Stamping Skittle in Black and White

Hello gorgeous! Sorry this post is so late, it's been a crazy week. Everyone has been sick in my house, myself included. But that doesn't mean my nails need to suffer, right? As a pick-me-up, I decided to use my new Mega (L) by ILNP, and to follow through with this month's theme of stamping, I did a stamping skittle.

I unfortunately didn't stop and think to get a macro of Mega (L), and I'm really kicking myself for it. Now that I have a very present sun, I really should get pics of the holo...

Speaking of pics, I only got one after final cleanup. Please forgive me, as I've been horribly ill... But I did get a few of the pics from before final cleanup (aka the pics I take before I realize I'm not quite done with cleanup yet...), and I'll share one of those as well. 

Pic (of my right hand) before final cleanup. Surprisingly not my favorite hand. Usually my left hand does a better job than my right (because I'm much more careful and tend to take my time), but I guess it was a bad day.

Pic (of my left hand) after final cleanup. Ah, much better!

To get this look, I laid down a base of Sinful Colors' Snow Me White, then did two layers of Mega (L) by ILNP. I then stamped using Black on Black and a few different stamping plates:

• Gals' GA14 for the dots, 
• GA21 for the thick lines on my thumb and right index finger.
• Mash 46 for the thin stripes
• Mash 38 for the checks
• Bundle Monster's BM-201 for the chevron

I also used my new VAGA stamper. I'm unsure if the quality (or rather, the lack thereof) of the stamping is due to Black on Black or the stamper. Black on Black is not a stamping polish, and it leaves much to be desired. I REALLY need to get my hands on some stamping polishes! But just in case, I went and purchased another VAGA stamper as a part of a set, because I like the stamper itself, but it has a defect. I'll also be contacting the seller with my issue, which is that the stamper isn't smooth. It has a couple of indents and I'm pretty sure it's causing the stamper to be unable to grab everything from the plate. I'm going to keep playing with it though, and see if more conditioning and priming can help. But if all else fails, I have my backups.

Do you have a favorite and trusty stamper? What are your favorite plates? Within my Month of Stamping, did you learn anything that will help you in the future?  Please remember to subscribe, and you can find me on IG as @pinkiesforapenny. I hope you have a wonderful week, and I'll see you next Thursday! Ta-ta!

In Which The Nail Art Industry Brings Liquid Latex Out Of The Bedroom

Heya gorgeous! Hope your weekend is crammed with all the stuff you wanna do :) 

So I've decided that I'm going to spend January doing stamping. I have a lot of plates and I feel like I just don't use them enough :/ I plan on rectifying that this month, and using a lot of plates that I haven't used before, especially the plates that I specifically bought the sets for and then never used (I'm looking at you, paisley from Bundle Monster...)

So I'm looking to do new stamping techniques. Last week was double-stamping. This week, it's a part of the cleanup process, which I totally forgot to take pictures of...

Recently, a new cleanup method has come about called Liquid Palisade. It's basically purple liquid latex in a purple liquid eyeliner tube, according to some who tried it. It also retails for $22/bottle. 

Think about how long a tube of liquid eyeliner lasts. Now, imagine having to smear that all over your fingers instead of a thin line on your eyelid. It's not going to last for very long, and at $22 that feels like theft to this stingy mom. So, I went looking for a solution, and I found one, very easily. Liquid Latex. I went to a couple of smut shops in search of a small jar or tube, but found that it wasn't very popular and were pulled off of the shelves, and was encouraged to go online. I went to my favorite place, smile.amazon.com (where 5% of every purchase I make goes to St. Judes AND I get free shipping), and I found a sizeable tub of latex for more than half the price of the name brand. I chose white as my color, and two days later it was at my door.

So when I was deciding what to do for my mani, I decided it was time to bust out the latex. So I would need a messy and hard-to-clean mani... Gradient. Sponged gradient. Perfect. And then I closed my eyes, opened up a page in my new Pueen plates, and picked a design. It was fate. And as fate would have it, my nails are pretty awesome. 

So I get the gradient done using Sinful Colors' Enchanted and Zoya's Charisma and then decide to take a lesson from last week and add some glitter.  I'm not sure if you remember, it was a very long time ago, but I was having issues with the purple bleeding and nearly annihilating my stamp. In an attempt to prevent this, I decided to put a clear coat of something in between the stamp and my gradient. I still want to get to know Starrily's Eclipse a bit better, so I added a layer as a barrier between the purple gradient and the white Sinful Colors polish I was going to stamp with (Snow Me White), and it worked! I topcoated this with Parrot Polish's Glow Purple (still can't capture that elusive glow-in-the-dark effect on camera...) and there was no bleeding, yaaaay!!!

So that is the roller coaster of events that lead up to this mani. I do want to give some tips in the event that you decide to grab some liquid latex to try out for yourself, just real quick.

• Put the latex into a smaller container with a brush for easier use. I poured some into a clean and empty nail polish bottle. Don't forget to lay down newspaper when you pour, and the little tiny funnels you sometimes get with glitter at walmart are completely ineffective. 
• Only do one hand at a time. So, I wanted to play with it and got carried away and did both hands to start and MAN that was a messy mistake. One thing I did not know about liquid latex is that when it's dried, it has the consistency of really old waterballoons that sat in your garage or attic for a couple of summers too long. You know what I'm talking about... sticky and mushy and just really weird. When your fingers that are covered in latex touch each other, the latex kinda tries to meld together, making it hard for them to come apart. It causes lifting, and you'll have to redo the latex. When you have all 10 digits stuck together, this makes it really hard to try to do anything, especially nails. So keep it to one hand at a time, K?
• Buy ammonia-free. I did, and it still has a slight hint of cat pee smell to it when it's wet. It's odorless when it's dry, but if this is what the ammonia-free one smells like, I shudder to think what the kinds with ammonia smell like.
• Pull it away from the nail. In some videos, I've seen people just grab a corner and pull off and all of the polish came away. This was not the case for me. When I pulled it away, the polish kinda slid right off, like when you were a kid, you put polish on a balloon and... oh. Duh... Anyways. I'm wondering if the Liquid Palisade has anything special in it to prevent this, or if I shouldn't have waited until everything was dry. More experimentation is in my future, I predict! Anyways, I used a pair of tweezers and kinda cut it away from my cuticle and then pulled outwards, loosening the latex and making sure it took the polish with it, and THEN I was able to pull it away. It came in one piece, too, which was oddly, yet really satisfying.
• Waste not, want not! Just kidding, apply this sh*t liberally. Get it all over your finger, and then some. Make it thick. It'll come off easier. Avoid any hair that might be on your knuckles, though. Hair and liquid latex do NOT mix. Get it as close to the cuticle as you dare, and as far down and away as you think you might get any polish. If you're watermarbling, probably go like half an inch further, just in case.
• If you are allergic to latex, DO NOT USE THIS. I'm just being facetious here. If you're allergic to latex, you probably already know to avoid this stuff. I mean, it has the word "latex" right in the title... if you don't know if you're allergic or not, grab the nearest epipen or some benedryl,  and do a test patch on a hairless part of your hand. Always better to be safe than sorry!

I personally found this to be a better experience than taping my finger, and will definitely be continuing with this method. Keep an eye out in the tags for it in future posts! I'm really sorry about how wordy and long this post got. I generally do try to keep posts short-ish and sweet-er, but I got carried away. It happens to the best of us, right? 

Will you be giving this cleanup method a go, trying Liquid Palisade, or do you have your own tried-and-true method? Lemme know down in the comments, and please remember to subscribe for more fun with me!

Layered Double-Stamping

Hello gorgeous! I'm baaaaaack!!!

So today, I decided to do a layered mani! I've been seeing a LOT of double- and triple-stamped manis and I've been wanting to try one. So then I got this Pueen stamping set and thought today's the day! So I started planning a mani and gathering my stuff, to find that I didn't own the plate that I had based the entire plan on... It was one that I ordered in a group buy on Facebook that hasn't been shipped just yet... /Headdesk...

SO I decided to keep the colors I had originally grabbed, and change the plan. I grabbed some saran wrap, and my new Pueen plates and decided to go to town. I picked one plate, Pueen 77, and used two of the patterns on it. 

I also used my new stamper for this, and OH MY GODS there is a GIANT difference between my original stamper (an old, old, OLD one that came with the original Salon Express) and the marshmallow stamper. Just SUCH a drastic difference, and I may not use the Salon Express one again... (I'll keep it around, though... Just in case...)

I also took pics for you guys to show how I made this mani: 

Step one (after laying down a white base): Saran Wrap mani. I used Sally Hansen's Kiss Me Here.
I topcoated after this with my Diamond Claws to prepare for stamping.

Step two: First layer of stamping, using Finger Paints Pop Art Purple

Step Three: Stamping with Sinful Colors Black on Black.

Step four: Cleanup and topcoat!

You can kinda see what patterns I used to stamp. 

I actually like how my right hand turned out more than my left ROFLMAO

As you can probably see, I'm rocking nubbies right now :'( My nails were completely destroyed by the move. Both pinkies broke past the smile line and have been very painful, as has a couple of hangnails that got a wee bit infected. Holding the steering wheel for 1.7k miles was definitely a challenge :( They're feeling better now though!!

So in other news: I'M OFFICIALLY ENROLLED FOR SCHOOL!!!!!!!!! I start on February 3rd, and HOOOOOLY MOLY am I excited!!! Also, funny story, the admissions agent that enrolled me was a former coworker! We had a pleasant time catching up :) It was suuuper embarrassing though,  because I hadn't done my nails just yet... So I showed up to the school with broken, chipped, messy nails, after telling Kelly that I'd been blogging for a while and all of that. SO EMBARRASSING.
I had also gone on a date with nasty broken nails and spent the evening very super self-conscious of my hands >.< But now they're all pretty again!!! Yaaay!

I still kinda feel like these are incomplete.. Got any suggestions on what I should add? Maybe some rhinestones or glitter? Comment down below! Please also don't forget to subscribe, there are now TWO options to do so, through bloglovin' and Google Friend Connect! Have a wonderful rest of the week!

I'm Joining Bloglovin'!

So no new pics for this post, sorry, but I just wanted to let you know that I am making changes to the site. I'm adding a bloglovin' widget and claiming my blog, so that you can follow me there now too! I've also toyed with the layout a bit, so you don't have to scroll so far to certain widgets. Hope these changes enhance your experience! Please click the link below to follow me, and gimme a comment or some feedback on the changes :) Thank you!

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Winter Waterfalls

Filler post today guys, sorry! I just got off a 5-hour plane ride with a 3-year old (who may or may not had been cranky most of the flight) and the next 72 hours are going to be SUPER BUSY, so... yeah.

I did another waterfall. I'm not sorry, I effin' love this style! And with the blue, it's just.. augh, so GORGEOUS!! I stamped some snowflakes on to my ring finger, and freehanded the ones on my thumbs. I added the little rhinestones to hide some mistakes. These were so fun to wear!!

Had some fun with my watermark. Still figuring out Gimp.

I may have been playing with filters on instagram. Maybe. 

I should be back up to posting next week, but seeing as it's Christmas and I won't have my nail polish stash with me, I can't make any guarantees.

If I don't see you then, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!! (I'll be driving across the country, so I dunno if I'll be able to post for New Years' either... sorry). Please stay safe, and stay warm! 

Crazy Diamonds

Hello Gorgeous! Hope your December is going well! Mine is full of craziness. Saturday is my last day of work, then next Thursday, we're hopping on a plane to Vegas to tour schools, celebrate my birthday and Christmas, and start to get things settled for our stay there. Kiddo is very excited!

 As you're aware, I'm a part of the Hobby Polish Bloggers, and from that group I made a great friend, Narmai from PiggieLuv. She's always got AMAZING art on her nails, and she's an absolute muse. I took some inspiration from her GORGEOUS Don't Let Anyone Dull Your Sparkle nails, and decided to work with it. I bought some OPI Sheer Tint minis on Amazon, grabbed my chunky glitters and went nuts.

First step in this process is using a sp- you know what, she's got a great tutorial over on Youtube. Check it out!

I went out and about like this, before they were finished... Even unfinished, they got comments and compliments! 

Macro Shot. Because these will never get old lol

For my nails, I went with a different message than my muse:

Shine on, you crazy diamond! 

My diamond in Macro

To create the lettering and the diamond, I created my own decals using Seche Vite, a piece of paper, and a ziplock baggie. I wrote out what I wanted to say on the paper, put the paper in the baggie, and then painted the baggie with Seche Vite. After that was dry, I painted out the words using Pure Ice's Silver Mercedes and Sinful Colors' Black on Black using my medium-length line brush. The diamond is Silver Mercedes, with LAC's Glitter Bomb and China Glaze's Fairy Dust behind.

I sooo love these! They were so cute and fun to make! I hope you enjoyed them as much as I do!

In the comments, please lemme know what you're doing for Christmas!

Traveling TARDIS nails!

Hello, Whovian! Hope you're having a wonderful day! Today, I'm showing you some of my favorite nails I've ever done! If you've been with me for a while, you know I'm a pretty big nerd/geek, part of the Doctor Who fandom, and I love doing nails that show it!

So on Black Friday weekend, Storenvy was having a 30% off select shops sale, and while sifting through a bunch of beauty stores, I discovered one called Gryffinstor that does mostly water decals and temporary tattoos. They have a LOT of fun and nerdy stuff, please go check them out! As I was sifting through their items, I saw that they had the TARDIS, and I had to have a sheet! With zero hesitation, I tossed them in my cart and purchased them, with the intent to do this mani.

I received them really quickly, the shipping speed was excellent! In fact, they arrived so soon, and I couldn't wait (of course), so I took some polishes, sponges, and tools to work and did these at my desk. After some trial and error, I ended up deciding to paint the backs of the decals with white polish because they were too transparent without, and you couldn't see the TARDIS. After doing so, the TARDIS really pops!

Ooweeeoooooh! OOooheweeeeoooh! Do do do do da doooo de dooo!

*weird grinding noise*

Yeah, I'm excited about these. After wearing them for a few days, I still don't want to take them off.

Now, I wanna let you in on a little secret: not all of this is nail polish! I accidentally forgot to bring black (how?!), and I don't have black handy at my desk, so I grabbed what I had: black sharpie >_< 

So after laying down the black, I put a top coat down so it didn't smudge, then sponged on several colors using a ripped up makeup sponge held by some tweezers.

The colors I used for this are: Black Sharpie, Sally Hansen's Co-Bolt Blue, Zoya's Robyn and Pippa, and LAC's Purple Passion. I also used three glow-in-the-dark colors, an unnamed Rue Beaute' that's hot pink (it has a light-up lid), Pulsating Purple by Bright 'n Sassy (I found it at my local grocery store), and Pure Ice's Glow In The Dark. I was disappointed to find that the pink and the purple don't glow in this mani, but Glow In The Dark sure does! I haven't been disappointed in that one yet :) I still feel like they do make a bit of a difference in this mani, though, by changing some colors.

I used a dotting tool and a striping brush to create the stars, and Sinful Colors' Snow Me White. Topped everything with China Glaze Fairy Dust, and then placed the TARDIS-es. After those were snug, I topped everything with Diamond Claw after cleanup.

I love these so much, and I keep nerding out over them. I have a feeling we'll be seeing them again soon!

What fandoms do you belong to? If you like these, please leave a comment!