Crumpet's Nail Tarts: Going on Holiday

Hello Readers!



It's Friday again, and this week's prompt for Crumpet's Nail Tarts is "going on holiday". I immediately was drawn to tropical or beachy themes for this mani, although I suppose "on holiday" could mean any location!

Still, I've been wanting to use these unusual beach images from MoYou London's "Scandi" collection forever.

I started this mani with two coats of light blue, and then sponged on a simple gradient. When sponging on a gradient with a flakie polish like "Better Sedona-ed", it's important to use a barrier to protect your cuticles such as liquid latex. Seriously, those flakies are near impossible to remove from your skin later! Speaking of flakie polishes, I spied the entire collection of Sinful Colors "Stoned Crystal Shimmer", including the hard-to-find "Super Cooper", at Kmart the other day. *enabling wink*

I made decals from this plate, "Scandi 01", of the adorable ocean and surf bus images. There's something about that shark in the water that just tickles my funny bone every time I see it.

I normally use a toothpick to fill in my decals, but to get those super tiny ones I had to resort to using a sewing pin.

The little waves come from "Scandi 03". I love how they included coordinating background patterns in this collection! So convenient.


Thanks for stopping by today! If you'd like to see more holiday themed manis, be sure to check out the link-up below!

An InLinkz Link-up

City of Rome ft. MoYou London Scandi

Hello Readers!


Today's #clairestelle8challenge prompt on instagram was one that really made me stop and think, browse through my pinterest board of the stamping plates I own to find inspiration, and even do light research on google. I knew I wanted to choose a specific city for the "cities" prompt, rather than doing a generic city look, but I had no idea which city to choose!

In the end, I was inspired by the Colosseum image on my Scandi plate to base my mani after the famous city of Rome. I decided to pair my images with a marble pattern you might expect to see there, as well as a flower popular in Roman mythology as well as the city itself: the poppy.

I started most of my nails with two coats of Sinful Colors "Snow Me White". On my ring finger, I have 4 coats of "Cinderella" for my base.

The Colosseum image comes from the MoYou London plate "Scandi 03", which has a lot of great landmark buildings from around the world. I've used a few of them already in previous manis; the Golden Gate Bridge, La Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, and some of the textures, so I wanted to choose something I hadn't done before.

My poppies come from a Bundle Monster plate, from the blogger collaboration collection. This is a really gorgeous plate that I've also used a ton of; one of my favorites was this spring daffodil look.

To get the marble texture, I used a different Bundle Monster plate from the Blogger Collaboration plate; this time the Twi_Star plate with all the mermaid stuff. It's supposed to be a kind of water texture, but I thought it would also be perfect to do an easy marble look.

I finished the look off with a couple of studs. I hope you enjoyed this look! If you'd like to see more city themed manis, you can find them on the #clairestelle8may tag on instagram.

Basilica de la Sagrada Familia ft. MoYou London Scandi, Explorer

Hello Readers!


Today for the #clairestelle8challenge on Instagram, the prompt is "Easter", and I feel like I've done a lot of pastel, spring, floral and rabbit themed manis lately so I really wanted to take this prompt in a different direction. Flipping through my plates on my Pinterest board, I noticed this church image and used it as a jumping off point to do a mani based off of a beautiful cathedral. Because to me, Easter is about church.

I'll admit, at first I wasn't sure which church this image was supposed to be, so I did what most people do when in doubt, and turned to google. It didn't take too long to discover the inspiration for this image:



This photo of Basilica of the Sagrada Familia is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Here's a look at the MoYou London "Scandi" plate that I used for the church image:

I decided to take elements of this beautiful basilica to put on my other nails; the middle nail is inspired by some of the lovely stained glass elements that can be found inside the building. I followed the yellow/green color scheme that I noticed in some of the windows. My image comes from a Bundle Monster plate, from the "Shangri la" collection:

To play up the "stained glass" look on this nail, I first painted a coat of Sinful colors "Green Ocean" over the entire stamped image, then I filled in some of the details.

It's hard to really see the flakies of the Green Ocean polish in the first picture, but you can see the effect better here:

Finally, for my pointer/pinky fingers I wanted to represent some of the columns and the detail work carved into the exterior and interior surfaces. I used another MoYou London plate, from the Explorer collection, to represent this:

Always Be Batman (ft. MoYou London Rebel, Scandi)

Hello Readers!

Today's post is for the Crumpet's Nail Tarts/26 Great Nail Art ideas challenge group on Facebook. The prompt is "pastel to bold gradient with something on top." Now, doesn't that just make your mind immediately leap to Batman? No? 

Ok, so this wasn't my first idea but as I was thinking randomly about how I'd like to do a Batman mani and I remembered this prompt, a wild idea popped into my head that these would be perfect for the hero that Gotham deserves.

I'm not sure if the majority of my nails here qualify for "pastel to bold gradient", but the ring finger definitely does! Pastel yellow to the boldest of blue, "Endless Blue" by Sinful Colors. I decided to do a slightly different gradient for my other fingers; my original plan was to do the same gradient on all and do some decals with the building images, but upon further inspection of that particular stamp I decided it wouldn't work because the buildings cover the whole nail. 

My "batman" image comes from this MoYou London "Rebel" collection plate, and is the main inspiration for this mani. I had been debating about this plate for a while, but I finally broke down and bought it and I have to say I have been using the heck out of it. Guess I like it more than I thought. ;)

My city buildings come from this MoYou London "Scandi" plate- another very versatile and cute plate! 

And there you have it- a quite simple to do Batman mani.  Be sure to check out some more gradient manis in the link-up below!

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.

26 Great Nail Art Ideas: Spring Animals ft. MoYou London animal

Hello Readers!


I've been looking forward to this Crumpets Nail Tarts prompt for quite some time now, because I love doing animal themed manis and of course seeing other people's animal themed manis! I'm posting this a day early to avoid two posts on the same day; I really want to post a St. Patrick's Day mani tomorrow!

The theme this week is "Spring Animals", and the first thing I thought of was the adorable bunny image on one of the MoYou London "Animal" collection plates. Adorable sweet bunnies sitting on tree stumps.

I wanted to keep my colors kind of on the pastel side to fit with the "spring" theme, so I started off with a base of Sally Hansen "Mint Sorbet."

I love the color of this polish, but it's a pretty runny formula.

30 Days of Color: GOLDen Gate Bridge ft. MoYou London Scandi

Hello Readers!


Today's prompt is for the 30 Days of Color Challenge, for which this week's prompt is "gold". I've been itching to use the new MoYou London Scandi collection, and I realized that one of the images is the Golden Gate Bridge, which would work perfectly for the "gold" theme. So I decided to use gold as more of an accent color in this mani:

I paired it with the "Big Ben" image, to go along with the gold theme. I did some reverse stamping, for this mani on my stamper head instead of my silicone mat, because for some weird reason I just couldn't get these images to stamp onto the mat properly. I don't usually have that problem; my guess is it was due to the fine lines.

My un-used polishes here are the two Sinful Colors, which are part of the new "Stoned Crystal Shimmer" line. I only used two coats of each polish here; but I've heard a lot of people need at least 3 for these lighter polishes in this collection.

I only used one plate in this mani, which was the MoYou London Scandi plate 3. These Scandi plates are so stinkin cute! I love all the travel themed images on this one, and that it also comes with some basic, very versatile tiny patterns to play with.

Be sure to check out more "gold" themed manis in the link-up below!

Clairestelle8: Beige/Early Simple Sunday Post with Sinful Colors Stoned Crystal Shimmer

Hello Readers!


This week's Simple Sunday post is coming a day early to coincide with the Clairestelle8 challenge on Instagram. I'm pretty new over on Instagram, so this is my first time participating in a challenge over there, so I'm kind of excited about it.

Also, I figured these nails will be perfect for Sunday so why not roll them into tomorrow's Sunday post?

Also, yesterday I went a little crazy with the kitchen scissors and a big box and made a jimmy-rigged DIY light box. I've been trying to work on my photography and I was hoping it would step up my picture game a notch. I'm not sure if you can tell the difference or not.... but there it is.

I have been really enjoying the Sinful Colors "Stoned Crystal Shimmer" collection which they put out this spring. I decided to go for a second round of the "Just Deserts" color for the base of this mani, to fit with the "beige" prompt. This was two thickish coats of the color. I also used Thera-pewter from this collection and the light green color from the current St. Patrick's Day collection to fill in the decals.

The image on my ring finger comes from this MoYou London plate, which is a newer release for their "Doodles" collection. I just really liked the strips of floral on this plate; it's really different and lovely!

The other images come from this MoYou London plate from the new Scandi collection. The Scandi collection... is just so cute! I'm sure you'll be seeing more of me playing with this collection in the very near future. ;) But I really like this plate for all the small images- so many of them are perfect for doing a small little image a the cuticle, which is something I find myself doing a lot.