GuestPost - Wacie

Fun With Pink and Coral 

Hello, Secretary's Nail Art readers!
I am Stacie from wacie.com, and I am your guest blogger today.
I have mani for you that combines many nail art techniques to create one cohesive mani.

 For this look, I used Essie's Pink Glove Service and Tart Deco, Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer's Too Close to the Flame, OPI's Live, Love, Carnaval, and a nameless pink glow-in-the-dark polish I got at Rite-Aid. Each nail is topped with Dream Polish's Gem Glam top coat in the Melon Baller scent, and Essie's Matte About You matte top coat.

(The white spots are from the matte top coat)

As I mentioned, I employed many different styles for this mani.
All nails have a gradient done with Pink Glove Service and Tart Deco, but only one, my thumb, has the gradient alone and unfettered. The index finger has a coat of Too Close to the Flame under the gradient, while the pinky has it over the top. The middle two nails have the water marble done with Live, Love, Carnaval and Pink Glove Service. It's harder to see on some nails, but it is there.

Pink Glove Service is the workhorse of this mani, and I chose it because it's so sheer and so neutral that you can barely tell it's there. I definitely recommend a polish like this for everyone.

I used it here for all my negative-space needs, it watermarbles, and it's soft enough to work on every skintone.

Each nail also has a dose of the no-name glow-in-the-dark. I applied it at a different time on each nail, dependent on what nail art was done.
Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to get a really strong glow. I'll definitely use more if I attempt this again.

This photo was taken in complete darkness.

Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquers are sold in their online shop.
You probably already know where to find OPI and Essie.

Thank you so much for guestposting for me Stacie! Be sure to check out her work over at her blog wacie.com. Preparing for life as a new mom is keeping me busy, and I am looking forward to be getting back to blogging and getting the hang of having a baby around.

Coffee -nails

A product in this post was gifted to me, nothing else to disclose.

If there is not a tea cup next to me, there is a coffee cup. I love coffee, be it coffee scented candles (my favorite at the moment is Reindeer Brew - Peruvian Coffee Beans -03), a lazy latte or an americano in the morning.

I was organizing my stamping plates recently and found some stamping plates that I have not used for a while. The Cookbook Collection from Moyou London was one of these plates.

I filmed the whole process of this nail art, so if you want to have a look at that, hit that play button below. I made an intro for my videos and very excited about that. Hope you like it.




I started out with one coat of Barry M - Matte - Mocha on all nails, on top of that I added a thin layer of Ard As Nails - Vicky, to add a gorgeous shift, and transforms the look from a basic coffee -nails to something a little bit more glam.
When that was all dry I used Essie - Little Brown Dress, my favorite brown polish for stamping. Moyou London - The Cookbook Collection - 03 as an accent, and Moyou London - The Cookbook Collection - 04 for the rest of the nails.

I used my Magic Mask Liquid Latex that I purchased from Nail-Artisan UK. You can see me use it in the video above.

Coffee -nails using Moyou London - The Cookbook Collection 03 and 04 with Barry M - Matte - Mocha, Ard As Nails - Vicky and Essie - Little Brown Dress.

This is not the first time that I have done coffee nails using the Moyou London - The Cookbook Collection, in fact, last year I did these.

Secretary's Nail Art does Coffee -Nails 2015

If you want to read the whole post about last years coffee nails with a smooch base, follow this link.

My Garden is full of... Carrots

I love carrots, and when I was a little girl I would sometimes pretend to be a bunny.  With two large front-teeth, carrot in hand I would imitate bunnies better than anyone I know. Except for actual bunnies. This is Squee Ember and is probably the most famous bunny that I know in all of UK.

Used with permission from Squee, and Sam Ember.

For as long as I can remember I have always loved carrots.
This is why I decided to make Carrot-nails. Squee approved.

I had been dying to use Ard As Nails - The Chunk from "Here Comes The Boys" Collection from Soap Dodger.  this hunk of a polish is only 3.50£ for a mini or 6.50£ for a full size.
All Soap Dodger polishes are 5-free.

I had bought the full size, which is what I normally do. I always get so afraid of using polishes when they come in mini's as they will run out faster, and thus end up not using them at all...
Logic, right?

I used two coats of Ard As Nails - The Chunk, topped that with one coat of Nayll - I Found Loot, a franken I had made for me a while back.

If you like the idea of Frankening your own polishes, check out this post for a little Frankening 101.

I did the stamping using Bundlemonster - Secret Garden Collection - BM-705, and Cheeky - Jumbo plate 7 - Home Sweet Home (link to review of said plate). My stamping polish was Essie - Little Brown Dress.

'Ard As Nails - The Chunk

'Ard As Nails - The Chunk with one coat of Nayll - I Found Loot 

'Ard As Nails - The Chunk with one coat of Nayll - I Found Loot, stamped with Essie - Little Brown Dress with Bundlemonster BM705 and Cheeky - Jumbo plate 7 - Home Sweet Home.

'Ard As Nails - The Chunk with one coat of Nayll - I Found Loot, stamped with Essie - Little Brown Dress with Bundlemonster BM705 and Cheeky - Jumbo plate 7 - Home Sweet Home

What is your favorite vegetable? Do you love carrots as much as I do?

For the Love of Coffee

I am a bit late to the party here, but it was Secretary's Nail Art's 3 year anniversary the 1th of June.
I was celebrating with a well deserved holiday in Finland, and I am all Sauna'ed out (if that is even a thing), and ready to hit the keyboard again and show you all the new designs I have made.

I have also completed my Nail Cave aka Office Room at home, so there will be pictures of that coming soon as well. I love sitting here, and working, I feel so at home.

I have almost finished my project on swatching all my nail polishes to swatching sticks, and reorganizing them in alphabetic order in my Helmers, so that will be an exciting post as well.

I am very excited to show it to you all, but for now, that will have to wait.

One of the first nail art designs I did way before there even was a blog was cupcakes and coffee nails, so when I got my hands on Moyou London - The Cookbook Collection - 04 I knew I had to do that again. So since I did a Throwback Thursday  last year, I thought I would do a Coffee Nail. Last years Coffee Manicure was a bit tame, so I decided to turn up the heat.

I chose three different design from the 04 plate, and used Essie - Little Brown Dress to stamp with.

One a plastic surface I placed a few drops of Barry M - Cappucino, Barry M - Matte - Mocha, and Barry M - Gelly - Almond (I didn't have another polish with a coffee related name, so had to choose a non-coffee named polish for the third one). With my Creative Stamper Head I pressed the three shades together and transfered that to my nails. I really like how this makes the background more interesting. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of this step as it was too dark, at that point.
But I have some OttLights on it's way, so that won't be a problem much longer.

Moyou London - the Cook Book Collection - 04 manicure (before topcoat)

Moyou London - the Cook Book Collection - 04 manicure (after topcoat)

I LOVE this design, and could not stop looking at my nails, neither could one of my coworkers. Haha. He was gobsmacked over how gorgeous they where.

Aztec Sunset

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

Do you ever find yourself struggling to name a post? ...and then you have this epiphany moment where you feel like you hooked up to the Mother Server and you had a name for the post?
I had one of those days today, and this manicure started out with me wanting to show off how gorgeous Max Factor - Fantasy Fire is. I didn't have a Master Plan before I sat down to do my nails, I just did them.
When the name hit me, I had no idea where it came from, it just felt so right.

For this manicure I wanted to show off my gorgeous Max Fantasy - 45 - Fantasy Fire. This used to be "all the rage", a while back, and I must have been to the stores and picked up 15-20 of these the past few years. Everyone wanted one, back home in Norway, and I was gladly a mule for such a gorgeous polish. 

Taken on a polish-hunting trip in Londons outskirts.

The sun was shining bright, and the day called for a polish that could dance with the sun rays, and so it was that this manicure came together.
If you are a frequent reader of my blog you know that I received a parcel from BornPrettyStore for review, it was their plate BP L002 that I decided to use for this look.
This is not the first manicure I to using this plate, you can see the original review over here. 


I started out with one coat of Sally Hansen - 640 - Plum Luck, I really like how deep and rich this purple shade is, and I have enjoyed using it a lot lately. You might have noticed I used it for my Alice In Wonderland manicure as well. Then I followed up with two coats of Max Fantasy - 45 - Fantasy Fire I find that it gives the best result).

Sally Hansen - 640 - Plum Luck with Max Fantasy - 45 - Fantasy Fire layered on top.

Sally Hansen - 640 - Plum Luck with Max Fantasy - 45 - Fantasy Fire layered on top.

Sally Hansen - 640 - Plum Luck with Max Fantasy - 45 - Fantasy Fire layered on top.

Sally Hansen - 640 - Plum Luck with Max Fantasy - 45 - Fantasy Fire layered on top.

Then it was time for stamping. I wanted it to look like a sunset, as the colour shift in Max Fantasy - 45 - Fantasy Fire reminds me of the sky in sunset. Below you can see the section that I used from the BP L002 plate for this manicure. I used Essie - Little Brown Dress to stamp with.

The section of the BornPrettyStore BP L002 that I used for this manicure.

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 design is very subtle in all the glory of Max Fantasy - 45 - Fantasy Fire, but I really like it that way. What do you think about subtle designs like this?

Aztec Sunset; Sally Hansen - 640 - Plum Luck with Max Fantasy - 45 - Fantasy Fire layered on top using BP L002 stamping plate from BornPrettyStore

Aztec Sunset; Sally Hansen - 640 - Plum Luck with Max Fantasy - 45 - Fantasy Fire layered on top using BP L002 stamping plate from BornPrettyStore

I am currently working on a blog post of my move, and how I transported my two Helmers full of nail polish by the power of a boat and my suitcases. Stay tuned for that. 

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

Let's Hit The Beach!

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

It's been very sunny lately here in Northern Ireland, so I was getting in the mood for spring and summer. I would like to start by saying sorry to those in my home country, Norway, that was just hit with loads of snow. So if there is snow in your country, and you don't want to hear about how sunny and lovely the weather is here, you might want to come back to these nails at a later stage.

First I started with two coats of Savina - Coral. This was one of my first polishes that I ordered online, and I haven't used it for a long time. Sadly, it is turning gooey on me, so it will need a couple of drops of thinner next time I pick it up. It is also past half empty, and I am considering getting a new one, or a Coral in a different brand, as I don't have that many coral shades.

If you have a Coral to recommend, please let me know in the comments below.

I then proceeded to take a fan brush and brushed my nails with Barry M - Superdrugs Limited Edition Yellow and ESSIE - Mojito Madness.

Savina - Coral, fan brushed with  Barry M - Superdrugs Limited Edition Yellow and ESSIE - Mojito Madness

Savina - Coral, fan brushed with  Barry M - Superdrugs Limited Edition Yellow and ESSIE - Mojito Madness

The first picture is taken in direct sunlight to really show off how great Savina - Coral looks. It really gives an instant Summer Feeling (even on my winter pale hands).

Of course I could have stopped here, but I had a vision that I wanted to get out.

For this I needed my BP53 plate that I recently received from BornPrettyStore to review. When I first saw this plate, I know straight away I wanted to do something with the summery looking beach balls.
You might not have noticed them on the plate, but it was the first thing I saw. 

I did some freehand using FNUG - Runway, on my stamper and then made a decal out of it to transfer it to my nails easier. I found out that the size of the little green stamping head from Konad is the size of my ring finger nail at the moment. I wrote "Beach Party".

I used FNUG - Runway to stamp with, and made a decal with BP 53 and filled in the beach balls using FNUG - Bandana and Sinful Colors - Exotic Green. I wanted to add something more beached themed and made another decal with Bundlemonster - BM309 and filled that with Sinful Color - Exotic Green as well.

After a lot of waiting the decals was ready to go on my nails.
I simply added a coat of clear polish to make them bond, and topped it off with some topcoat.

I added a little dot of Savina - Coral to the beach balls and it was all done.

Here is the final look.

Beach nails using BP 53 and BM309

All ready for the beach!

Which look did you like the best? Here is a snap of the before, so save you the scrolling. 

Fan brushed nail art over Savina - Coral

I really liked to work with this stamping plate,  BP53 has a lot of cool images on it. I have some other ideas for manicures using this plate. For one, I would love to make a decal with the petal flower on this plate, as I think that would be totally awesome. And the "watermarble" looking heart image would be really cool for Valentines. To throw out some ideas to you all. 

You can find BP53 by following this link.   it cost 2.99 $. It comes with a protective blue film that needs to be removed before usage, and it also has a protective backing, so no sharp edges here. 

If you will be placing an order, feel free to use my 10 % off coupon: RAMG10

There are plenty of products to choose from at their site, not just nail related items, and the prices are very affordable and they have free worldwide shipping.

Click the image below and you will be taken to their site. 

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

Beauty and The Beast

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

One of the things I like about living in the UK, compared to when I lived in Norway, is Poundland, and Pound World and what not's. There are always nail polishes to find, beauties looking for a good home. On one of my trips to these stores I came across Sally Hansen - Black Tie.
Since that day, it has been a part of my stash.

Sally Hansen - Black Tie

For this manicure I used the Y003 plate that I recently received from Born Pretty Store to review. I have already done a manicure using this plate, and you can find that over here. 

There is no hiding that I am a huge lover of Disney movies, and one that I love in particular is Beauty and The Beast. After having started watching Once Upon A Time (if you have  not seen the show, I would highly recommend it. I am on season 2 now), my love for Belle has rekindled. 

When I saw this design on the Y003 plate, I knew I had to make a decal with it, and fill in the rose, and the leaves. 

For the stamping I used FNUG - Runway, the grey tone in this polish would make it visible against Sally Hansen - Black Tie, as well as not interfering with the depth of it.

I filled the rose in with Barry M - Vintage Violet and Barry M - Crush, and the leaves with Sinful Colors - Exotic Green and Essie - Mojito Madness. I didn't want the design to seem one dimensional, therefor all the polishes.

Sally Hansen - Black Tie, with Y003 stamped over in FNUG - Runway.

Sally Hansen - Black Tie with a stamping using Y003 as an accent

I really like how this manicure turned out, and I think next time I use this image from the Y003 plate, I will try to fill it all in, and not just the rose and leaves. I love this stained glass / mosaic look on my nails. It really adds some elegance to it all.

If you wanted to get hold of this plate, at this writing moment Y003 is back in stock at Born Pretty Store.

If you will be placing an order, feel free to use my 10 % off coupon: RAMG10

There are plenty of products to choose from at their site, not just nail related items, and the prices are very affordable and they have free worldwide shipping.

Click the image below and you will be taken to their site. 

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. 

Watermarble in Green

I loved playing around with the water marble, so when I sat there putting it on my nails, I wanted to keep practicing and make another manicure using the decal method for water marble. I am trying to use different techniques when dragging my needle over the design. I have seen some alternating on dragging up and down, so I tried doing that here. My design bled out a little creating an interesting look. I am much more pleased with this try, as it is more solid, with no large empty spaces like the previous one.

I was sticking to green for this design too, but I swapped out some of the colours.

The Green Watermarble - Just out of the glass, and patted dry

ESSIE - Mojito Madness
ESSIE - Navigate Her
Barry M - Lime Green

I had a little mistake on some of the tips, when adjusting the decals, and cutting them, and when I grabbed a polish to paint over, to make it blend in seamlessly... I grabbed the wrong polish. so the errors was corrected using ESSIE - School of Hard Rocks. Oops. Did not mean to do that.

Green Watermarble

Green Watermarble

I still think it all turned out well. To make it less obvious I grabbed ESSIE - School of Hard Rocks, and a dotting tool, and "went to town", by adding some dots here and there. I think it worked well.
You know, sometimes the coolest manicures starts with a mistake of some kind.

I wasn't quite happy with just the dots and the water marble, and was advised by some lovely ladies on Polish-aholics Anonymous Facebook group, to add Out The Door - Northern Light. So, I did just that, This is actually the second time I use the topcoat(!!) I have had it for a long long time, just never ended up using it. I think I overloaded it a little bit on the middle finger, but it all turned out very nice. I think I am falling in love with water marbling this way.

Northern Lights over a green watermarble

Northern Lights over a green watermarble

This is not the last time you will see watermarbeling on this blog. I got some cool ones coming up, so I hope you are all not too tired of my marble adventure.

An Essie watermarble

I wanted to experiment with water marbles, specially since I have been seeing so many of them in my feed recently. I wanted to go with green shades since I live in Northern Ireland, and it's all about green.

Essie Watermable starting point, still in the cup

As I wanted to have more control of each nail, I used the decal method. Which means that I did the marble as normal in the water, but instead of dipping my fingers in the water, I allowed it to dry completely over night, before sticking it to my nails.
This also allowed me to make more than one design, and rather spread it out when I was wearing them.

Essie Watermarble - Allowed to sit over night, picture taken before patted dry

I used a handful of polishes for this design, and they where all ESSIE polishes.

ESSIE - Navigate Her
ESSIE - Mojito Madness
ESSIE -  School of Hard Rocks
ESSIE - Turquoise & Caicos

Essie watermarble manicure - cut to fit, and after clean-up

As one of the nails didn't turn out the way I had planned due to bad positioning of the decal, I made a flower using NYC - Flat Iron Green. First I stamped using MASH 46, but it didn't turn out quite the way I wanted, so I traced it with a brush, and made the flower a bit bigger, using an angled brush to make the petals the way i wanted.

Essie Watermarble manicure - with an accent, and added topcoat

I am quite pleased with the end result. A lot of work went into this manicure, even though it kinda look effortless...

Branches and Leaves

Or possible the title should have been:
- Hate the smudges, love the mani

It didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to, but I like the base colours together, and I think I am on to something. Maybe I should have tried to leadlight the leaves or something...

I still think ti was worth showing you all.

I did this mani this autumn, and since I have been in hiatus for so long now, I thought I should share with you, what I have had on my tips, while I was away.

For this manicure I used ESSIE - Navigate Her, and China Glaze - For Audrey, I stamped using Moyou London - Mother Nature Plate Collection 07, I used alternating colours for it, so on top of  ESSIE - Navigate Her, I stamped using China Glaze - For Audrey, and on top of China Glaze - For Audrey i used  ESSIE - Navigate Her. The branches are stamped using ESSIE - Little Brown Dress.

That would be me for this time, I hope you all are surviving the winter cold, and staying warm, moisturized and healthy.