Newspaper nail art with alcohol prep pads (for all who have had newspaper stuck to your nails :-) )

                            No top coat                                                                        Top-Coat

 

 Have you heard of any saying that goes "A person who gets it right the first time, never learns anything", If no, you heard it from me now.

Yes, long before I did try newspaper nail art when I was still new to nail art. It was one of my very first attempts after trying some of the more easy nail arts by Sveta Sanders :-), Yes, I was that naive to nail art, I started attempting her very famous drag marble nail art when I was just a novice entering into the world of nailartism.

I had no clue about the difficulties or the expertise hard work and focus that goes into these mind blowing nail arts. I thought it should be as easy as applying nail polish, Oh yes, now I have also learnt how to apply your nail enamel professionally :-).

So here I thought I should do a newspaper nail art again, now that I have my blog and Facebook page. So I sat there attempting and re-attempting this beautiful Idea of a nail art, only to find the ink would transfer lightly, the image was not clear or worse when you think you transferred the image beautifully, only to find later that the newspaper image had stuck to your nails , now that is not a bad Idea either, just cut the newspaper and stick to your nails.

But, I was not going to do that. I had to try no matter what. after all so many have had success with this, what am I doing wrong, I tried rubbing alcohol, water, tried applying varied degrees of pressure, press hard, then a little gentle, tried dipping nails in water or rubbing alcohol and removing immediately and then placing on my nail, then wait for certain seconds, tried them all. They would work once then it wouldn't for other fingers. I can leave it like it is, that imperfection was also looking beautiful. But, I was not the one to give up now, so I found a newspaper cutting that said "You Can". I pasted that right above my nail art desk for  motivation, then put my attempts to rest as I had a toddler who required more focus than this. So once he was asleep I tried again, Painted my nails white, the bottle almost empty now from my attempts.

 Suddenly out of the blue an Idea  struck me. Yes alcohol pads, little did I know then that it was the answer I was so diligently seeking. That, they were going to bring me the beautiful images, so I cut some newspaper aligned it on my nail, took out the alcohol prep pads and pressed, when I removed the pad and paper there was my Image more clearer than ever. Hurrah !!!!!

So yes, all that my curved nail bed required was alcohol soaked in a pad, Gosh! why didn't I think of it before. I love them so much now, what a relief alas to find a friend among foes, Yes my lovable alcohol pads, I love my nails so much now that I am typing this only with my right hand, so much I wanted to preserve my hand just to show to my husband when he comes home, my faithful audience and critic.

Hope someone like me out there found something informative today from this post :-)

Products Used:

• White polish NYN
• SQ Rapid dry topcoat
• Alcohol prep pads
• Newspaper

Bundle Monster water marble plate stamping

 

 

 So I started early today around 5:30 am, and thought I have some time to myself while my toddler is still sleeping. So what color shall I paint my nails with, been using lot of SQ shades, so time for something new. I opened a bottle of steel grey metallic shade from a brand called Lea, I had mentioned earlier that I would do a detailed review of the haul, could not find time, nevertheless I find them a breeze to apply.

So I painted my nails with one coat of polish and little more to fill here and there. I loved how it looked and was wondering what color and design to stamp with. So this was a kid of shade that any other color but white would suit, now that I decided the stamping polish color, what design should I choose, I though the steel grey would look good like fish scale so would opt for a mermaid pattern. Oh I know a BP stamping plate that has the mermaid design, so as I pulled out my brand new BM lotus mat to protect my table, I thought why not try the BM water marble plate.

I have the shangri-la master plates from BM, so this is my second addition from this brand. Look at the pictures to see how beautiful the images are. I mean anyone who have tried their hands at water marbelling know the difficulty of perfecting those beautiful designs, It is just that now you can stamp them way easily any time you want with zero mess of water marbelling.

So here I am stamping the water marble designs, finally. I loved how they turned out they look even more pretty in-person. 

hope you like it too :-)

Products Used:

• Stay Quirky Base-Coat
• Stay Quirky Rapid dry Top-Coat 
• Lea nail color for the base
• Konad white for stamping
• Stamping plate BM-XL210, sloteazzy
• Born pretty jumbo stamper

 

Polka dot nails with dotting tools

A simple and easy nail art this time. In fact it is so easy that any one can do this nail art.
You can use dotting tool or even a bobby pin would do. Take colors of you choice , I prefer using a color palette holder simply because its easy to use and clean, make different random dots with different sizes and colors using your tools, as simple as that.

You will have achieved a stunning manicure with less time and effort. I used a white base to make my colors pop.

Products used:

• Stay Quirky Base-Coat
• Stay Quirky Rapid Dry Top-Coat
• Stay Quirky shade "Unicorn #536"
• Stay Quirky Shade "Serious  Black #32"
• Maybelline color show Shade "Orange Fix #214"
• Maybelline Color Show shade "Blueberry Ice #403"
• Dotting tool from eBay
• Color palette holder from Ali express

Ink blue stamping nail art (non konad stamping polish)

A simple grey blue stamping nail art. I really wanted to use blue on a grey background, so chose these colors. I really liked the grey finish, but took a while to dry, so I just used a rapid dry top coat to speed up the process, really helps for stamping nail art, helps to complete your mani quickly.

The fun part of this mani is finding a new non-konad stamping polish that stamps well as you can see in the above pic. I did a huge haul of this nail enamel, happy to know most of them or can I confidently say all of them stamp really really well. Lucky to find affordable polishes that can stamp well. I will soon update a swatch of all those polishes soon.

A word about the stamping plate from aliexpress very cheap but good, I will do a review of this too. Probably will do a combined review of both the polish and plate together.

Products Used:

• Stay Quirky Base-Coat
• Stay Quirky Rapid dry top coat
• Stay Quirky Gel effect shade Tar-Grey-Rian
• Stamping Polish : Lea nail enamel Shade 00087 
• Stamping Plate: OM - 09 from Ali express
• Born Pretty Jumbo stamper from eBay

Masking tape manicure

My initial plan for this nail art was to include red, blue and white stripes for the accent finger. I kept trying for perfect lines, and finally kept adding, removing, re-painting colors. Finally I decided to use these colors. I just used masking tape for the parallel lines. I used stay quirky nail hardener for the base, because my nail broke and had to file them, so just used the nail hardener before painting my nails.

I chose SQ shade# 260 a beautiful taupe color, love love love this color and the finish, its more beautiful than what is visible in this picture. I just painted my ring finger with green shade and used BP L003 to print the design on the middle and ringer finger using maybelline blackout. Then used masking tape to paint other colors on my ring finger, then finished only the ring finger with a top coat.

Products Used:

• SQ 260
• SQ 564 
• SQ 306
• SQ gel finish top coat
• SQ nail hardener
• Maybelline color show 302
• Maybelline color show Blackout
• BMW (no number green polish)
• Babby Doll nail enamel metallic coppery shade (no number)
• Stamping plate - BP L003
• Stamper - BP marshmallow big stamper

Valentines day water marble nail art - Originally created for stay quirky

This nail art for Stay Quirky Valentine's Day contest 2016 was my attempt at water marbeling using only SQ polishes, one of their rules,  I tried to create a heart design, but just ended up wasting polishes, so finally I decided to do this.  First I painted my nails using shade Unicorn, this helped the water marble colors pop. Then, I did my water marbling.  Hope you like it :-).

Products Used:

SQ Shades

• Nude Unicorn 536
• Shade 592
• Conditional access 585
• Coral nail swag 520
• Gel effect top coat

Sparkly Monochrome - Dual stamping

This sparkly monochrome felt just right to celebrate the weekend :-). Another easy to do nail art.

Products Used:

• Top coat : Before stamping : Oriflame crystal base & topcoat : After stamping : Sally Hansen Mega Shine
• Stay Quirky base-coat.
•  New U Nail Enamel Glitterati,  Icy Cool 79
• Maybelline color show - Blackout 220
• Stamping plate -XY13 Nail Art Stamping Kit Decoration Jumbo Image Plate from eBay
• Stamper - 4 cm marshmallow stamper from born pretty

To achieve this look apply your base-coat, let dry. Now apply your favorite white glitter polish, let dry. I always like to add a topcoat before I stamp, easy to take the design off without having to re-paint your nails.
Now for the first accent finger stamp your design just like you would normally do. Now for the next accent finger, we will use dual stamping technique.  For this stamp image on your 1st stamper and transfer this image on the 2nd stamper, now use the 2nd stamper to which you just transferred your design to stamp on your nails, this  helps to place the image in another direction just like in the above picture.

For easier understanding imagine you are going to stamp the letter L, when you stamp, your stamper will have the image in reverse, but when you stamp on your nails again, the image is reversed again thereby printing the "L" shape correctly.

In Dual stamping method your are transferring image from one stamper to another stamper and then on to your nails which leaves the image in the direction opposite to the original image.  Easy right, now finish with a top coat.

See below image.