Nail Crazies Unite: Ugly *Harry Potter* Sweater

Hello Readers!

For this week's challenge we are over in the Nail Crazies group with an "ugly sweater" prompt. Originally I was going to use my Bundle Monster Christmas-sweater themed plate to go with a classic ugly sweater look, but then I remembered Harry Potter.

For those not familiar with the story (or those who need a refresher), every year at Christmas-time Mrs. Weasley would knit sweaters for each of her children for Christmas, and also one for Harry. Ron always bemoaned the "ugly" maroon sweater he was inevitably given by his mother, though Harry quite appreciated receiving any Christmas gifts at all.

My design is based off of Harry's first year at Hogwarts, and the sweaters that were received by various characters in the book.

Harry's is the green, Ron's is red, and of course I had to include Fred and George, as it reminds me on one of my favorite jokes in the book:

“You haven't got a letter on yours," George observed. "I suppose she thinks you don't forget your name. But we're not stupid-we know we're called Gred and Forge.”

So for these fingers, I basically started with a nude base and then painted over it in the appropriate color. I left some nude at the top to represent the character's neckline when they are wearing the sweater.

Simple Sunday: Ballerina Nails

Hello Readers!


It's been awhile since I have been able to do a Simple Sunday post, since I have been all tied up with the 31-day challenge. Actually, today's Sunday post didn't turn out to be quite as simple as I was hoping, though the techniques are simple enough I had a little trouble figuring out what polishes were going to work best for the stamping I was doing, so I ended up re-doing it a few times. Here is the final result:

So for this mani, I used a combination of water slide decals, stamping, and a 3-D accent. The water slide decals are on my pointer and pinky, as well as my thumb. For my middle and ring, I started with two coats of Sinful Colors "Angelik" from the Kylie Jenner line. I did some background stamping for my ballerina using BMC polish in "Freedom Ring", and this stamping plate from Bundle Monster:

Then I added some stamping from this plate, which is everywhere on ebay and aliexpress and is a dupe for a MoYou London plate from the "Fairytale" collection:

Now, the etching on the dupe is not as deep as the authentic MoYou London plates, but I did not have any problems getting the image to pick up. I did, however, notice a difference in the opacity of the stamping with the dupe compared to a real MoYou plate. Because it is not etched as deeply, there is less polish on the stamping image so it doesn't stamp as dark. I got around this for my ballerina image by filling in the solid areas with more black polish and a toothpick, because I didn't really like how light the black polish looked. I was also using Wet N Wild black polish, so I'm sure if you have real black stamping polish it would come out better. That being said, I didn't have any bald patches in the open areas that I stamped using this plate, so I was impressed about that. 

For the middle finger, I used the ballerina's skirt from this plate, placing the image halfway down my nails, and I added a line with...

...this brand new plate from MoYou London! I'm really excited about this plate, because it the images are designed to be overlapped together to make advanced stamping techniques easier. I'm going to have some fun playing with this! This time, I just used one of the super-useful solid lines to make an easy stripe on my nail. I did take a toothpick and fill it in, just because some of the black stamping was showing through my red polish before I went over it again. 

Finally, I added a rhinestone heart. 

Thanks for stopping by today! I hope you enjoyed this mani, and hope to see you here again. 

-Midnight Stamper