied a layer of Sinful Colors "Bangin Blue", which is a gorgeous blue jelly polish with flakies. For my accent nail, I used ORLY "Don't Lasso Me Around" with a coat of LA Colors "Dizzy" over it, which is a gold glitter. I like to layer it over a gold polish just to add a little more bling to it. 

Here's another shot, with the Sinful Colors jelly polish:

My stamping plate came from Bundle Monster's Create Your Own 2014 collection. 

I hope you enjoyed this mani, and until next time, Happy Polishing!

-The Midnight Stamper

P is for Parrot in Paradise

Hello Readers!

It's time for another installment of the ABC Nail Art Challenge! After a bit of deliberation- there always seems to be so many possibilities for each letter- I decided to go with "parrots" for the letter P. I almost did peacocks, but I guess I will have to save that one for another day. I feel like I kind of have to get as many summery manicures in before the end of summer, and peacocks aren't as summery as parrots. ;)

I used a Bundle Monster plate from the Fuzzy and Ferocious Collection to reverse stamp a fun toucan (which is not technically a parrot, but oh well).

I used Sinful Colors "Rock the Bow" for the grayish blue background on my middle three nails, and Essie "Going Guru" for the light green on my thumb and pinky, as well as the reverse stamping for those tropical leaves. 

I was originally going to do the macaw from this stamping plate, but I ended up liking how the toucan turned out better than the macaw. (I put the macaw on my Cinderella hand). 

Here's my toucan plate: "Pretty Birds", from the Fuzzy and Ferocious collection by Bundle Monster. I just love this whole collection, but this plate is pretty awesome with the eagle (for fourth of July or other patriotic holidays) and I am looking forward to using the owl in the fall. 

This plate is also Bundle Monster, from the Hangloose collection. I used the leaves in the upper right hand corner for all my foliage on this mani. I love how the edges of the leaves are left outlined, which made it easy to put just a little of the leaves on my nails to make it look like we are seeing the toucan through the leaves in the jungle. 

Thanks for stopping in today, and be sure to check out the other ladies who participated in this challenge! Happy Polishing,

-The Midnight Stamper

An InLinkz Link-up

Simple Sunday Mani: Golden Pineapple

Hi Readers!

I'm back again with another Simple Sunday Mani, this time using some of Bundle Monster's adorable nail charms from the "Hangloose" collection.

Walgreens was having a 2/$3 sale on their Sinful Colors polishes this week, so I picked up a few new pinks since I don't really have a lot of pink in my collection. I decided to use one of my new pinks for this Sunday's mani, so I have on Sinful Colors "24/7" as my base. 

As I was trying to decide what to do for this Sunday, I knew I wanted to use the pineapple and I figured I'd do some simple stamping to go along with it, but I wasn't sure what color I wanted to use. I originally thought I'd use a more coral-leaning color. This style of mani would really work with almost any color, which I think is one of the fun things about it. 

I thought I would do a simple polka dot and a stripe, but when I pulled out my plates these images called to me and I decided it would be much more interesting with these instead. ;) 

My flowery image comes from BM-710, from Bundle Monster's "Secret Garden" Collection. 

Thank you for visiting me today, and Happy Polishing!

-The Midnight Stamper

Anniversary mani

Hello Readers!

Since today is my 9th wedding anniversary, I decided to make a celebratory mani. For such a simple manicure, this ended up being a massive struggle, but somehow I ended up liking the end result, for the most part.

Part of the reason I struggled so much is because it turns out that Sinful Colors "Angelick" from the Kylie Jenner collection (which I used as my base) is kind of a slow-drying polish, and it requires 3 coats to become opaque. I ended up ruining my pinky about 3 times just from smudging it on my other fingers while I was trying to stamp my other nails. Because yes, I am impatient. 

Then I had some trouble with the image I was using, because it is such a delicate image. I had trouble actually getting it onto my nails before the nail polish dried on my stamper.  

The rhinestones on my middle finger are actually salvaged from an earring had in my jewelry box for the last 15 years and never wore. I used wire cutters to cut off the post and voila! A nail charm. It has a little bend to it so I was trying to curve it so it would kind of go along my cuticle... it didn't curve so easily but I kind of like it anyway. 

So there it is: through much toil and frustration I ended up with something kind of nice. Is that a metaphor for marriage or something? Nah, marriage is better than "kind of nice", especially on your anniversary. ;)

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this, and happy polishing!

-The Midnight Stamper

Back to School Mani with Fimo Slices

Hi Readers!

In honor of the upcoming school year, which is starting this week in our area, I decided to try a back-to-school mani inspired by those cute little fimo clay cane slices. I thought an apple would be the perfect theme for a school mani, so I built the rest of my design around that.

My Polishes:

-base green: Colormates "Groovy Green"

-base red: ORLY "Red Gloss Glitter"

-cream polish: Sinful Colors "Beaches and Cream"

-stamping green: Wet N Wild "Do Pass Go"

-stamping black: Wet N Wild "Black Creme"

For my stamping plates, I used one from Bundle Monster's Holiday collection for the school-themed stamp:

The triangle pattern comes from an awesome Born Pretty plate with lots of basic designs:

I also used silver striping tape to separate the sections on my accent nail and just add a little bit of detail. 

I hope you enjoyed this mani, and Happy Polishing!

-The Midnight Stamper

ABC Nail Art Challenge: N is for "Nope"

Hi Readers!

I was so excited to do the letter "N" for the ABC Nail Art Challenge, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do for it.

I recently acquired the bundle monster "Fuzzy and Ferocious" nail stamping plate collection, and this particular image has been calling for me to use it.

Grumpy cat! And it even says "Nope" right under him. 

Here are the polishes I used:

-Sinful Colors "lavender" for the deep blue-purple shade on my thumb, index, and pinky

-Sinful Colors "Lie-lac" for the light purple under my stamping

-Wet N Wild "black creme" for my stamping polish

-Sinful Colors "beaches and Cream" for grumpy cat himself, and Wet N Wild "The Gold and the Beautiful" for to color in a few of the triangles

-LA Colors "splat" is the black and white glitter polish

Here is the stamping plate I used for these images:

I honestly love all the images on this plate. It is so much fun! In fact, the collection is just full of awesome animal images. 

Thanks for checking out my mani and happy polishing!

-The Midnight Stamper

An InLinkz Link-up

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. 

Simple Sunday Mani

Hello Readers!

Every Sunday I go to church, and so I prefer to do a more simple, formal manicure on Saturday night to wear next day. (Because I have little ones, I find that painting my nails during the day is a sure-fire way to end up with a ruined paint job. I ALWAYS smudge it when I try.)

Today I had a couple of polishes I really wanted to try out, both from Essie- "Belugaria" and "Jump in my Jumpsuit." I found them on clearance at Walgreens recently and have been scheming up what to do with them ever since.

In case you are not familiar with it, Belugaria is a textured polish meant to resemble caviar. I didn't realize this when I picked it up, so I was pretty surprised when I swatched it! I decided to try reverse stamping with it to see what would happen.

As it turns out, it doesn't look that different than regular polish with the advanced stamping technique. Once you get the topcoat on, it kind of smooths it out, though it is a bit more 3-D than a normal polish. 

I also used Sinful Colors "Devil's Stare" over the Essie's "Jump in my Jumpsuit" for the accent nail. I decided to stamp my image in Sinful Colors "Easygoing", because I wanted a more subtle look instead of a harsh white line. 

The image I used is from the Born Pretty XL plate "BP-L015". You can see it in the photo, just next to my index finger. 

Thanks for looking, and Happy Polishing!

-The Midnight Stamper

Game Night Mani

Hello all! Today I have for you a game-night inspired mani, created for an upcoming session of good 'ole Dungeons and Dragons with some friends.

When I saw the 20-sided dice on this design, well, it was honestly one of the selling points for me to buy the bundlemonster 2014 CYO collection. I paired it with the octopus image from the CYO 2013 collection. I don't actually own the entire CYO 2013 collection; just the one plate because I loved it.

Here are the polishes I used on my nails:

Thumb, pointer, pinky: 3 coats LA Colors "Citron", stamped over with Sinful Colors "Navy I Do"

Middle, Ring: 2 coats LA Colors "Wander", followed by 1 coat Sinful Colors "Hottie", stamped over with Sinful Colors "Navy I Do."

I'm so impressed by how well "Navy I Do" stamps. This is the second mani I've used it to stamp with and I'm really loving it.

Here are the plates I used:

BM-602, "Pop Art Gamer", from Bundlemonster's Create Your Own 2014 collection. I've actually gotten quite a bit of use out of this plate- I used the "pow" image to create a 4th of july mani along with the top burst image. 

The typography image I used today picked up on my stamper really well; I didn't have any issues with the plate.

The octopus image on this plate is just so awesome. I had to try scraping the image from a few different directions to get it to stamp perfectly, but that's to be expected of an image with so much open space and once I tried scraping it from bottom to top I didn't have any problems.

Thanks so much for checking out my mani! Go out and create awesome things.

-Midnight Stamper

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. 

Pioneer Day

In Utah, we celebrate an extra holiday on July 24 called Pioneer Day. It celebrates the founding of our state, and is basically like an extra 4th of July complete with fireworks, parades, and festivities.

I did this manicure in honor of pioneer day.

For my base color, I used Sinful Colors "Navy I do" and "Beaches and Cream". I stamped the fireworks from Bundlemonster's Occasions Collection, plate # BM-S211, "OOH! AAH!", which is a really cute plate full of different full nail firework images.

I stamped these images with ORLY's "Don't Lasso Me Around", from the Wonder Woman Collection. I stamped the lady with the umbrella from a Born Pretty stamping plate, BP-L021, also in Sinful Colors "Navy I Do."

 Last, I added a few gold circle glitters from LA Colors "Dizzy" using a toothpick.

Desert Dwellers

Hi all! Today I have a desert inspired mani using bundlemonster's BM-S168, "Desert Dwellers" from the Fuzzy and Ferocious set 2. I just love all the cute animals on the plates in this collection- they are a lot of fun to color in. For the southwest image on my green nails, I used a born pretty XL plate, BP-L009. It has a lot of fun southwest inspired designs.

Because sometimes I want to use all the images, but I don't really want to spend hours stamping, I do different images on each hand. I had a bit of a hard time getting the southwest design centered-  I guess I need more stamping practice.

For the main green color I used Essie "Going Guru", and the terra cotta color is Essie "Taj-ma-haul". I also stamped over the green with "Taj-ma-haul". I basically grabbed a bunch of random greens from my collection to color in the desert images with, along with a couple of pinks for the cactus flowers.

Watermelon Nails

I love watermelon nails, especially in the summertime. They just feel so bright and happy.

For this mani, I used two stamping plates: one from Bundlemonster (BMS-408, "Summer's Bounty" from the "Hangloose" collection) and one for Born Pretty (BPL-008). I really like both of these plates- the Born pretty plate is such a great one for basic patterns, and Summer's Bounty has some super cute summer images that are perfect for advanced stamping!

I used NYC Fuchsia Shock Cream for the pink base, LA colors Fresh for the blue, and Wet N Wild Leaf Me Be for the green. By the way, that particular Wet N Wild polish doesn't have the best formula, but I tolerate it because I have a hard time finding that particular shade of green, and it really comes in handy in a lot of designs. I stamped over the green with Revlon Colorstay Gel Envy in High Stakes, which stamped beautifully.  

How NOT to do advanced stamping

So, I thought I'd try to be clever with this one. I thought I'd try to make decals the night before, and then apply them to my nails the next day. Yeah... that didn't really work out for me.

Maybe it would work better if I had used a nicer topcoat to create the decals (I used NYC's basic topcoat). Not really sure. But what I can tell you is that the decals became so brittle that they basically crumbled when I tried to pick them up from my non-stick mat. I managed to kind of get the pineapple one on my nails, but I had to piece it together. In the end I decided to completely re-do them, but by that time I was feeling impatient and didn't wait quite long enough to apply the decals to my nails, and they smeared a little bit.

But, there it is anyway. I really love the images, which came from Bundlemonster's "Hangloose" collection, plate BM-S408, "Summer's Bounty".

I used Sinful Colors Yolo Yellow and NYC's Fuschia Shock Cream for my foundation colors, and filled in the pineapples with Sinful Colors Let's Meet and Wet n Wild megalast "Leaf me be". I also stamped with the Sinful Colors Yolo Yellow, which showed up fine but probably wasn't as vibrant as a stamping polish would have been.

This was my first ever attempt at nail stamping. I had tried nail art before, but always became frustrated because I ended up adding too many layers, getting all goopy, and smudging my design because it never fully dried.

So, because of all that, I am so in love with stamping. The polish goes on in such a nice, thin layer that it dries super quickly and super thin, and the process is so much faster than trying- and failing- to paint things freehand. 

My first attempt didn't turn out perfectly, but I love it anyway.

The images are from Bundlemonster's CYO 2014 collection, plate BM-605 (Dreamcatcher). 

I used LA colors petunia for the base color, and stamped over it with Sinful Colors Easygoing. For the accent, I simply reversed the polishes, used a different background image and stamped the dreamcatcher in black (wet n wild black on black). I was pretty pleased at how well the LA Colors polish stamped, since it is such a cheap polish.