Neutral Kitty Mani

It has been so long since I didn't use a prompt for my manicure decision and, I have to say, I was a bit lost.  I love stamping so I was going to just use a plate ending in whatever date it was, but then I remembered that I had a new Bundle Monster set that I hadn't even put away yet.

I knew, up front, that I wanted to do a neutral colored manicure and it was easy enough to find some pretty polish that I haven't tried yet.

Picking a plate to use was also easy - I have a lot of cats so it is always good to represent them.  :)

After my base coat, I used 3 thin layers of the Bone White.  I am really trying to branch out on my stamping colors and since I own all of the MDU colors, this one was a perfect match.

I used my Luxe stamper from UberChic Beauty for this one and I will say that I was utterly impressed with the transfer quality.  I will also say that this is the first time I have been able to successfully use it for stamping.  I didn't do anything differently either.  It just worked this time.  Whatever, I will go with it!

I hope you think this is as cute as I do.  Thanks for stopping by.

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Red

Red!!!  I love red and I really need to use it more often.  The big drawback for me is how hard it is to clean up after it.  My prompt for this week was "watercolor".  It is hard to think of a primary color as a watercolor, but I did my research and decided to go with the Nimbus technique as per Sammy at The Nailasaurus.

I chose 3 shades of red to use over a white base color.  A cute little Valentine's day heart stamp was the perfect touch to this one.

I have done this technique before with this look.  It is a very easy technique but kind of hard to know when to stop.  I tend to over-think things...  Anyway, using acetone to thin out the polish, I just started dabbing away with a cotton swab.

The other tricky part to this technique is that the cotton swabs tend to leave fibers in the look!  I tried really hard to keep those at bay with a good amount of success.  I used Pueen 41 for this cute heart image.  After a layer of Seche Vite, it turned out to be a sweet little Valentine to myself.

I hope you all had a happy Valentine's day too!

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Love

Hi there!

This week I am participating in a theme challenge rather than just a color/technique prompt.  I love Valentine's day mani's!

If there is one trait my husband has that is both endearing and really annoying, it is that he can't keep a surprise to himself - especially when it comes to gift giving.  Last week, he couldn't keep my Valentine's Day gift to himself any longer so he handed me some new UberChic Beauty stamping plates!  He bought me collections 1 & 2 and the new Love & Marriage 02 plate.  Gotta love a man who supports your habits!  He knew I would want to use it for this mani - so I tried to live up to his expectations.

My wonderful husband also bought me  a whole bunch of NYX polishes for Christmas (2014) that haven't been used yet so I brought that out too.  :)  I started with a new to me base coat for this one.  I'm trying Nail Savvy Gripper these days - so far, so good.  I used 3 thin coats of Pastel Lavender as my base color on all of my nails.  The accent nail has one coat then 3 very thin coats of Sugar Plum Fairy on top.

I used a different image for all of my nails from the Love & Marriage 02 plate.  They are all so pretty, it was hard to choose.  Since the theme was "love" this week, I tried to stick to words and hearts.  The glitter on that accent nail was so amazing, I was tempted to do that over all of the nails but I refrained, from going bling-tastic this time.  The violet color of the stamping polish played nicely with both the glitter and the creme colors.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!  This is about as romantic as anything gets around here!  I bought my husband a toaster to celebrate.  LOL!

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Aqua or Turquoise

Hi everyone!  I am so glad to be back with a new nail art post for you.  My nail room is about 85% complete now so I actually have a small space dedicated to my nails.  :)  I do want to apologize for the look of my blog.  I am not sure what is happening, but my background image will no longer load and I can't for the life of me figure out why.  So, I guess this means it is time for some kind of re-vamp of the design.  I'll get to thinking about that.

In the meantime, here is my entry for the New Crumpets Nail Tarts 40 Great Nail Art Ideas prompt for this week: Aqua or Turquoise.  I have waterspotting as my technique this week.

This is my first time attempting this technique.  Watermarbling is such a nemesis of mine, that this scared me!  Here is what I used for this look:

I started with 3 thin coats of Teal The Tide Turns.  This is a textured polish so it is kind of hard to build up to a solid opacity.  Without adding a top coat, I started the water spotting process.  To do this, I added some distilled, room temperature water from a jug I have had for well over a year to a paper cup.  I added 2 drops of the black to the cup and then sprayed 1 spray of hairspray to get it to separate.

As you can see, each nail is different.  It is really hard to control the spray from the bottle so, you get what you get.  LOL  I think it came out cool! I finished this off with a coat of Seche Vite to smooth that finish out and give it some shine.

This was SO MUCH EASIER than watermarbling (for me!).  Since the results can be just random and have no pattern, I found it to be much more satisfying to the perfectionist in me.

Thanks for stopping by!!