BB-8 Standing By for Star Wars Day!

Hello Readers, and Happy Star Wars Day!


I've always been into the Star Wars franchise, ever since I was a little girl. My Dad introduced my siblings and I to the original trilogy, and I remember watching it with my brothers and being awed by the exciting adventures and bizarre characters. When I was in High School, the prequels came out and even though  they were terrible, everyone was excited about it and me and my geek friends ;) had viewing parties and everything.

So I couldn't let Star Wars Day pass (as I'm sure everyone has heard a million times, "May the 4th... be with you) without giving it a nod.

I decided to base my mani off one of the newer characters to the franchise, BB-8, mostly because he is cute and I like his color scheme. Also, I've already done R2-D2 nail art.

So, I started off with base of my favorite white, and used this sparkly black on my pinky/pointer, partly because it's called "faraway galaxy" and partly because, just like its name suggests, it reminds me of stars.

Dry Brush Flamingos for Clairestelle8 ft. MoYou London Tropical

Hello Readers!


Today's post is for the #clairestelle8challenge over on instagram, and today's prompt is "dry brush". I decided to try to pair dry brushing with flamingos, since flamingos have some subtle texture and color variation on their feathers I thought I could use dry brushing to try to portray that.

Also, flamingos are fun!

I kept my colors pretty simple; I thought gray would be a good compliment to the pink of the flamingos. For my dry brushed nail, I started with "Let's Playa" and added the dry brushing with "Peaches and Cream" and then "Cool Cadet." I also stamped over the white nails with "Let's Playa".

Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff- ft. MoYou London Scandi

Hello Readers!


Today's prompt for the #clairestelle8challenge over on instagram is "magic", and while I considered doing a Harry Potter mani for this prompt no particular design was jumping out in my mind, so I had a quick look through my plates and saw the Scandi plate by MoYou London. Remembering the "tardis" image (I'm sure it's supposed to be a regular phone booth, but does it really matter?), I immediately knew what I wanted to do.

This is my interpretation of the Tardis, falling through the space-time continuum.

For the uninitiated, the Tardis (from the British TV series "Dr. Who") is basically a time traveling space ship. It was supposed to have a feature that made it disguise itself by taking on the appearance of an object that would fit the era and location, but it go permanently stuck on looking like a police call box.

Originally, I thought I'd do a gradient background but when I started sponging it on I decided it was going to take me a million spongings to get it to the opacity I wanted because of my sheer-ish polishes, so I just slapped it on there with the nail polish brushes, lol. I figured smooth transitions weren't super important for this mani since I was planning on stamping over it anyway.

I used one of the swirly stamping images from this MoYou London Pro Collection plate. I'm actually kind of surprised by how often I've been reaching for this plate; I've only had it about a month and I've already used it twice- in a Simple Sunday and a more kawaii mani.

And the phone booth image comes from this MoYou London Scandi plate. There's a double decker bus in the same image as it, but it was pretty simple to just apply polish to the phone booth and then scrape away from the bus to isolate it. I did that four times to make four decals to do a flip-book inspired look.

I love geeky manis, and this one makes my inner nerd very happy, ha ha.

Clairestelle8: "Swirls" ft. Bundle Monster Kawaii Emoji

Hello Readers!



Today I have a post for the #Clairestelle8 challenge group on Instagtam, and the prompt is "swirls". Because I've been itching to play with the new Kawaii Emoji collection by Bundle Monster, I decided to pair my swirls with some adorable nail polish themed images from that collection:

I also did a little dry brush gradient for my pointer and pinky fingers to go behind the swirls.

I started with a base of the LA Colors "Citron". I really love this color. It's a little bit concerning when you first start to put it on because it looks super patchy on the first two coats, but the third coat is magic and that's how many coats I put on today.

I used the Revlon Parfumerie polish "Ginger Melon" to do a dry brush gradient on my pointer and pinky fingers. This was my first time doing it this way; I normally use a sponge but I didn't have one handy and I figured it would be a good time to try this technique out. I did enjoy doing it this way; it was quite a bit less messy than the sponge method.

The adorable little polish bottles and stamper head images come from this Bundle Monster plate, from the new Kawaii Emoji collection. This plate is so stinkin cute and I have seen a lot of people using it on Instagram already.

I got my swirls from this MoYou London Pro collection plate. I liked how thick these swirls were and felt they would match up well with the bold kawaii images I was using from the other plate.

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.

ABC Nail Art Challenge: Z is for Zapatos

Hello readers!

Today is the final letter in the ABC nail art challenge! It gets a little bit tricky towards the end of the alphabet but it has been fun to come up with words for these last few letters. For "z" I am going with the foreign language approach and going with "zapatos", which means "shoes" in Spanish. I've had this shoe plate staring up at me beneath its blue film in my stamping plate binder for a while now, silently asking me, "why did you buy me? Are you ever going to use me?" So I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to take it up on its challenge.

I decided to pair my single shoe image with a smaller scale shoe image and a floral reminescent of what I imagine the tiny pattern on the shoe is. 

I started out with the Revlon "High Stakes" polish, which was super runny but turns out to be a beautiful royal  blue. I used the Sinful Colors "Snow Me White" to stamp with, and as you can see it stamps really nicely.

So, this plate... I bought it off Aliexpress on a whim, and it is similar to a MoYou London plate from the pro collection. I thought it was funny, but then I had trouble thinking of what to actually do with it because I didn't think I'd like a mani with all the nails being one big shoe. I love doing quirky things, but I think that would just be a little too much for me. I love that this plate exists, and since it was just $1 I decided to go for it but... I don't know, I guess it's just not a plate I really see myself using all the time. The images are cute though! Maybe I just need to use my imagination more to figure out a use for them. I think the flip-flop could be really fun for a tropical mani, though. 

The floral print comes from this Bundle Monster plate from the Create-Your-Own 2014 collection. I love this delicate floral- it is just so lovely. The leaf image on this plate is really neat too. 

Finally I have this fun Born Pretty plate that I took the smaller-scale shoes from. This plate is super fun for back-to-school themes and lots of random, quirky images. 

Well, that wraps up the final letter for the ABC challenge! Check out some more 'Z' themed manis in the link-up below!