new years nails 2012

For Christmas Mike got me a wonderful gift; storage for my nail polish, and an ULTA gift card. Even though he HATES the smell every time I change my polish {which this month was a lot}, he is very supportive of my addiction, and the creative outlet it brings. 

I finally got a chance today to stop at ULTA, where I wanted to pick up It's a Trap-eze, but they were sold out! Total bummer I did get to pick up China Glaze Liquid Leather, and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls (on sale for $4). And since I could do my original idea of "confetti" nails, I went in a different direction and busted out stamping plates!

I used two coats of Liquid Leather, although it almost covered in one, and used a "bubbly" stamp and Essie Penny Talk to add some champagne bubbles to help ring in the new year. 

polish please | arizona art

I was hoping to post about the mani that I gave myself for my friends wedding that I attended this weekend, but it turned out to be an EPIC fail. I am having SOOOO much fun with the striping tape that finally arrived from China, but I am by no means a pro yet.

I wanted to do something subtle and classic for the wedding {any pic that I am in will be around for quite a while}. I wanted to recreate this mani, it was perfect; mine was not. It all started out great, and looked very good. It dried, and everything was staying put, until I took a shower. After that, the mani was coming apart at the seams. The tape buckled and pulled up on all nails, but the middle fingers {the nail gods were trying to tell me something}. Fortunately my mega best friend Shawna came to the rescue, and I borrowed her black to go over the peeled off mess. 

Here is Mike and I just after the quick polish fix.

And my mega best friend who saved the day!

I thought that I should leave you all with a successful mani, and a tribute to the great state of Arizona. I love my stamping plates, and metallic polishes transfer VERY well.  

polish please | nail stamping

I have posted before that I have a little bit of an obsession with nail polish, and that I change it a little too much all the time. Lately I have been so inspired by what I see on pinterest, and some nail art blogs that I follow, that I cannot be satisfied with JUST polish. I have started dabbling in nail art, and stamping is my new favorite thing to do. 

I had admired manicures that I have seen on The Nailasaurus, Nailed It, and Chloe's Nail, and wanted to create some of the awesome looks that they have made. The problem is that I don't have the experience or that talent {yet} to make anything as remotely good as the real nail bloggers make. This is when I decide that I needed a little help by the way of nail image stamping plates. So I took to the web and started searching for tools to add to my nail arsenal. After searching and researching I opted to order the MASH plates from amazon. Their over all rating was pretty high, and I wasn't willing to shell out the cash for the Konad plates {these are the real deal and real pricey}.

Here is my second attempt at stamping, and I was really happy with the outcome for a first-timer. I stamped the bow on my ring finger and used dotting tools {also an amazon find} to create polka dots. The first attempted wasn't horrible, but was added to a mani that was on it's way out that had seen better days.

The third try I used stamps on every nail. I went back to the trusty bow, and added a full design to my ring finger with pink hearts. It is recommended to use a fast drying polish for the stamping. The first time I used Sally Hansen's Extreme Wear in White Out, the next time I stamped with Sally's Insta-Dry, which worked much better. I did have some problems with centering the design the way that I truly wanted it, but with a bit more practice I should get the hang of it. 

Nail stamping is super easy, and takes much less time then some of the other techniques that I had been using. You are also left with such a clean finished product. Trust me, there will be many more stamping mani's in the future {and I will try really hard not to use the bow too much}.