Crystal Stamping Kit

 

I swear I posted about this before, but I simply can't find the post. I guess I never actually did so here we go!

Back in 2016, I saw a video someone took at CosmoProf. It was s demo for a stamping technique, but instead of applying polish, it applied crystals to your nails in certain patterns. Great for getting perfect lines and super fast! The company was Pave and after that one video I saw once, I never heard about them again. Jump ahead about 4 years and I find these kits at my local Walmart by Salon Perfect. I'm not sure what happened to Pave, they still have a website but most of their stamping templates are sold out as of this writing. I have no idea if Salon Perfect and Pave are related (I really don't think so) but I am LOVING this kit. And at about 10 bucks each I got both the crystal and pearl set. 

Holographic Pigment Powder

Holographic powder isn't exactly new. Spectacular? Yes. New? Not really. SpectraFlair has been a popular polish additive for years. the difference now is how its used. The holo of old was added to existing polish to give it a holo sheen but balancing the ratio could be difficult. Too little and you see no effect. Too much and you end up with grey sludge. The new powders in holo, chrome, and multi chrome that have recently exploded into popularity are buffed into the nail after it is polished. The coverage is surprisingly complete and I believe it uses significantly less of the precious powders.

One of the first pigments available in brick and mortar stores. I got this at Sally's Beauty Supply a few years ago. (yeah this review has been sitting in my queue for years.) SuperNail came out with Chrome, Rose Gold and Holographic. Of course I had to go with Holo. It was also a great time to use my Seche Vite UV lamp I got on clearance years before but never had polish to go with it. Pigment powders work best with a UV/LED No Wipe Top Coat.

Its really very easy to use. Just paint with the top coat, cure it under a light, use the eyeshadow applicator to pick up just the tiniest bit of powder, and buff it into your cured polish. That's it. All there is to it.

Literally this is all the powder you need for one nail.

This is Layla holo nail polish (with a little stamping for flair). I've yet to find a regular top coat that doesn't "eat" the holo effect so this is not top coated and wears away at the tip.

More Layla polish with no topcoat. Ring was with Black Holo, others with regular Holo.

Holo powder buffed into the nail with another coat of No Wipe on top of it so that it shines too! Index and ring have a coat of black under the top coat, the others are naked.  I'm in love with powders and now have a large collection of tiny pots of powder.

Dragon Eggs

These magnificent little gems have been popping up in all my nail polish groups these last few days. Dragon Eggs! I adore them! The tutorial I have been following is by Accio Lacquer.  The only real difference is she says she used about 200 thumbtacks, but my count is closer to 600, but I think that is mostly because I got a bigger egg by accident. That's right, you heard me, thumbtacks. The basic idea is you paint the heads of the thumbtacks with nail polish and push them into a Styrofoam egg. Very easy, but time consuming. And polish consuming I found out.

Materials:

• Styrofoam Egg
• Thumbtacks (The large the egg, the more tacks you will need)
• Nearly full bottles of polish and topcoat (for my example I used Sinful Colors "Enchanted" Wet n Wild "Buffy the Violet Slayer" and Fresh Paint "Candy Crush")
• Cardboard, corkboard, or foamboard. Something to hold the tacks while you paint them.

No way to get around it, this is the long boring part. Push your thumbtacks into something to hold them in place. First time I did this I used a pizza box. This time I just using a couple sheets of cardboard. Don't push them all the way down or you might get em stuck to the cardboard when you paint. Try to leave some space around each one so they don't get stuck to each other either.

300 tacks....

And 600 tacks. Long and boring, but it helps so much when you paint em.

I started off with Sinful Colors "Enchanted" a deep almost eggplant purple. One coat of that followed by the slightly shimmery color Wet n Wild "Buffy the Violet Slayer". By the time you finish painting the last tack, the first is dry and ready for next coat. I topped it all off with a coat of Fresh Paint "Candy Crush" and lovely flakie. You can topcoat as well, for the green egg I did, but I ran out so purple egg isn't topcoated yet. I think I'll get some spray sealant for it.  For an egg this size you will almost used a full bottle of polish each coat. Like 2/3 of a bottle. That's why I suggest you start with nearly full bottles and cheap ones. First egg I did, my green one, I had no idea just how much polish this eats and used my beloved China Glaze "Running in Circles". It's not empty yet, but it was a wrench to part with that much of it.

This part goes much faster than the stages before it. Time to stick em on the egg! Now the eggs has a narrow and a fat end. You want the fat end to start with.

In the center of the fat end push your first tack in. Doesn't have to be exact, just eye ball it.

Your gonna want to spiral out from that tack. Each tack you put in needs to overlap the last tack you put in. It also helps if it overlaps the row below it too. These aren't glued in (tho you can if you want to) and the tack you put in holds all the tacks before it in place. That sounds confusing. I made a short video of what I mean but blogger is being a pain and not loading it right. I'll keep working on that.

Just keep going spiraling outward and upward.

Get the idea?

Keep going!

And your done! My camera has a tough time with blue-leaning purples, but it is way more purple in real life. I love how the flakie adds just a subtle magic to it.

And my first egg, Sally Hansen "Emerald City and China Glaze "Running in Circles". And I used gold thumbtacks instead of the silver I used in my purple one. Now time to make some sort of padded chest to store them in. I'll be experimenting with smaller eggs later this week. I still want to make a red holographic one and a white pearly one.

My First Foils

I have always admired nail foils. So shiny! And a fascinating effect that glitter and holos just can't quite copy. I did get some by Fingr's Heart 2 Art collection, but it didn't come with glue. Fingr's directions was to paint your nails and just before it was completely dry to put the foil on then. That seemed incredibly stupid so I just hung onto the foils until I got some glue. I figured it was just a matter of time before I did. A couple weeks ago I proved myself right when I found It's So Easy Foil 'Em Kit. 3 rolls of foil and a small bottle of glue!

My camera didn't want to pick up the patterns in the foil at all. The rolls in the box are, from the left, silver with holo lines running thru it, aqua blue with holo dots, and violet with holo dots.

The directions are more what I expect from a foil kit. Paint your nails with the glue. As it dries it turns from milky lavender to clear. The interesting thing with foil glue is it dries sticky.

Here you see the light purple color of the glue on my thumb. The ring finger is almost dried so you can see how much clearer it is.

I tried to keep the foil on the roll but it was unwieldy so I cut a small square off of it. Press the boring color side of the foil to the clear, dry glued nails. Rub it onto the nail and keep it as flat as you can to avoid wrinkles. Then gently lift it off the nail. You will see the colorful part of the foil stick to your nail leaving clear plastic in your hands. You can see on my ring finger that some glue got on the skin and the foil transferred to it too.

 I've always been told not to topcoat foils. Curious I just had to give it a shot. The topcoat I used (Pure Ice "Girl On The Run") looked like it ate the shiny holo bits and made it look over all kinda foggy. I took a pic then redid the nail. So don't topcoat your foils!

China Glaze "Coconut Kiss"

 You can always go back and fix any bald spots on your nails. I still need practice, but for my first time foiling I am super proud of it!

How To: Fan Brush Manicures

The Fan Brush. Nifty little thing. You don't see mani's with it too often anymore, but I just got my first one and am eager to try a new (to me at least) technique. Pick the colors you will want to use. I went with a base color of Sally Hansen "Straw-ready" and will paint on the colors "French White Creme" and "Black Creme" by Wet n Wild using the brush.

First you need to paint your base color and let it dry.

The fan brush is simply a paint brush with the bristles fanned out in a arc. You can find this at most art stores and some beauty supply stores.

You can use acrylic paint if you like. Paint will be easier to clean out of the brush later, but if you are careful then polish is fine. You just want paint/polish to be at the tips of the brush. If you saturate the brush it will be a huge pain to clean later. I dabbed some polish on a paper plate and just dipped the tip into the puddle. I then tapped excess polish off because I wanted thin pretty lines.

Polish just on the tip of the brush.

In a smooth stroke, brush the polish on the nail from one side to the other. I think I may have dabbed off too much because half way across the nail my polish ran dry and I had to go again starting from the other side to the center.

Do the same thing with your second color and you are done! Very simple artwork that just requires the use of a different sort of brush. You can keep adding more colors or more coats of the same colors. It just depends on the design you are trying to create.

Polish Ornaments

I had always heard of the make your own ornaments where you take clear glass ball ornaments and swirl the inside with paint, but I never thought to use nail polish instead of paint! Polish is so much prettier than paint, with the glitters, shimmers, holos, metallics and all the other types out there! It's so much fun, but I need to warn you, it does use alot of polish. Not as much as you might think, but maybe a bit less than a quarter of a full bottle? That is alot.

Start off with a clear glass bauble and a bottle of polish that you don't mind using alot of. I used China Glaze holographic "Infra Red". I usually would balk at using an expensive bottle, but I accidentally got 2 of these when they went on clearance. That and I really wanted to see if the holo would translate to the ornament.

A neat trick I found was to pull up on the wire bit on the cap. It will come up but then stop where there is a little bend in the wires. This keeps it from pulling all the way out and you can lift the cap off easy. If the wires pop out all the way don't fret. You can thread them back into the holes in the cap.

Pour your polish into the ornament. Don't be stingy. I usually pour nearly the whole bottle into it. You will swirl the polish inside to coat the whole ornament. If you are working with a older polish, maybe thin it with polish thinner before pouring it into the glass to make it easier to swirl. Then pour the polish back into the bottle. Polish is thick so you might be holding the bauble over the bottle for a while and it drips slowly back in.

When you get tired of holding it and you think most has dripped out turn it upside down and let it dry. You can try to balance it on a paper towel, but I live with cats and that was a mess waiting to happen. So I found this plastic container at work. I have no idea what was packed into it, but it was being thrown away so I grabbed it. I think you could use maybe an egg carton or ice cube tray to prop up the ornament while it dries. Something that can keep the drips from making a mess. You could use the packaging the ornaments came in, but I like to use them to store the finished ornament in. I left them overnight to dry.

In the morning you will see a puddle formed under the ornament.

Put the cap back on the ornament and you are done! You can see the holo effect in this photo. I love it!!

I had so much fun making these that I gave them all to my coworkers for Christmas. It was a hit!

31 Day Challenge: Day Thirty ~ Inspired by a Tutorial

I've never done a waterfall nail art before and I still need some practice it seems. I saw the Waterfall technique on The Nailasaurus blog last week and fell in love with it. Mine didn't turn out nearly as good as theirs did so you should totally check out their blog. I would say that I just don't have a good brush for this yet, but its a poor artist who blames her tools. So I just need practice.

To do this I used shades of purples starting with Sinful Colors "Tempest" as the base. I then thought it was too dark so I used a coat of Sinful Colors "Tokyo Pearl" to lighten it up, but it was to light so a final coat of Sinful Colors "Rain Song". It was at this point I should have realize I didn't have the patience to try this today, but I pushed through. It wasn't drying fast enough for me so I slapped a coat of Seche Vite to flash dry it. Shortly after that bubbles showed up in the base color. For the streaks I used "Tempest" Sally Hansen "Grape Race" and "Grape Escape". It was awfully dark so I threw in some streaks of Maybelline "Bold Gold" to lighten it up. Not bad, but not as good as Nailasaurus does. Seriously, they are amazing!

Tomorrow is the last day of the challenge and I have no idea what I'm gonna do for it yet! But lookie! One post every day this month! That is a first for me :D

Temporary Nail Tattoos

These are nifty little things. Fing'rs has a line of nail art products out now called "Heart 2 Art" with all kinds of fun things. Stamping plates, gems, striping tape and these cool little nail tattoos. They are not the nail polish strips that have been popping up the last year or so. These are literally just temporary tattoos cut in convenient nail sized squares. They were so easy to put on and each pack comes with 30 sheets. My nails are not all that long so I cut each sheet into quarters. And to top it all off it was cheap! I paid 2.50 bucks for the whole pack.

After the jump I'll show you just how easy these are to apply.

Neon Stripes

Yep, neons again! But this time set in black to make them stand out even more! This wasn't an original idea of mine, I saw it in Nail It! magazine, a magazine all about nail polish and nail art, but in their version the black was a textured polish. I don't have many textured polishes (pretty much just a purple so far) so I used my favorite black Orly "Liquid Vinyl".

Step by step on how to do this manicure after the jump...

How To Make Stamper Decals

Yesterday I mentioned Stamper Decals. Decals are images printed on some other substance that are then applied to the nails. There are all kinds of images you can buy online and in the stores, but here is a way to make some at home using your stamping plates. Using this technique you can color in the stamped images before applying them to your nails.

 Check out how after the jump.