Border and Mosaic Nails

Sometimes I just feel like switching things up a little, and pull out techniques that I haven't used for a while. Since my past two posts on here has been kinda serious, I wanted to lighten up the mood with today's nails.

We are revisiting Border Nails.

I know some people know this style better as Frame Nails, but they are one and the same technique.


For this look I am using three polishes:

H&M - Beige is one of my oldest polishes and I am surprised it is still kicking and hasn't dried all up. It has been with me since the very beginning. No wonder it is also, half empty. 

I actually won FNUG - Love Chic in a competition when FNUG first launched, and I got to choose a couple of shades from their line. Their polishes are amazing, a bit on the pricey side, but the staying power of these babies beats most of my other polishes to the boot. 

W7 - Buff is like the accident polish of this look. I never really liked this particular polish, it is too thin to be worn alone, but it works great for sponging. I think W7 make great polishes but W7- Buff is a dud. 

I also used a thin striping brush and a sponge for this look. 

First I started out with applying one coat of H&M - Beige, and once it was dry I placed 2 drops of H&M - Beige and 3 drops of W7- Buff to my Uber Chic Mat and dipped a sponge in to pick up the two colours. Dab dab dab on to the nails. 

It created a nice washed out marbled look. 

Then I went in with a striping brush and FNUG - Love Chic and framed the nails. 

FNUG - Love Chic Border Nails with H&M - Beige and W7 - Buff sponged in the middle as a washed marble look.

I am still learning to get my lines even with my striping brush, but this is definitely looking a whole better than last years attempts at border nails. 

Practise makes perfect, right?

I wore this look for a couple of days, and decided to switch up up and do Mosaic Nails. 

Grabbing my striping brush again and FNUG - Love Chic, I managed to get a couple days more wear.

FNUG - Love Chic Mosaic Nails with H&M - Beige and W7 - Buff sponged in the middle as a washed marble look.

Which one is your favourite?

Arabesque Nails

I received this product of my choosing, free of charge for my honest, non-bias review from the Born Pretty Store.

I needed something that would match my outfit, but still be interesting enough to talk about. Just in case anyone were to take a glance at my nails.
After all, it was a classical concert, and there would be wine and chatter.

I had just received some stamping plates from Born Pretty Store, and I had been eyeing BP L002 for a while. This would be the perfect opportunity.

Since I would be wearing a cream coloured dress, I decided to stay on the neutral side of my nail polish collection. After carefully considering every shade, I chose W7 - Buff as my base colour.

BP-L002 from BornPrettyStore

This is the part of the plate that I decided to use. There was something about those neat lines, that was dragging me towards it. Almost like a tentacle, almost like a sweet lace pattern. I did spend quite some time with this plate in order to find "the perfect" section for my manicure. I have a notebook where I sometimes do test stamps in, and I filled a full page. Crazy right?

BP-L002 from BornPrettyStore, filled in and on the stamping heads

For the stamping I used Barry M - Coconut and Barry M - Vanilla. I thought those two shades would be perfect together with W7 - Buff for this look. It is not often I wear shades like this, so why not wear them all together.  The dots are done using Barry M - Coconut.

After they had dried enough, I could proceed to getting them on my nails. Making it look something like this.

BP-L002 from BornPrettyStore decal ready to go on the nail

I wanted the design to mirror the other finger, I find this a lot easier when using the decal method, and it worked very well for this look. I finished it all with two rhinestones in a soft purple, on the index and little finger. 

BP-L002 from BornPrettyStore with rhinestones 

BP-L002 from BornPrettyStore with rhinestones 

I really like how this look came together, specially with the rhinestones and the mirror-image stamping in the middle.

If you want to get hold of this plate, it is sold for 5.99 USD, BornPrettyStore offers free shipping worldwide, and if you use my code (RAMG10) you get 10% off your order.

The plate was easy to work with, and the etching was very good, and I had no problems picking up the images with my Konad or my Moyou London stamper.

As you can see from the image, it comes with a backing piece, so no dangers of cuts here. It also comes with the protective blue film, which you are expecting to find on plates now a days.

I received this product of my choosing, free of charge for my honest, non-bias review from the Born Pretty Store.

That one time ... Watermarvel

I think it is important to report the "not so successful" attempts every now and then.
Specially when you can identify what went wrong in the process.

So this attempt started the same way as all the other:
Polish goes in water, spreads, drag needle over, dry over night.
Yet, it turned out quite different.

IsaDora - 179 - Winter Rose
W7 - 140 - Buff
ESSIE - Little Brown Dress

close up few minutes after it was made

15 h later, it looks like this

I could still make a nice manicure out of it, so it wasn't completely ruined, but it baffled me that it turned out so differently. As I hadn't had any failed attempts at all using this technique I wanted to find out what went wrong.
I asked the girls at Polish-aholics Anonymous on Facebook, and the suggestions ranged from water contamination, to temperature drops, and even air contamination. One suggested it might simply be the polishes I choose.

So I went to the scientific method, and worked on eliminating one and one of these theories.
By using the same polishes in the same order with new water, and with a lid, the problem still occurred. So it could not be air- or water contamination. Though, this was a very good bet.
As I had used the same water all week, there was a possibility that water contamination could be a factor. I would lift the decal out of the water, and make a new one right away, so the water was never changed. However this had not, and continued not to be the problem, so it had to be something else.

I then decided to use the same polishes but to swap out one of them. As I am not the biggest fan of IsaDora - Winter Rose, that was the polish I decided to swap out. This attempt had no errors and can be found following this link:

Vintage Wood - A watermarble adventure

I was twisting and turning on the decal. It wasn't much to work with, and it had gaps here and there. Some of it simply crumbled away when I took it out of the water.

 It's not my best work, hehe, but I made it, kinda, work.

Vintage Wood - A watermarble adventure

I think this post does not come as a surprise to any of you. Specially as it is another water-marble manicure. I have been practicing and practicing all week.
I was trying to identify a problem that occurred with one of my water-marbles, when I came upon this combo. I did a similar one, but was using IsaDora / Winter Rose for that one, and something strange happen to it, so when I experimenting to see if it was the polishes/water/temperature/air that was causing the problem, I used my new Barry M - Vintage Violet.

Instead of alternating every third, like I have done for a while, today I only added ONE drop of the Barry M - Vintage Violet. The rest of the water-marble was done using W7 - Buff, and ESSIE - Little Brown Dress. It really reminds me of woodwork, and I just can't say how pleased I am with this attempt. I have come so far with my watermarbeling decals this month.

The added dusky violet in this manicure lifts it up just that little.

Vintage Wood worked nails - water marbling

I will be uploading my failed attempt as well. So you can see what can go wrong when water marbling, and how I managed to make a mani out of it after all. 

A writers manicure

I was totally inspired by Mishka over at Lacquer or Leave Her! for todays manicure. You can find her post: Review and Before & After: Moyou London Scholar Collection 02 and 06 here.

Quick view of the original.

Property of Lacquer or Leave Her

This manicure is so gorgeous. It's amazingly gorgeous. I can not praise it enough. hopefully my recreation with a twist will get as much love as the original. If you are not already a subscriber of her, I would highly recommend checking her out.

For this manicure I used the same plate as Mishka did in her manicure, but I also added one plate from MASH - 39, for a background image. I wanted my nails to look like notebooks, and since I don't have the Scholar Collection plate 06, I found an image that kinda looks the same on another plate.

I used a several different nail polishes for this manicure. W7 - Buff on the tips over Barry M - Lychee, and ESSIE - Little Brown Dress as an accent. Stamped using Makeup Mekka - Charlotte Grey and Barry M - Lychee, and ESSIE - Little Brown Dress.

This is how it all started.

A writers manicure

A writers manicure

A writers manicure

A writers manicure

Can I just say that I am totally in LOVE with this manicure. I just LOVE LOVE it. And I love how the ink came out, when I used a brush over it to make it look more like it was "wiped" away. 

Throwback Thursday - Cafè Nails

Today I decided to do a throwback, with a re-creation. Before I even had a blog, before I was good at doing my nails (I tried, it counts), I did a nail art creation using a Konad plate and two nail polishes. H&M - Brown, and Depend - 188.

I intended to post this on the blog 2 years ago, but something kept me from doing it, firstly it's not that well done, it looks rugged and my cleanup is not the best. So it never went live. Just been sitting in my "draft" folder for these 2 years. And now I am going to post it. Excited?

This text is taken from the original drafted post:

First I started off painting my nails with Depend - 188, an old favorite of mine. But seeing it as a full mani, I felt it was boring, and needed some fun. I picked up my H&M mini - Brown, and used it on two of my fingers, then I reached for Konad stamping plate M14 and stamped a cupcake on it, using Depend - 188. 

Depend - 188

H&M - Brown, and Depend - 188, cupcake from Konad - M15 stamped in Depend - 188.

Yeah, it's not that great, but we all started somewhere, and this was one of my first stamping nail art looks.
I acknowledge that I was once a complete noobie, and I still consider myself pretty new at these things. We all started somewhere, and that's okay.

So I decided to take this mani, and do something new with it. I kept the stamping plate, added another image, swapped out those terrible polishes, and made it new and fresher.

For this look I used W7 - Buff, and W7 - Royal, Konad - M15 (using the cupcake image) and Cheeky - Jumbo Plate 7 - Home Sweet Home.

It turned out a bit more sheer than I thought it would, but in the right light (under not too bright, artificial light) you can see what it says.

If you where wondering, the stamp stays Tea Time and Cupcakes.

I don't think this is the last time I am doing this. I really enjoyed the lookback, and a bit sad that my hands looks so dry in the picture even though I mosturised them right before taking the picture. Darn you Spain for being so warm and drying me out. 

Holo-tastic

It was long after I landed in Spain that I felt the forces drag me to the nearest nail polish shop. I found this quirky shop in Alonso Martinez, Madrid, it was full of old polishes. Some Catrice, Dance Legend, China Glaze .. etc. There was no order to the chaos. Needless to say, I loved it!

I didn't want to go completely:
BUY ALL THE POLISH!
...straight after landing, so I limited myself to one polish. Believe me ladies it was hard. Yes, I might have been on a low-buy for 2 years, but it doesn't mean it's easy. Ever.
Well, to be honest, sometimes it's really easy, but not today.

I found this gorgeous Catrice holo. It's somewhere between pink and brown. I got a pink holo, but nothing like this, so it was cleared on my check list for "do I really need this polish?"

Catrice - iROSEdescent

Catrice - iROSEdescent

This polish has one of those wider brushes that we know from brands like ESSIE, some of you hate it, and some of you love it. As you can see on this picture its not a C-brush, but more like a V-brush (if there is such a term). I really liked this brush, and found it easy to use.

It covered completely in two strokes.

Catrice - iROSEdescent in Indirect sunlight

Catrice - iROSEdescent in Direct sunlight

Catrice - iROSEdescent in Indoor artificial light

Catrice - iROSEdescent in Half-shade indirect sunlight

I did some nail art as you might be able to see there, I was struggeling to get a good picture of the nail art, cause all the (holo-ness) awesomeness was blinding it out. Below you can see the best picture I managed to snap. It's coffee-beans on all nails. On the thumb I used W7 - Buff, and on the rest of the nails I used W7 - Royal. All stamped using the Cheeky - Jumbo plate - Home Sweet Home.
I think this is actually the first time I use this plate, and that's kinda sad, but it's just .. that I have so many awesome stamping plates.

I brought them all with me on my move to Spain, so hopefully I get to use them a lot more in the next couple of months, since I didn't bring my acrylics, and my selection of nail polish is limited to those I brought with me and the ones I buy while I am here.

If you got any suggestions on where to shop for polishes in Madrid, Spain, please leave me a message in the commentfield below. I am only here for 2 months, and would like to see all the polish-places while I am here.

Jump to the Airport - mani

So there I am, finishes packed and ready to go to Spain. When I noitice something horrible. My nail polish has chipped!!! I don't want to be selfconcious on the entire trip, I want to be able to relax. So those nails had to be done. 

For this manicure I did something cool.

I made a decal!

I ended up using it on my thumb, I forgot how large the image was... Oh well. There is a first time for everything, and everyone. This was mine. I am no longer a decal-virigin. 

I used the Cheeky - Jumbo Plate - Tropical Holiday. It was the only plate I could use really. Tropical Holiday, I was going to Spain, ya know?!

How-to:

Select an image you want on your nails. Transfer it to your stamper. Fill in with colours using a fine brush or dotting tool, Let it dry for 10 min. Apply a generously amount of clear nail polish over, or the background colour of your choice. Let it dry for 10-15 min. Take it of carefully, and apply to wet/tacky polish on your nails. There you go!


Now, enough about decals. Over to the nails. Since I was kinda in a hurry, I forgot the usual step-to-step pics, but you get an idea.

Jump to the Airport - mani

The thumb is the decal I made. I used ESSIE - Navigate Her as base and ESSIE - Moijito Madness for the top of the palm tree and W7 - Buff for the stem
Iindex finger I used Barry M - Lime Green stamped a plane over and filled it in using Wet & Wild - Black Creme
Middle finger I used Barry M - Superdrug Limited Edition Yellow, and stamped over using Barry M - Lychee with seashells
Ringfinger has Barry M - Acid Yellow as base with Barry M - Fuchsia stamped over with hibiscus flowers
Little finger is ESSIE - Navigate Her and a nail sticker with hipster glasses

Phuuu that is a long list of polishes.

I got to the Airport in time, and got to sit down there for a couple of minutes before take up. UK was raining like all hell was loose as soon as I got in the Airport, and when I landed in Spain, it had just stopped raining.
There was some tubulense on the trip, but all in all, it went good.


PS: If you are planning on taking EasyJet any time soon.. They are planning on denying all liquids on check-in luggage. Just FYI.

Birthday Haul

13th of May! Today is my birthday. I am so excited. The day is going to be filled with cake, and my boyfriend is making me Italian pizza (the proper way). We are having stuffed mushrooms for starters and Vino Verde (my favorite wine in the world!).

Cherry blossom design on my cake

I went to Herefordshire not long ago, to visit some friends and do some shopping. This is what I got:

Not the biggest of hauls, but I needed some more summer colours, and these seemed to suit my mood just fine. I also picked up another nude shade of brown. I have no idea why.

Ciaté - Strictly Legal

Ciaté doesn't really got a good reputation, but since this was on sale, I decided to get it anyway. 

Barry M - Acid Yellow, Barry M - Lime Green, Barry M - Superdrug Limited Edition Yellow. 

Barry M - Acid Yellow, Barry M - Lime Green, Barry M - Superdrug Limited Edition Yellow. 

From top: W7 - Fluffy Duck, W7 - Purple Rain, W7 - Buff, W7 - Royal, W7 - Pink Chrome

Claire's - Dizzy and cuticle clipper

There you have it. It's my little birthday haul. I  am looking forward to try all my new polishes, so don't be surprised if you see them again on my blog very soon. 

Until next time. Keep those talons pretty, and have fun!

Manicures using the products hauled:
W7 - Fluffy Duck
W7 - Purple Rain
W7 - Buff
W7 - Royal
W7 - Pink Chrome

Barry M - Acid Yellow
Barry M - Lime Green
Barry M - Superdrug Limited Edition Yellow

Ciaté - Paint Pots - Strictly Legal

Claire's - Dizzy