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.

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.