Finals Procrastination

If you read any of my recent posts, you know I had finals last week. Of course I had to procrastinate a little bit and what better way to procrastinate than pain my nails? Since I was spending the majority of my time studying depressing topics like cancer and heart disease (I'm a MA Pathology student), I decided I needed bright, fun nails. I decided to try out two previously unused Zoya polishes: Charla and Apple. 

Charla is a bright tropical blue with a metallic finish. Apple, as the name suggests, is a vivid green color that is packed with gold sparkle. 

I decided to do contrasting hands as you can see since I couldn't decide on a main color. Boy do these colors SPARKLE!!!! They are so bright and fun!

Since I finished my nails and still felt like procrastinating more, I added some stamping. This was my first mostly successful attempt at full nail stamping. I was excited, and the fun print and colors cheered up my studying. Win! You can find Charla here and Apple here. They are normally $8 a piece but if you follow those links and sign up for a new account, you can get one free for just the price of shipping. Happy painting!

Stamping first try

Last night I tried stamping for real. It's definitely the easiest way to get designs on your nails, that's for sure. However, I still have some kinks to work out as you can see in the pictures. 

As you can see, not all of the design came out cleanly. Some nails are missing parts of the design, while others have extra dots of nail polish from the stamper. 

I discovered that cleaning the scraper and stamp off in between each nail provides the best stamp. The built up nail polish on the scraper creates a bumpy surface which causes imperfections in the design. Also, using a thicker nail polish would help the stamped image be more opaque. However, I kind of like the translucent design.

I used 3 layers Del Sol Electrick! as the base and Sally Hansen Adoring Amethyst for the stamp. It's not very visible here, but I added two top coats of Nfu Oh #39 to create a soft focus look, and hide some of my imperfect stamping.

Here's what it looks like in the sun.  Del Sol Electrick! doesn't exactly have the most drastic color change but it it does turn mint green.

Final verdict: While stamping takes some practice, it's an easy (and pretty quick) way to add designs to your nails. Even as a very beginner, I had very little trouble getting acceptable results on my first attempt. With practice, my technique will get better and at least this is fun practice!

Stamping!

Good morning! I got another fun package in the mail yesterday... my first stamping set! It came with a mini stamper, scraper, 5 different image plates. It was only $8.95 from Amazon. I figured this was a decent way to try out the stamping everyone's been talking about.

I didn't have enough time to completely redo my nails last night to make them more stampable, but I had to try my new toy anyway. I have to say, it was definitely easier than I expected, although it took me a while to find a color that would show up on my green nails. Oh well, that's what I get for being lazy and impatient! I ended up using OPI for Sephora What's a Tire Jack? which worked pretty well. It's kind of hard to see in the picture, but the design is there.

The plates definitely worked really well, however there were no instructions included. However, a quick search of google/redditlaquarists turned up plenty of info and advice. As of now, I really like the mini-stamper which I have heard others complain about, but I have very small hands. The plastic scraper has some downsides though. I had to really clean it off in between each stamp attempt and even then it didn't leave a completely clean scrape. I can also see it getting nicks in it easily and causing messy designs. I'll probably upgrade to one of the metal scrapers. 

Tomorrow, I will hopefully have time to completely redo my manicure and give stamping a real try. However, as of my first attempt, I am a big fan and am already looking for more image plates to ad to my collection!