Some Pig- Inspired by a book ft. Bundle Monster Fuzzy and Ferocious

Salutations, Readers!


For this month's #clairestelle8challenge on instagram, the final prompt is to be "inspired by a book/movie". I felt I just had to represent my 4-year-old's favorite book right now, Charlotte's Web. I grew up watching the animated movie based off of the book, but didn't read the book itself until I started reading a chapter to him before he went to bed each night.

 We stopped reading for a few months, but a couple of weeks ago we were at the dentist. Our kid's dentist lets them pick out a book from a very nice selection as a reward for getting their teeth messed with, and there in the bookshelf was "Charlotte's Web".

I tried to tell him that we already had a copy at home, but he insisted upon bring home his "favorite book", and we've been reading it again ever since.

So, my mani is based on the unlikey friendship of the little pig and the wise spider.

I started off this mani with the LA Colors "Fresh" polish, and then added some clouds with a makeup sponge to give my characters a bit more of an interesting background. To do this, I cut off a tiny corner of the sponge and held it with self-closing tweezers. Then I sponged on some white polish in cloud shapes, and finally added a tiny bit of silver polish with the sponge towards the bottom of the clouds.

My little pig comes from this Bundle Monster "Fuzzy and Ferocious" plate. I used my lint roller to lift off all of the little elements around the pig to just get the animal himself.

The little spider comes from another Bundle Monster "Fuzzy and Ferocous" plate, this time with lots of bugs. I made a really simple decal with the image.

Finally, I grabbed the spider web image from this Bundle Monster plate from their original holiday collection. For the pointer finger, I added lettering to represent the words Charlotte spun into her web to save her little friend. I'm not great with hand lettering, but I figured it didn't really matter in this case since it was supposed to look as if a spider wrote it.


Are you a fan of this classic children's book? Or were you too busy reading other literature as a child and skipped this one over, as I did? Let me know in the comments!

Cinco De Mayo mani, and an existential ramble

Hello Readers!


Today I have a mani for a somewhat controversial, very "American" holiday; Cinco De Mayo. This is a holiday billed by Americans as "Mexican", although it is not really celebrated in Mexico, which makes it the perfect example of the melting pot that America is, as well as my own personal journey with my feelings about my heritage.

I've always felt a little bit awkward answering the question on surveys; you know, the one that asks, "Are you of Mexican or Latin descent?" It makes me hesitate. Even though my Grandmother was born in Mexico, grew up in Mexico, and immigrated to America as a young adult, it feels dishonest somehow to check that box.

My Grandmother had strong feelings about accepting the American culture. She worked hard to learn to speak English, and as a result, Spanish was not spoken in her home and my father didn't learn it as a native language. He did go on to learn it later in life, as a young adult, when he lived in Mexico for a couple of years to serve a mission for our church. But, as my own mother does not speak Spanish, I also did not grow up speaking it. But as a teenager, I chose to learn it in school as a kind of way to connect back to my heritage.

My Grandmother was very proud of having become a naturalized citizen of the United States. She left most of her Mexican culture at home and embraced America in almost every ways. The few things that remained from her homeland were her heavy accent and her delicious, authentic recipes. Much like this holiday, she left Mexico and created a life of her own in America, making her own version of the American experience.

Whenever I read those silly little surveys about "growing up Mexican/American", I never relate to any of it. I wasn't raised by her, and in fact saw very little of her as she lived far away from us and our visits were few and short. But she holds a very special place in my heart, and so does her country of origin.

I decided to go fairly simple on this mani, with gradient base and simple stamping over it. I ended up using a "real" stamping polish to capture all the tiny details of my stamping images.

Pastel Eggs in a Basket ft. Bundle Monster Holiday Collection

Hello Readers!


Today's post is for the 30 Days of Color Challenge, where we are encouraged to pull out our unused polished to create a mani inspired by a weekly prompt. This week's prompt is "pastels", and in honor of the upcoming holiday and because I only have 2 plates left on my "unused plate" list and I wanted to cross one off, I decided to go "Easter" for this prompt.

In case you were wondering, the Easter egg pattern was on the unused plate. I've used the basket weave stamp a few times before.

I picked a very pastel palette, and decided to try to stamp with lighter colors to play up the pastel... ness... of my mani. The "Pink Pineapple" polish was my unused color for this mani. I found this recently at the Dollar Tree when they put a million of those Revlon Parfumarie polishes out- mine still has quite a few left. This polish had a kind of crelly formula and I put about 4 coats of it on.

My Easter egg image comes from this plate, which is part of the Bundle Monster "Holiday" collection. I originally thought it would be pretty to do all my stamping in gold, but after I finished the reverse stamping it looked pretty washed out so I stamped over it with white. I tried to line it up, but it's a bit offset. *shrugs shoulders* I'm going to pretend that's what I was going for here.

My basket weave pattern is also from the Bundle Monster Holiday collection. I used this around Thanksgiving for a very different look, but here I thought it would be fun to layer it over a pastel color to give an Easter Basket look. 

Thanks for stopping by today! Be sure to check out the link-up below for more "pastel" manis!

Clairestelle8 "Mothers" inspired mani

Hello Readers!


Today's nail art is for the #clairestelle8challenge on instagram... the prompt is "mothers", so I decided to go with a "new mom" type of theme. That being said...  I feel like this mani is mediocre and I'm not in love with it. I can't quite put my finger on why I don't like it either, and it's driving me a little bit crazy.

Maybe it's the colors?

I started off with Sinful Colors "Kashmere", which is a color I really do like. I wanted to see how my new-ish purple Orly polish would stamp, so I was playing with that. I chose purple as my base thinking of using it as a "baby color" and an alternative to the more traditional pink, but I wasn't super confident about what colors to pair it with for the balloons. Maybe that's why  I'm not crazy about it?

Most of my images come from this Bundle Monster plate, from the original Holiday collection. I love how the dangly bows curve around in a kind of curtain.

My heart balloons come from this love-themed plate from Bundle Monster's new "Kawaii Emoji" collection. I just made a really simple decal with them.

I decided to add a little bit of lace behind the balloon image, so I used the MoYou London Trend Hunter plate with all the lovely lacy images on it.

Pop Art Zombies ft. Bundle Monster House of Horrors, MoYou London Holy Shapes

Hello Readers!


Today's post is an unusual one for March, because the prompt today for the #clairestelle8challenge on instagram is "unseasonal". I had a couple of Halloween plates on my "unused" plates list and I figured this was the perfect opportunity to play with them.

As I was contemplating what exactly I wanted to do, I remembered this pop art ghost mani I did around Halloween time last year, and decided to follow that sort of theme, but with a Zombie twist.

I stated off with a base of Sinful Colors "Snow Me White", and then had some fun with Bundle Monster stamping polishes. I did use an actual stamping polish for my black here. That means I also used a different topcoat than my normal to try to help prevent it from smudging. Black stamping polish is always the worst smudger! I find the Revlon Gel Envy topcoat works well over black stamping. You can see in the pic that it did still smudge in one small spot on the zombie's neck, but it's better than if I had used my normal quick-drying topcoat.

While we are on the subject, I also like to use the "gel" formula topcoats when making decals. Not actual lamp cured gel topcoats, just the kind with a gel-like formula. They tend to work better and crack less when moving the decals around to apply them to my nails.

I started off by stamping the large right triangle image from this MoYou London Holy Shapes plate.

Next, I stamped some polka dots from this other plate from the Holy Shapes collection. I just turned the stamp diagonally and purposely overlapped them onto the purple triangles just a little bit.

Once I had by base down, I stamped on some zombie themed images. My zombie face and the word "zombie" on my middle nail came from this Bundle Monster plate, from the House of Horrors collection. It was a really awesome Halloween collection that came out last year, and I used all the the plates except for this one, because it was a bit more gorey than the others and it's not my usual style. Hence the bright colors on this mani, ha ha.

My eye splat images come from this other Bundle Monster plate, from the original holiday collection.

For my middle nail, I actually lifted an "I <3" image off this plate from MoYou London's Rebel collection, and then stamped the word "zombie" under it. That's one great thing about these types of images- it's pretty easy to switch it up to say whatever you need it to say.

So I think this mani just about wins a "use-a-million-plates" award, ha ha. It was really fun to do though, and I'm happy to return to a pop-art nail art look; I always seem to enjoy them.

St. Patrick's Day Nails ft. Bundle Monster Holiday

Hello Readers!



Happy St. Patrick's Day to all who celebrate it! Today's post is, of course, inspired by the holiday over here in America and is also my fill for the #clairestelle8challenge on instagram.

I decided to break out my classic Bundle Monster holiday plates and use the St. Patrick's Day images on them for this mani. Although I have other plates that have shamrocks on them, I haven't actually used these plates yet and the images on them are pretty cute.

I used the Sinful Colors St. Patrick's Day color "Works Like a Charm" for my base on my pointer/pinky fingers, and decided to stamp over that with the Essie "Off Tropic" polish, because it is a deeply saturated green and all those dark polishes normally work great for stamping. Just be aware when using regular polish to stamp that it will normally show up a few shades lighter with stamping than with regular polishing. Actually, I often find the same to be true with actual stamping polishes, to a lesser extent.

The original Bundle Monster holiday collection, with the old school round plates, has two St. Patrick's Day plates, and I used both here. From the above plate, I only used the shamrock image on the right hand side. 

But on this plate, I made a decal with the coin image and use the top shamrock image. I just took advantage of the straight line at the top of the image and stamped it about 1/3 from the top of my nails.

Next, I used this MoYou London plate from the Frenchy collection to create the bands at the top of the pattern. I used the skinniest band at the very top to do this. I find that to place these bands correctly, you have to be very careful when lifting the stamper. I like to hold it to my nail for a few seconds to give it a chance to dry on my nail before lifting, and when I lift I do it very slowly, checking to make sure the band hasn't come up over the nail and folded over.

Finally, I finished off my pointer/pinky fingers with a little square stud, because we know any St. Patrick's Day look benefits from a little bit of Leprechaun treasure!


Will you be celebrating St. Patrick's Day this year?   Personally, I think the only festive part of my day will be my fingernails, but we did have a green pudding pie earlier this week in a kind of pi day/St. Patrick's day combo celebration. The kids have been making St. Patrick's Day crafts at the library and doing other small activities throughout the week. But I'm not really planning on doing anything elaborate this year.

Simple Sunday 3/12/17, ft. MoYou London Pro

Hello Readers!


Today's Simple Sunday is truly simple as it features no reverse stamping; only simple straight-to-nail stamping with a few different plates.

30 DOC/CYNA combo challenge: In Rememberance

Hello Readers!


Today I am doing a combo challenge mani, half accidentally. I started out doing this mani with the 30 Days of Color Challenge prompt in mind, which is "hearts/love", but as I was thinking about it I realized I really wanted to do a gradient background, which fits perfectly in the Challenge Your Nail Art current prompt, which is "gradient". So It's a double post today!

This mani represents a very tender sentiment for me. Right around this time of year is the anniversary of the loss of my sweet tiny baby. I always like to do some form of artwork to commemorate and honor those babies that I lost about 3 years ago. Last year I made a series of pastel paintings:

This was before I was into nail art; I was really into pastels and pastel portraits at the time so it seemed like the perfect medium.

To explain the significance of the images in the paintings and on my nails today, I suppose I need to tell you the story behind them.

Lunar New Year Nails

Hello Readers!


Today I have a holiday mani for Lunar New Year, which begins today.

This year is the year of the Fire Rooster, and though I decided not put a Rooster on my nails, I always think it is interesting to learn what each animal symbolizes, so here we go:

"Roosters are characterized as observant and hardworking. Active and talkative, Roosters tend to enjoy social events and being in the center of attention, according to Chinese astrology. They also typically enjoy sports, according to traits set by the astrology."
-from Time's Article about the Year of the Rooster

 I decided to pair paper cranes with my Lunar New Year mani, even though they are not usually associated with the holiday. My reasoning is that until more recent modern days, Lunar New Year was the official start of the New Year in Japan as well as China, and the paper cranes are a Japanese symbol that represent good luck, healing, and wish fulfillment. I feel like that is a good sentiment for going into a new year- the hope that it will be full of those things.

I used my new favorite red for this mani, since red is a symbol of good luck in China and is traditionally a color associated with Lunar New Year.

My paper cranes come from this MoYou London Origami collection plate. (That paper airplane in the upper left corner!!) I used the reverse stamping method to fill in their little crane bodies with white before stamping them onto my gold nail.

The lanterns come from this Bundle Monster plate from their original holiday collection.

Do you do anything to celebrate Lunar New Year? Although I don't do anything too elaborate, I always enjoy seeing what the zodiac animal for the year is and reading a little bit about Chinese culture this time of year. It's always fun to explore other countries, even if your budget limits you to doing it from your computer chair. ;) Also, do you know what your Chinese Zodiac sign is? Mine is a rabbit- a fire rabbit, to be specific. If you want to find yours, this site will help you out with that. :)

Challenge Your Nail Art: Pumpkins

Hello Readers!

Today I have a response to the "pumpkins" prompt for the Challenge Your Nail art group on Facebook. I've been looking forward to October for months now because I have been so excited to do fall and Halloween manis! So I'm excited to be participating in the group to see even more fun fall manis.

So today's stamping heavily features Bundle Monster's "holiday" round plate collection, which is an older collection. I made a pumpkin decal and had fun shading it in, as well as shading my leaves. I've really been enjoying coloring fall leaves in; they are really fun to do. 

I also used this moyou london dupe plate for the second time this month:

As well as this farm themed plate from Bundle Monster's "Fuzzy and Ferocious" for the little barn:

I was originally going to do a scarecrow on my accent nail. I actually got it all painted for the decal and when I flipped it over, I hated it. So I decided to change directions and try out the barn image instead. In retrospect, I think the overall look would have been better if I had stuck to the basketweave background on all the nails and just had the one with a pumpkin. Oh, well, you live you learn right? I actually tried to take one of the smaller pumpkins and stamp it onto the foreground on the barn landscape, but it just didn't work. The scale was off and it looked too simple because all the other images have thin black borders. I tried to add detail to make it fit, but it was a fail so I ended up scraping it off and re-stamping the lower portion of my grass there. I later added little pumpkins just using a dotting tool, and then added a little highlight on them with a smaller dotting tool. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this fall-themed manicure. Thanks for stopping by today!