My Stripes for Golden Oldies Thursdays

This is my first entry in one of The Crumpet‘s nail challenges! This one’s called Golden Oldies Thursdays and the theme for this week is STRIPES. For my manicure I used some very old polishes to stick true to the rules. In fact, I really went for the gusto and used one verrrrry old polish!

My white tips were painted with Sally Hansen Teflon Tuff polish called French White Tips.  I don’t know how old it is, but I would guess about 20 yrs old? Wow, right? My magenta stripes were made with a Stripe Rite striper that I bought at Sally’s when I first started dabbling in nail art.  So I’d say that it’s probably 4 yrs old. Funny thing…. I never use my stripers anymore! Why, I have no idea! Then I outlined the stripes with a black nail art pen and stamped a little floral konad design on my accent nails.  This M4 KONAD plate was the verrrry first stamping plate that I bought a few yrs ago, so it’s perfect to use for this Golden Oldies challenge! 🙂

I’m not excited about my nail art pen lines looking so sloppy though!  I think the pen sticks and drags on the surface of my polish and it always looks funny- like a kindergartener did them.  Oh well!  It is what it is.  The sloppiness gives it some panache, right?

If you’re wondering why my nailbeds look so pink, so am I!  I started using Duri Rejuvacote and I am halfway through my ten day trial!  Not sure why my nails are turning pink with it!  I will post all the results when my ten days is up.  I love before and after pics!!!

view the other girls’ GOT Stripes here:

Size Comparison of Top Stamping Plates

I love using stamping plates for nail designs… but there’s a lot of brands out there to choose from.  When I’m on the market for a new plate my main question is how big are their designs? It’s hard to locate sizing information online since most product descriptions do not include dimensions.  So I’ve put together a nice little comparison of four top brands: Konad, Cheeky, Bundle Monster and Mash!

My nails are relatively long so I’m always looking for plates with long designs.  Some of you may have wide nails and the width of each stamp may be important to you.  So I’ve included the dimensions (in millimeters) on each photo below.   All dimensions are listed as width times length (W x L).  Keep in mind that brands may change their plates over time so I’ve included the specific plate names/model numbers for your reference.  Let’s get to the comparison!

KONAD↑ To my surprise, Konad has the smallest designs of all four plates- both in width and length!  These stamps generally cover most of my other nails if I position them carefully, but you can see it doesn’t cover much of my thumb!  Something else I noticed about Konad is that their sizing may not be consistent.   Although most of them are sized like the one in my photo, one my other plates has a full-nail design that’s even shorter than this one.  Konad was the first brand of stamping products I used when I first started getting into nail art, but now that I line them up and compare- Konad doesn’t really impress me!

CHEEKY ↑  Cheeky plates have big designs!   Something to note is that they are shaped with a curve on one end for french manicures or halfmoons.  If you use it for a halfmoon then you’d be able to take advantage of more of its length, which is 20mm.  That’s really long!  But if you want to use it as a full-nail stamp then you’d only have 17mm of length to work with.  But still, that’s really good!  (The photo above was used as a full-nail stamp and it almost covered the length of my thumb.)  I also want to note that Cheeky plates have wider designs than the other three brands.  I heard they make jumbo-sized plates too, but I don’t own any of them.

BUNDLE MONSTER ↑ Bundle Monster designs are relatively big.  They’re larger than Konad but a tad smaller than Cheeky.  I have however seen BM plates that have smaller designs than this one.  So this brand may not be consistent with sizing either.  Also, I think that perhaps the BM plates aren’t etched very deeply?  Because the stamp in this photo came out kind of faint.  I dunno- they’re not my fave.

MASH ↑ Mash plates are relatively small.  They’re only one step up from Konad.  This was my first time using a Mash plate and it works ok, not much to say here really!

MY PICK: My top pick is Cheeky!  I do have a bit more cleanup when I use Cheeky plates since their designs are wide, but I like their length.  And it’s cool that they give you the flexibility for frenchies or halfmoons!  I haven’t tried them that way yet since I’m afraid they’ll come out crooked,  but it’s nice to have that option!  Also, the whole metal plate itself is larger than the other three brands.  You can see in my first photo that the Cheeky plate looks giant next to the other ones!  This Cheeky plate was part of a summer 2012 collection, but I hope all of their plates are this big.  When it comes to stamping, bigger is always better, don’t you think?

So what do you think of this comparison and was it helpful for you?  What’s your experience with stamping?

Day 22 of OMD Challenge- Panda Bear Nails

The theme of day 22 in the nail art challenge is ANIMALS.  I’ve been wanting to try panda nails for a while- so I tracked down a great blog tutorial to use as a guide: Kung Fu Panda 2 Nail Art by Mini Nail Blog.

Brown ♥ Orly Coffee Break

Green ♥ Wet n Wild Lickety Split Lime

White Accents ♥ OPI Alpine Snow w/ sephora nail art brush

Black Accents ♥ NYC Black Lace Creme w/ dotting tool and sephora brush

Black Bamboo Stamp ♥ Black Konad Special Polish and Konad M66 Plate

I’m sure there’s gonna be a ton of other fun designs for ANIMAL day!  Make sure to clicky here to see them all! ↓

22. Animal Themed :

My guest post at Dizzy Little Digits- Dental Floss Nail Art!

Hey nail fans!! Denise (the bloggerista behind Dizzy Little Digits) is in Ireland right now and I am so happy to put this manicure together for her blog while she’s away.  I created this Irish-inspired look using dental floss!  Have you ever tried that technique out before?  If you want to find out more please view my guest post at Dizzy Little Digits!!

If you don’t already follow Denise’s blog- you will love it!  She posts a lot and she always has the cutest nail art designs!  So please check her out or find her on bloglovin!

Have a great day!

L.A. Girl Fishnet French Manicure

In March I bought an L.A. Girl polish in rite aid and loved it!  Since then I placed an order online and bought a bunch of other cool stuff from them!  Well, I’m so happy to finally try out this L.A. Girl French Manicure nail polish!   This shade is called Pink Nude and I just love the big clinky bottle and the Eiffel Tower!

I used nail guide stickers and painted my tips with wet n wild French White Crème.  I removed the stickers and then applied just one coat of my LA Girl Pink Nude.  I probably could’ve done two but I was feeling lazy.  It came out really nice- nuthin like a classy french manicure.

But then I woke up the next morning…and I just HAD to spice up my frenchie.  I guess I can’t leave well enough alone!  So I stamped a fishnet design using my Konad M79 plate and a matte satin polish from Sally Hansen called Bronzed Matte.  The stamp came out kinda translucent which looks cool I think.  Now that’s more like it!

I think french manicures look  beautiful…but always leave me itching to pull out the nail polish remover and do something with more pizazz! It’s this weird ‘I LOVE YOU BUT I WANNA REMOVE YOU’ kinda relationship!  LOL!  What do you think of them?

Black Roses

The theme of Day 29 of the nail art challenge is ‘inspired by a song’.  The song I have chosen is a reggae song by Barrington Levy called BLACK ROSES.  Here’s the song on youtube.   I love this song!  It’s part of my reggae playlist and iTunes says that I’ve played it 42 times… but I know it has to be way more than that!  I love how he says Oh Ay!  at the end of the verses.  It totally gets stuck in my head!

I used the Konad M53 stamping plate along with my Konad special polish in black.  And my lovely pastel pink polish is my new Wet N Wild Megalast called Sugar Coat.  I got it at Walgreens and made out like a bandit.  I got 5 polishes all for the low price of $7.22 total!  And one of them was an Essie flakie topcoat from the luxeffects collection that was on sale for $2.00!  Thank you Walgreens!    I am enjoying this mani- sometimes it’s nice to go with a simple stamp design.  It’s quick and easy and the color combo came out so delicate and feminine.  Oh Ay!

Polka Dots and Glow in the Dark Nail Polish Review

It’s day 9 of the 30 Day Nail Challenge for April and the theme is polka dots!

Today I’ve got Glow In The Dark Nail Polish from Claire’s Cosmetics to share with you.  I purchased this un-named pink polish last month at Claire’s Boutique in the mall.  Since the theme is polka dots I used my Konad M79 stamping plate and some black Konad polish to accent my ring finger.  It looks cute and summery but let’s get to my review…

First off, the polish comes in this awesome bottle that has a light in the top!  The whole bottle lights up when you press the button on top of the applicator brush!!  Good packaging ploy, Claire’s Boutique!  They enticed me to spend the $7.

After applying my first coat I was surprised at how sheer it was- it barely tinted my nails pink at all.  So I started investigating the bottle to see if there were special instructions.  Maybe I was supposed to put the polish over top of an opaque color?  I peeled off my price tag- to reveal no instructions at all.  I guess you are supposed to wear it by itself.  But hold on!  Wait… under the price tag sticker I found an expiration date!  The bottle says it was manufactured in Feb 2011 and it expires in August 2013…that’s only a couple months away!  Well, that would’ve been nice to know!  I wish I still had my receipt- I’m tempted to write a letter to Claire’s to suggest that they not intentionally cover the expiry info!

I applied three coats and I still have a lot of visible nail line.  But I figured I’d stop at 3.  It dries fast though, which is nice.  It has a very strange formula due to the particles of glow in the dark stuff that’s in it.  It was thin but gritty and I had to paint with as few strokes as possible.  If I painted over a section that was just painted- then the polish would lift off and it looked streaky and thin.  Application was weird but it dried quickly so the three coats weren’t a hassle.  The final result?  A sheer neon with a gritty matte texture.  Here’s a closeup.↓

I put a nice thick coat of seche vite over top to try and smooth it out.  It still feels a little bumpy though, but no biggie.  So the next question is….  HOW WELL DOES IT GLOW IN THE DARK?

It glows just fine.  Nothing that I would write home about, but I’m not disappointed either.  It works as expected.  I wonder if it would glow more with a bright base coat underneath?  Also, my bottle’s getting close to expiration so perhaps a newer bottle would glow more?  I’m surprised that it didn’t glow in pink… instead, it was more of your standard yellow glow, typical of most glow-in-the-dark stuff.  Wonder what it looks like under a blacklight?  I had a hard time photographing this… but here’s an untouched shot of it in the dark. ↓ On the computer this pic looked okay, but on my Nook Tablet it looked so dark.  Sorry, but I tried!

Overall, I do like this polish.  I really love the tone of this pink.  It almost has a peach tint to it and it makes me look tan!  It’s so summery and tropical and the sheerness of it makes it look like a sheet of neon glass over my nails. Normally I don’t like sheer polishes- but this one reminds me of summertime so I will definitely wear it again.  The glow-in-the-dark thing is fun… so why not?  I’m glad I added this polish to my stash.  The more I wear it the more I adore the color.  I feel like I need a vacation, sunglasses and a drink with an umbrella in it!

Have you ever tried glow in the dark polish?