Breast Cancer Awareness Mani: 22nd - Ombre

This month is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and every Wednesday, we wear pink to highlight the cause. Each week has a theme for the manicure, and today's was ombre:

I decided that the cause needed flowers, and my favourite pink gradients are usually done with white. I therefore chose a flower that exists in both colours: roses. I used probably my single most used plate stamp - the roses from Moyou Pro XL 07. With a strong, pink like Mundo de Unas 20 (Fuschia), I thought I'd go for a dark base that's a little less harsh than black - Essie's Luxedo, a midnight plum shade. All I had to do was paint the stamp with MdU 20, Konad white, and then mix where the two met with the wooden end of my nail art brush. I then scraped twice in different directions to ensure the mix of pink of white, then picked it up and voila! A stamped gradient of pink and white roses over plum :)

This isn't perfct - I think it shows that it was my first time doing a gradient stamp, but I rather like its imperfections. It has, more importantly, drawn a lot of comments including from my partner, for whom funky nails are a norm so often go unnoticed.

So, go on: why not give it a go yourself, and see how much fun you can have, and how many people you can discuss Breast Cancer Awareness month with? Just remember to use the following hashtags when posting to Instagram ( I'm boldandbeautyfool btw):

#maniroseenoctubre

#enoctubreusamosrosa

#OnWednesdaysWeWearPink

See you next week for flowers :)

The ingredients: Konad White, Essie Luxedo, Mundo de Unas 20 (Fuschia) and Moyou Pro XL 07

Farewell Stamping September, Hello Autumn Colours!

So, yesterday was my last manicure for Tina's September Stamping Challenge. It was a choose your own day, and I wanted to do a technique-oriented manicure; I had a few ideas on my head, but settled on a multi-coloured stamping technique and a theme from a day I had missed - Day 5, birds.

So, peacocks were the name of the game. I first painted my nails gold with Zoya's Richelle, and got my Moyou plate ready - Pro XL 05. I decided blue and green were the most in-keeping with the peacock colour scheme, so took two Mundo de Unas polishes out for a spin - #3 Navy Blue and #38 - Neon Green. I dobbed both colours on the image, scraped twice to mix them, and then stamped them on my nails. I think the more mixed nails looks better (the unmixed green on my little finger irks me), but it's not bad for a first attempt I don't think!


Taken in direct sunlight:

With flash:

Ingredients:

So, I have a mani of my choice, with a theme of Tina's choice, and using a gold base that will no doubt return again in the Lady Loves Lacquer October Mani Challenge. I look forward to taking part, and seeing what everyone is wearing. This month has been a lot of fun though: thanks Tina for setting up and running the challenge. It's been a blast! :)

Stamping Challenge Day 29: My Choice

So, it's almost the end of the stamping challenge, and it's Tina's 'Your choice' days. Having missed so many of the set themes due to lacking plates for the days I was free, I decided I should do a catch up, so I am going for Day 17 - Candy.

I loved Tina's candy manicure - colourful, sweet and old school. I have no directly relevant plates, so went for the old wrapper of a sweet I have been craving these past few days - a strawberry cream from Cadbury's Roses. Sadly, Google isn't providing me with an image of the wrapper from my childhood - a closely wrapped cerise pink foil with roses stamped over it, so a modern wrapper with it plastic pink cover and print of the word 'Roses' will have to suffice as a poor second:

So, this one I created with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Pink Fast, Konad White and Moyou Pro XL 12. I was in a rush, so haven't photographed my tools - apologies!

In direct sunlight:

With flash:

Moyou Pro XL 12 (Moyou's own picture) - bottom row 3rd image:

This Insta-Dri pink is lovely (although the bottle is ugly and the brush is terrible to use). For £1, it is a great stamper, and actually seems to last a few days without chipping - something fast dryers rarely do. I'm definitely getting my money's worth out of this one!

September Challenge, Day 24: French Manicure

A very quick post during my tea break, showing how a 'zhoozhed' up a French manicure using a stamp - my favourite rose pattern from Moyou Pro XL 07.

Moyou-London's official picture of the plate (and I used the bottom row, second image in):

So, I'm not usually a fan of weird and wonderful coloured tips on French manicures - I like them traditional or not at all. Well, at least I thought I did, but having seen some lovely stamping such as Tina's here, I do feel it's an option I need to play with more in future

So, for this mani I used Nails Inc Elizabeth Street as the nude pink, and Zoya Snow White for my tips. The roses were stamped with Konad white.  Sadly, I was photographing on the fly, so it's not the best lit - apologies for that!

Before stamping (with flash):

After the addition of accent roses on the ring finger:

In dappled, evening sunlight:

While I don't think I've photographed this well and you can see the day's wear on the tips, I like it a lot... in fact, I think it's a contender for my bridal manicure (given that in my head, that's always been a French manicure, perhaps with room for a subtle twist, particularly a lace-type design on the ring finger). So, I'm still not ready for overly busy or colour twists on a French mani, but I am enjoying dipping my toe in to a brand new pool for now :)

Remember to keep up to date with Tina's challenge here, and see what us fellow participants are doing here. Thanks for reading! :)

September Stamping Challenge: Day 22 - Partial Stamp

So another day, another mani for Tina's monthly challenge, and this is a technique I have been meaning to practice for a while as it takes careful placement - using a stamp that only covers part of the nail. (To see what the other participants have been up to this month, find them all listed here).

I started by choosing a polish I owned but hadn't got around to wearing yet - Color Club Cherubic, a nude shade holographic. With a subtle, taupy shade, a stamp with fine detail felt appropriate, so out came Moyou Pro 02, and the 2-sided partial on the bottom row.

As well as Cherubic and the Pro 02 plate, I also used Konad black stamping polish, OPI Matte Nail envy (base) and HK Girl top coat.

I try to take photos in natural light, but with a holo, I have included the obligatory 'with flash' photo!

I do rather like the understatedness of this mani; I just need some more placement practice :)

Natural, direct sunlight:

Natural but indirect sunlight:

With flash:

As always, thanks for looking, and please feel free to leave a link to your blog in the comments, so that I can see what you're up to as well :)

September Stamping Challenge: Day 16 - Rainbow

Apologies for my tardiness in posting, but life has been busy! I have finally done one of Tina's set manicures on the relevant say - a rainbow manicure. I just can't believe it's taken me 2 days to post it! (Voting in Scotland's Independence referendum first thing this morning has paid off by giving me more time to spare than anticipated).

So, I don't have a rainbow on my plates to make a stamping decal from as it's not really my cup of tea. I took a different approach though: to go rainbow with the colours themselves and create a skittle mani. Once I had the colours on, the plate pretty much decided itself: Moyou Tropical 02 and its exotic summer flowers just spoke to me!

The ingredients list is a bit longer than usual:
- (matte OPI Nail Envy base and HK Girl top coat)
- Nails Inc Seymour Walk (pink), Royal Botanical Gardens (powder blue), Notting Hill Carnival (yellow), Mornington Crescent (orange) and St John's Wood (heather).
-Moyou Tropical 02

(Apologies for any poor formatting - the mobile app really isn't all that great for Blogger)!

September Stamping Challenge: Day 6 - Flamingos

So, I had a look at Miss Tina's suggested daily list, and Travel is her theme for today (http://madricka.blogspot.ca/2014/08/september-is-stamping-month-mani-challenge.html?m=1). I don't own travel-themed plates per se, so started to think about what I might see on holiday that I don't see here. Well, flamingos are not native to Scotland and are on my gorgeous Moyou Tropical 06 plate. Decision made!

The mani has a few added bonuses too:

• it was quick, as only 2 fingers are stamped. (Given that I am riding with 200 other horses and riders through Edinburgh tomorrow, ensuring the boundaries of the city are still secure as per olden times, I will only ruin it when saddling up anyway! http://www.edinburghridingthemarches.co.uk)
• it uses my fave polish: Essie Cascade Cool. This polish looks so unassuming in the bottle, but is the perfect blue-toned pink for my skin tone.
• it uses the sparkly pink Insta-Dri polish I picked up in Poundland this morning. All North American bloggers swear by them, so it was nice to find them to play with in the UK for £1!

.I meant to do all of this manicure facing outwards, but totally forgot myself when stamping my ring finger. Oops! (I did remember for doing my right hand thankfully, it just doesn't look as good as I'm right-handed).

The ingredients (below) are:

• Essie Cascade Cool and Zoya Snow White as base colours
• Sally Hansen Instra-Dri Pink Fast and Konad White for stamping
• Moyou Tropical 06 and my Chinese marshmallow for stamping
• (as ever but unphotographed, my base was OPI Matte Nail Envy, and HK Girl was my top coat).

(Please excuse any lay out errors: I posted this using the Blogger App for the first time, and even from my laptop now, moving and changing the photographs seems impossible).

September Stamping Challenge: Day 1 - National Symbols

So, I am taking part in the lovely Miss Tina's stamping challenge this September (Tina's September Challenge), as often as I can (sadly not daily). I don't have huge variety in my plates yet, and I pretty much live in flower and butterfly manicures, so can't stick to this fabulous guide Tina has come up with. So, I'll try and do some from Tina's list, and some of my own as time and my imagination allow.

So, today's manicure is a floral one, but the theme is one of Nationality (not mine, might I add) - in fact, it's Malaysian in origin. So, how did an Irish girl living in Scotland dream this one up?

Well, on Sunday night, I watched the Edinburgh End of Festival Fireworks and concert. The finale was played out to Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture (the Scottish Chamber Orchestra did an amazing job, as the the pyrotechnics team). I have listened to this piece of music countless times over the years, but never before had the hints of La Marseillaise, France's national anthem, stood out so well before, as the fireworks reflected the colour and formation of the French flag. So, while watching these fireworks with my friends from China, Malaysia, Indian and England, National Colours and symbols came to mind. When it came up that the national flower of Malaysia was the hibiscus, and the flag was mostly red and white (with some blue and gold too), my mind was made up!

Hibiscus Flower

Malaysian Flag

So, here's the list of ingredients that went in to my manicure (left to right):
-OPI Matte Nail Envy base coat
-Nails Inc Greenwich Market polish
-Konad White stamping polish
-HK Girl top coat
-Stamper and scraper kit from China (marshmallow)
-Moyou Pro XL 13 (top row, 4th image from left)

(I should say that, unless stated otherwise, all my manis on this blog use Nail Envy as a base, HK Girl as my topper, and this marshmallow stamper and plastic scraper as my tools).

So, here is the finished article. Sadly there wasn't great sunlight to catch the full beauty of it, and I'm still learning about placement, but I for one think it's pretty, as do my OH and several strangers so far!

Thanks for taking a look! Feel free to leave a comment so that I see your blog too :)

My Name is Debs, and I Am a Stampaholic...

... and PROUD!

I have been meaning to restart blogging for so long, but have finally found something that I enjoy enough to inspire me - nail stamping! The road has been rocky at times (wrong plates, wrong stamper, wrong polishes, you name it), but once I got over the beginners bumps, I fell totally in love. I'm going to try more of a little and often approach, but here's a few photos to get this thing started :)

This was the first stamping job I have done that I felt truly happy with, so was my break-through of sorts. The only things that displeased me was the green turning my crisp white to a yellow when top coated though - d'oh! This was achieved with my Chinese marshmallow stamper from Ebay, Moyou Pro Plate XL 12, Nails Inc Queen Victoria Street and Konad White. (All manis here are top coated with Seche Vite).

Below was done with Moyou Pro XL Plates 07 and 12, and polishes Nails Inc Morning Crescent, Zoya Snow White, and Konad White (stamping polish).

During September, I'm going to take part in a challenge with Miss Tina (albeit not every day - duty calls and all that)! The details are all here: Miss Tina's September Stamping Challenge So, I'll be taking different themes and inspirations, and coming up with stamping manis accordingly. I can't wait, as I already pick up so much inspiration when out and about and looking at people's handiwork online. The mani below I did last week, and was inspired by a long and boring trip to DFS to look at sofas!

Zoya Richelle, Konad White and Moyou Pro XL 12.

So, thanks for reading, and I hope you join me over the coming weeks to see what's new :) Feel free to direct me to your blogs too - I love a bit of inspiration! Clubbing together to do Twin Manicures (where we become copy cats of one another) is always fun too.