BundleMonster Plate BM-201

Played around with the BundleMonster plates yesternight. Quick pics of what the full size images look like on my nails. Love the bigger size, but too bad my thumb is a bit too wide for the width of the images just like the Konad plates.


This is plate BM-201. Plate was kinda dirty when I took the pic so I super brightened the picture and added in some vignetting.



Mini Kleancolor polishes from the Wicked Witch set, in 101 Concrete Grey and 4 White. Never used Kleancolor polishes before and they were great. Went on smoothly and only needed one coat. When I saw that they were pretty pigmented I thought I would try stamping with them. The white wasn't that great, but the grey seems like it would be good for going on light coloured polishes.


Tried stamping with colours used as base colour again, this time with joe Sun Kissed and Gunmetal. I really like this swirly pattern. Sun Kissed as a stamping polish kind of resembles the Konad gold special polish.


I believe in the older set of plates there's an image with just a single flower that's similar to the flowers in this full nail design. I think I might have used a similar colour combo with that image. The picture isn't on this blog, but it is on my tumblr. Base colour = Cosline 709, stamped with yellow Konad special polish.


Lastly, my favourite of the lot. Did a sponged gradient with four colours from another set of mini Kleancolors - Candy Cast, 153 Neon Amethyst, 20 Neon Pink, 19 Neon Orange and 18 Neon Yellow. Loved the polishes, dabbed the sponge on my nails once and they were completely covered. The wavy lines, stamped with black Konad special polish, helped to enhance the gradient-ness. Too bad while putting on a top coat it got streaky, but still very nice.

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That is all, I didn't stamp with the small images from the plate. I dunno if I'll do this with every single plate, it was rather time consuming.

Seeing Stars + Surprising Find

While waiting for the new BundleMonster plates to arrive I used a star pattern from one of the older plates BM21. Colour I used was a franken that I had made, a milky yellow glitter. Took about 3 or 4 coats to get to this opacity. Stamped on the star pattern using Konad light blue special polish. For some reason the pictures all turned out kinda dreamy looking.

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Surprising find = New Kids On The Block concert video found while spring cleaning.



Thought this was forever lost years ago. But my brother found it among a bunch of old stamp books. Video should still work, but I haven't watched it yet. We do still have a VCR, but I dunno if it's hooked up to a TV. Haven't used the VCR in years.

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While writing this the new BundleMonster plates arrived. Yay! Can't wait to use 'em.

Flowers

Here's a couple of floral designs that I did.


This one I didn't really like and and took it off pretty much after taking the pictures. The green and yellow was just not for me. Sponged on Cosline - 203 Pure Yellow and 702 Spring Green. Then I used a dotting tool with a couple of Mood Struck polishes that I recently purchased from Winners. They came in a package of three with no names. The top left corner is what the flowers look like when cold and the bottom right is when the flowers are warm/hot.


This one I really like and currently have on my nails. I've seen this design plenty of times in Japanese nail magazines. It seems to be a popular design since it is in pretty much every magazine every month though usually in pinks/reds. The blue is an Ardene polish in Deep Sky Blue. They seem to have changed their bottle design once again. Third bottle design within a year. Used some Sally Hansen nail guides to tape off areas then used white acrylic paint. Instead of painting on roses I decided to stamp them on since I wanted them to be more uniform, especially on my right hand. Red and green Konad special polishes for the stamping colours using fauxnad plate F01. Glitter stripes were done using L.A. Colors Art Deco polish in silver glitter.

Butterfly Wings

Recently Deez Nails did a butterfly mani and featured a little picture tutorial. I'd seen this design done before, but never did it because I hadn't graduated from just doing Konad stamping.

The pictures on the left are with natural light while the pictures on the right were taken in my light box. Light box pictures are slightly yellower. The picture in the top right were just some practice ones. I ended up doing the middle one. Polishes used for the sponging gradient were all from Color Club - an unknown blue, Velvet Rope and Feel The Beat. The black was acrylic paint and the white was Sally Hansen Xtreme-wear - White On.

Painted Roses

Decided to practice doing some painted roses instead of the swirly ones. Wasn't really a big fan of those since I found them to be kinda thick.


I think these turned out alright. Used acrylic paints to paint them on instead of polishes. Really liked the black with white roses so I decided to do a full mani with it.


Really liked this, but it was difficult to paint my right hand. Two coats of Rimmel Lasting Finish Pro in Black Satin, black and white acrylic paint and a green Dabo polish for the leaves.

Food Post: PBJ Taiyaki

Peanut butter and strawberry jam filled taiyaki. Was recently gifted a mini electric taiyaki machine and this is the first batch that I made. The machine came with a booklet with a recipe, but I can't read Japanese so I just used a pancake mix. I did find a recipe online, but was too lazy. They were very tasty, but like my mom says anything with peanuts/peanut butter tastes good.

Blossoms and Mini Haul

Something springy for a pretty crappy day today, but it was quite nice yesterday, though a bit chilly. Base colour is Color Club - Ready to Wear, and the branches were painted on with a no brand/name brown polish, Etude House - GR605 for the greenery and a pink franken for the blossoms.


Went to Zellers the other day and saw that they finally had the Wet n Wild Fast Dry polishes. I had already bought Party of Five Glitters and Gray's Anatomy in January from Walmart so I just picked up one - Hannah Pinktana. Also picked up the NYC IndividualEyes eyeshadow palette for brown eyes. Just something new and inexpensive to try out.

Also took the picture of the above items in a cruddy lightbox I made over the weekend. Got the Idea from here. I made a fairly small one, but I can take pictures of manicures in it, but I still prefer using natural light.

Glitter Franken

Here's a franken that I made sometime last week. I love this. It looks so pretty. I had an almost empty bottle of Nailene Total Care 5 in One so I decided to use it for a franken. I wanted to make something like Debra Lippman's Glitter in the Air, but in pink. Mixed in some Wet N Wild - Party of Five Glitters, Dabo - RD411, Cosline - 002 White and an unknown pink Color Club. I also added in some large hexagon glitters. This turned out to be somewhat sheer and needed three coats.

H&M Scarf Inspired

Hellos, here's something that was inspired by a scarf gifted to me for my birthday not too long ago. The stripes are a bit sloppy since I didn't use any nail guides or tape. Quite liked it, but the stripes kinda killed it for me. Should have done them properly or maybe incorporate those colours in a different way.

Base colour = Ardene - Barely There
Stripes = Color Club - Vintage Couture, Etude House - PP903 and American Apparel - Cameo Blue
Stamping colours = Sally Hansen Insta Dri - Lively Lilac and Snappy Sorbet and American Apparel - Cameo Blue
Stamping plate = E05

I did this mani because I found the birds on the E05 plate otherwise I probably wouldn't have done it. Might have drawn super large birds if I was doing it freehand.

Gradient Tutorials..sort of.

Here are a couple of picture tutorials on how to do some gradient nails.


First up, sponging. I prefer to line up the colours that I plan on using on the sponge, dab off some excess polish to help prevent bubbling and then apply them to the nail. Two or three sponging layers will make the polish opaque and of course glitter at the end to help blur everything together or put a top coat on soon after the last layer to make it a smooth transition from light to dark.


Next up, a more time consuming method with a sheer polish. It doesn't have to be a single colour. You can start with a darker colour and then lead up to a lighter colour like this one. Just a bit of polish at a time and slowly going up. Finish off with some glitter or just top coat. I usually put glitter polish on just 'cause it helps to hide any imperfections sometimes.

Some Crafty Goodness

On Saturday I met up with my friend Selene for dinner and she gifted me a pack of loose papers from The Paper Place along with some blank cards as a belated birthday gift. There were lots of cool Japanese papers and different textured card stock paper. Inspiration hit and I did some simple crafts.


First up is a card featuring a Kokeshi type doll/figure made with some Japanese paper with fans printed on for the body, black felt for the hair and the face was a pinkish recycled paper. Drew the eyes with a black marker, the blush was a pink eyeshadow that I had close by and the lips were done with a franken polish. That same polish was used for the petals/hearts falling from the tree and nail polish was also used to paint the tree. Everything was done freehanded without much thought to it so it was done fairly quickly.

The bookmark was also made with Japanese paper. I just glued it to a green textured card stock, punched a flower shaped hole out and strung through some ribbon. I think I'll need to get a spray varnish to protect the bookmark in case it gets wet.

It took less than half an hour to do both projects, so super easy.



Change purse with keyring. Saw a tutorial on how to sew this little baggie here - Noodlehead: Zippy Wallet Tutorial. This is an improvement over my last cardholder/keyring thing I sewed two years ago. I'm missing the button right now, but will be added soon. Love it 'cause there's a card slot up front and zippered part for money or whatever to go in. Will definitely be getting a lot of use out of it.

FOPI minis + Etude House

Went out shopping last Monday at Pacific Mall/Market Village. Bought some cream puffs (ate them before I could take a photo of them) and these faux OPI minis.


They were just in large tubs with a bunch of other mini polishes with no names or labels. The bottles themselves have some scratches or improper printing on the bottle. The bottoms have labels with a number and some words in Korean. They also smelled pretty bad. Here's a glittery gradient I did with the polishes above.


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This is Etude House from I believe the Dear Darling line - WH020 Extreme Jewel.


I couldn't really capture it well on my nails, but it's mostly a silver glitter with purple, green, blue and red glitters thrown in too. This didn't stay on my nails too long. I think it peeled off the my index fingers the the second day of wear, which was the Monday that I went shopping. I walked around with polish on half my nails all day.