Clairstelle8: Chocolate ft. Bundle Monster Kawaii Emoji

Hello Readers!


Today's post is another fill for the #Clairestelle8challenge over in instagram, and this time the prompt is "chocolate". I struggled with coming up with a theme for this a little bit, but I finally settled on chocolate cupcakes.

I thought it would also be fun to do little splashes of melted chocolate, since we all know it can get a little bit messy, especially in the warmer weather!

I started off with 3 coats of Sinful Colors "Unicorn". I also decided to use the Revlon Parfumerie "Chocolate Truffle" polish (for the darkest stamping) to make my mani also *smell* like chocolate!

My full-nail cupcake image comes from this Bundle Monster "Kawaii Emoji" plate. So many cute sweets!

My little chocolate splashes were taken from this MoYou London "Artist" collection plate. I love this plate- I never have a problem with the pick-up, even with those large open images.

Finally, I used this MoYou London "Rebel" collection plate for the "I love cupcakes" image on my middle finger. I decided to make the chocolate splashes lighter on this nail so that my stamping would stand out over it, so I used a different brown to stamp them in.

Simple Sunday 4/9/17- Spring Daffodils

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It's time for another Simple Sunday post, which for a change this week is actually fairly simple because it only requires stamping on one nail. I was inspired by this daffodil image because daffodils are, to me, the quintessential spring flower.

 See? Mostly just polish, very little stamping. ;)

The main featured polish here is from the Sinful Colors "Stoned Crystal Shimmer" collection which was released this spring. The green, "Super Cooper", is more difficult to find than the others but I was lucky enough to spot it at my local Albertsons.

For my middle finger, I started with a gold polish for a base and then sponged on a gold flakie polish to get a more saturated look. I did use liquid latex to protect my skin, because glitter is no fun to remove from your fingers!

My daffodil image comes from this gorgeous Bundle Monster plate. This was part of the blogger collaboration release last year- I loved all the flower images that are so perfect for reverse stamping! If you'd like to see a couple of other examples of these flowers being filled in, you can check out this mani where I used the roses, or here for the bluebells.

Bunnies love carrots- Ft. MoYou London Animal

Hello Readers!



Today's post is in response to a #clairestelle8challenge prompt on instagram- which happens to be "bunnies or chicks". It turns out I have bunch of different bunny images, but only one chick or two chick images to choose from. I decided to go with the bunnies and their favorite snack.

I think they turned out very "Easter-y!"

I started this mani with two coats of "Lie-Lac", though I probably could have gotten away with just one. Love this polish!

My little bunny images come from this MoYou London "Animal 04" plate.

And I got my carrots off of this Bundle Monster plate from the "Fuzzy and Ferocious" collection. The carrot image above the donkey in the lower right hand corner of the plate wasn't quite big enough to cover my whole nail, so I stamped it twice to extend the image. It overlaps a little in the middle, but it doesn't bother me too much.

Finally, I finished the mani off with some simple stamping with this MoYou London Africa plate. I thought the design somewhat resembles a basketweave design, which I figured was very appropriate for Easter.

Nail Crazies Unite: Hippy/Boho

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Today's post is for the "Nail Crazies Unite" group on Facebook, and this week's prompt is "Hippy/Boho". The images that came to mind when I thought about that theme were blue skies, dreamcatchers, and woodgrain.

I decided to try a little bit of free hand sponging to try to make my cloudy background more realistic.

For my sky base, I used China Glaze "For Audrey" to make a nice deep, blue sky like the kind we see in the Southwest.

To create the clouds, I cut a tiny corner off of a sponge and held it with my tweezers. First I sponged on some white, then I added a tiny bit of grey over that for shading.

My dream catcher and "Dream Big" phrase come from this Bundle Monster plate from the "Festival" collection. I made a little decal with the dream catcher so I could fill it in a little bit.

My woodgrain image comes from another Bundle Monster plate, from the "Secret Garden" collection.

Finally, my little daisies come from this plate from the Born Pretty store; they are actually from one of the potted plant images but I just wanted the daisies because they remind me of flower crowns. I just placed the "pot" off of the nail.

Thanks for stopping by today- I hope you enjoyed this mani; this I think is one of my favorites! Check out the link-up below for more hippy/boho inspired nail art!

Pastel Eggs in a Basket ft. Bundle Monster Holiday Collection

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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!

Dry Brush Flamingos for Clairestelle8 ft. MoYou London Tropical

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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".

Simple Sunday 4/2/17 ft. MoYou London Kaliedoscopic

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Today's post is another Simple Sunday, where I post a more traditional nail art look... supposedly... ha ha. I've been really enjoying working with nude shades for my Sunday posts lately, so this post is keeping with that tradition.

My idea behind this mani was to try out the "layering" feature on MoYou London's "Kaleidoscopic" plate. I've used this plate a few times before, but I've never actually used it as it was designed to be used- by layering the images together to create a multi-colored full nail image.

At first, my plan was to keep to three colors to keep the look simple, but halfway through I decided I really needed a third color to pull this off so I grabbed a slightly darker pink to fill in my reverse-stamped image on my ring finger. I also used a large dotting tool to fill in the dots on the images on my pointer and pinky fingers.

Here's a shot of the MoYou London plate I used for the majority of my images. The images with the higher arches on the right-hand side of the plate are the ones intended to be the "middle" image, because the smaller "bottom" images fit inside the arch better. I learned this the hard way- I tried putting one of the straighter images on the left-hand side in the middle first and it didn't turn out as well. (That's why I always stamp my Cindy hand first.... bwhahaha)

The ring finger image comes from and older born pretty store plate, which apparently somehow missed being photographed. Here's a link to it on Ebay, though, in case you're curious.