So-Cute-You-Might-Die Black and White Stamping!

Hey! I'm here! Not dead!  It's just incredibly hard to blog and start a new job when I've been sitting at home not doing much for two months.  I'm now working for an agency in downtown Toronto doing front-end web development and it's really fun.  Anyway, I was lucky enough to get some new MASH stamping plates in the mail this week and I just had to try them out.  I chose ridiculously cute as a theme and away I went. 

As I'm still not that good at stamping and I'm only half-way good with the Konad polishes, I decided on a black and white theme.  To start, I applied three coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.  If you're looking for a white to be something other than polish underwear, this is actually a really good option.  It doesn't go streaky at all.  Once I was sure each layer and the overall result was dry, I waited another ten minutes.  I can't even count the number of times I've stamped on my nail only to have still-wet polish squish out the sides.  Using the Konad Black polish and the MASH plates (26-50) I went to stamping.  I had trouble getting the polish to come off evenly on the larger areas like the cherry bodies and the horses but I'm ok with it, makes it look rustic.  I had this idea in my head of stamping a small design over and over again to create my own design but only really did that on my thumb and middle fingers.  Stamping is good in that it's dry almost instantly so you can stamp repeatedly. 

The Verdict:  Still love the white OPI polish and really like these new plates, despite some issues I had with getting the polish to be even across the larger areas.  Seems like the direction you use the scraper in helps.  If you look at the shape of the horse, I got better results when I swiped from head to tail rather than down the body.  And look how cute these images are!  Even my male friend noticed and I always take that as I sign I did a good job.

The Polishes:

• OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls
• Konad Black
• MASH Stamping Plates 26-50, mashnails.com

Stamping plates were provided for honest review. 

Rainbow Bar Glitter French Tips on Turquoise!

So I know I just did a post about my new holographic bar glitter but I don't care, it's sparkly so you'll probably see a lot of this in the next little while.  Having just tried stripes the other day, I wanted to see what the horizontal version would look like and it hit me: this could make for an awesome French tip! 

To start, I applied three coats of China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise! It doesn't have the best consistency in the world (you really need the three coats) but the colour is so fantastic I can look past it.  Using a cheap top coat and working from left to right, I went to town with the glitter.  You have to be careful when working with such skinny glitter pieces - too much top coat and it will go over the glitter and look icky.  You can see that happening a bit on my middle finger.  Don't do that.  Very thin coats of glitter are your friend.  Once I was done, I put a preliminary coat of Seche Vite on to stick it all down then I trimmed the glitter that was overhanging the tips of my nails.  Another coat and DONE. 

The Verdict: I'm not happy with how my middle finger came out (got a bit too carried away with getting rid of the extra glitter) but all in all I think this came out awesome.  I just love that the glitter is all holographic, just makes it that much more awesome. 

Cos I'm doing this now too, here's a Vine of this mani in action:

You can find the glitter here at MASH nails. 

This product was sent to me for my unbiased review.