Gradient Neon Stamping

This week I am celebrating my 4th year of blogging here on Secretary's Nail Art, and to celebrate with style I am trying out something a bit new in terms on nail art. 

Today I have for you a subtle splatter and neon gradient stamping nail art look. 

I am using polishes from Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow Collection that I purchased for my own money a couple of months back. 

This collection is filled with vibrant neon polishes, and I have had so much fun playing around with them. Below you can see a picture of the polishes used today over Sinful Color - Snow Me White. 

Opulent Essences - Strawberry, Opulent Essences - Orange, Opulent Essences - Blueberry and Opulent Essences - Lime.

Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow Collection polishes used in this manicure. 

For the splatter I used a baby toothbrush and splashed some polish over my white base polish, Sinful Color - Snow Me White. I wanted a light spray of colour, so that it would look more like small specks over the white than those large splatters you often see features in nail art looks. 

Then I picked up my Bundlemonster BM-XL204, Beaching Nails stamping plate and put Opulent Essences - Blueberry and Opulent Essences - Lime on each half of the image before scraping 2-3 times lightly over in order to blend the colours to create a gradient effect in the stamping. I think it came out the best on the long finger, but I definitely think I am on to something here.

Just need a little bit more practise on gradient stamping. 

Subtle splatter with neon gradient stamping. 

About Opulent Essences:

Opulent Essences is a Vegan Friendly Nail Polish Maker from the UK. Behind the brand is the duo Sharon and Zoe. They are awesome, and so are their polishes.
Etsy Store
Instagram

If you want to see more nail art looks from this collection, follow the Label: Opulent Essences.


About Bundlemonster:
Started in 2009, sells an arrange of nail art products and stamping polishes. Located in Hawaii, sometimes shipping and taxes for us UK girls can get a bit expensive, but luckily you can get most of their products from Rainbow Connection UK .

Neon Watercolours

Today I have for you a nail art look that was inspired by the many festival outfits that I have seen so far this summer. 

Neon seems to go hand in hand with geometric shapes this year, so I decided to throw a little part on my nails and rock a Festival Ready Mani. 

I will be using Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow Collection for this look, using Opulent Essences Grape, Opulent Essences - Strawberry and Opulent Essences - Blueberry (purple, pink and blue from the picture below).

Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow Collection

If you want to see more nail art looks from this collection, follow the Label: Opulent Essences. 

First I applied one coat of Sinful Color - Snow Me White to all my nails.

Then I dabbed some Opulent Essences - Strawberry and Opulent Essences - Blueberry on my stamping mat and squished my jumbo clear stamper over and gave it a little twist before pressing it on my nails. I repeated this three times on my middle finger and twice on my ring- and little finger. 

I wanted to do some gradient stamping with these shades and chose Uber Chic stamping plate 2-02 that I recently purchased. I think the diamond image works really well with this look. 

The smoosh base really makes these neons look like vibrant watercolours and I just love how it looks. 

Neons and Diamonds. 

About Opulent Essences:
Opulent Essences is a Vegan Friendly Nail Polish Maker from the UK. Behind the brand is the duo Sharon and Zoe. They are awesome, and so are their polishes.

Etsy Store
Instagram

About Uber Chic Beauty:

Uber Chic Beauty is the leading Indie Stamp Plate Maker, and the company and their leader Brittany is located in the US. It can be a bit expensive for us UK girls to get our hands on the plates if ordering directly from Uber Chic Beauty, but luckily you can get the plates from Nail Artisan UK.

Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow Collection - Blueberry

This is the last polish in the Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow Collection. Today I am showing you a nail art look using Opulent Essences - Blueberry.

For the other polishes in this collection head over here:
Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow Collection - Orange

Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow Collection - Lemon

Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow Collection - Grape

Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow Collection - Strawberry

Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow Collection - Lime

Or you can check out my Live Swatch and Review:
Live Swatch and Review on the blog.

Live Swatch and Review on the Youtube Channel.

For this swatch I used 2 coats over one coat of Sinful Color - Snow Me White and UNT - peelable basecoat.  This polish is super glossy and you can actually build it somewhat on it's own to get a darker and more vibrant shade. 

If you choose to wear it without the white undie this will cover perfectly in 3-4 coats.

Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow - Blueberry

I decided to switch things up a little for today's post, and instead of just doing some fancy stamping on top I decided to go for a marbled design.
I grabbed a large angled brush for this, and dipped one side in Sinful Color - Snow Me White, and the other in Opulent Essences - Blueberry - like you would when doing a one stroke mani.
I then used the brush to wiggle the polishes across my nails for this marbled look. 

Wiggle, Wiggle. 

Wiggle, Wiggle.

For the matter of documenting I did not use UNT basecoat for this look as I was expecting guests and needed my mani to last a long hiking trip in the mountain, bad weather conditions and the occasional grasping a tree-trunk or rock in order to follow the trail. I wore this look for almost 2 weeks with no chipping. 

Marble nails using Opulent Essences - Taste The Rainbow - Blueberry and Sinful Color - Snow Me White.

@opulent_essences - Blueberry marble nails. 😱 💙 I absolutely love these #marblenails #opulentessences - Blueberry made the job so easy, just tapped in the polish with a large angled brush and then in white and swirled on my nails. #secretarysnailart #nailartoohlala #nailart #nailartaddict #nailsoftheday #nailsoninstagram #nailsoninstagram #nails #manicure #drymarblenails

A photo posted by Dina Ramse (@secretarysnailart) on Apr 19, 2016 at 9:48am PDT

Colourful fields

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

I have been organizing my collection and swatching them out on swatching sticks, while all of this was happening my nail room was filled with polishes over all surfaces. Organized into brands, in somewhat alphabetical order (more on this in a later post).

So when I received my review box from BornPrettyStore, I was inspired to use as many polishes I could within one brand, and therefor not mess up my entire system while doing so.

That is how this accent design was born.

For this manicure I used Qgirl-032 from BornPrettyStore, Barry M - Gelly - Paprika as base colour. I stamped using WetnWild - Black Creme, and filled in my accent using; Barry M - Superdrug Limited Edition Yellow, Barry M - Vintage Violet, Barry M - Gelly - Mustard, Barry M - Gelly - Mango, Barry M - Gelly - Chilli, Barry M - Gelly - Dragon, Barry M - Beery I/C, Barry M - Fuschia, Barry M - Gelly - Blueberry, Barry M - Gelly - Blue Grape and Barry M - Gelly - Plum.

Phuu, that is a long list.

I bet you are all super excited to see the end result now?

Barry M - Gelly - Paprika with Qgirl - 032 (from BornPrettyStore) stamped over in Barry M - Superdrug Limited Edition Yellow, Barry M - Vintage Violet, Barry M - Gelly - Mustard, Barry M - Gelly - Mango, Barry M - Gelly - Chilli, Barry M - Gelly - Dragon, Barry M - Beery I/C, Barry M - Fuschia, Barry M - Gelly - Blueberry, Barry M - Gelly - Blue Grape and Barry M - Gelly - Plum. 

I really like this plate and it has a lot of versatility to it, with some Aztec looking design as well as some Chinese looking ones. If you want to get your hands on the Bird Animal Pattern Nail Art Stamp Template Image Plate Pattern #Qgirl-032 it is found at BornPrettyStore and it's sold for $ 2.99.
BornPrettyStore also offers free shipping worldwide, and if you use my code (RAMG10) you get 10% off your order.

I am very pleased with the end result of this look, and it took quite some time to fill in all the lines. Stay tuned for the second manicure I did using this plate, coming up later this week/weekend.


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

The Lonely Prince

I recently received my Moyou-London plates, and just had to try them out. So I made this little nail art with the Fairytale Collection Plate 08.
I was having some starting problems with the new plastic scraper, but after a few errors and tries, I think I nailed it (pun intended).

I used Barry M - Dragon, and Barry M - Blueberry for this manicure. (follow the link for more about the polishes used, as this is a second day mani) I isolate the handsome young man, and stamped him over Blueberry, and used the veins and roses on the rest of the nails.

Doesn't it just look like he is lonely, looking out for his princess?

Barry M - Dragon

Today I have a very soft and girly manicure. It's my new Barry M - Dragon, with an accent using Barry M - Blueberry. When I fist bought Barry M - Dragon I thought it was going to be a very soft pink, and was surprised to see that it has some shimmer in it. Not much, but a little hint of shimmer.

Both from the Gelly collection.
Blueberry applied very smooth and nice, while as I was having more trouble with Dragon. I suppose it's fitting for the name... it did bring the dragon out in me. I think I ended up having to use three coats of Dragon while as I only used one coat of Blueberry. My main problem with Dragon was that it didn't even out properly, and after two coats I could still see a VNL. So after those three coats, it dried sloooowly.

I'm very happy with Barry M - Dragon though. That must be said. Time will tell if it stained my nails or not, being a blue, and all...

I kept looking at my mani wondering if I should do some nail art on it. What do you girls think?
I am open for suggestions.

My little Boots Haul

There is always one of those 3 for 2 offers running around, and this time I wanted to take advantage of the offer on Boots (UK). Basically anything in the makeup isle at Boots was on this offer. In terms of hauling, this is just a little one.

I  have been eyeing the Gelly Collection for a while, and purchased Barry M - Watermelon a while back, this time I bought a bunch of others from the collection, as well as some of the Silk Collection.

From the Gelly Collection
Barry M - Blueberry
Barry M - Dragon
Barry M - Lychee
Barry M - Plum

From the Silk Collection
Barry M - Meadow
Barry M - Blossom

I might go back and purchase more from these collections, but will see how they work for me first, this specially goes for the Silk Collection. I'm in love with how awesome Barry M - Watermelon was, so hoping the rest of the Gelly's are as awesome. Will systematically work my way through these polishes as the days come, so watch this space for some swatches and nail art with them.

I want to add some more white to Barry M - Lychee, I think that would be the perfect background for paper/newspaper manicures. If I do, there will be a franken post about it.

As you can see, I also bought another Nail Rock, I have quite the selection of these now, so I might have to try them out at one point, just waiting for the perfect moment. Well... it's like they say. There is no such thing as a perfect moment, you have to create it.

Hope you enjoyed my little haul. I will be back tomorrow with some swatches for you ladies.