Metallic Olive Nails with Stamps

I have been trying to grow off the rough surface left by acrylic nails and now my own nails are finally in a shape I like. I'm a fan of long nails, but way too lazy to get acrylics touched up often enough. My own nails grow brittle, but using nail oil often seems to do the trick and moisturizes enough so the nails can grow. I have and expensive Essie nail oil, but my favourite is a super cheap essence oil that comes with a little doe foot applicator. It's called Caring Nail Oil and I've gone through about four bottles in a couple of years. I used to think I needed strengthening nail products to make my nails harder, but it turned out they were actually just very dry and broke off easily. Using oil makes my nails more elastic, so instead of breaking, they bend.

The polish on the nails is Gone Glamping by China Glaze. It's an interesting shade which I would call metallic olive. It shifts between olive, green and a light copper, but mostly looks olive-ish. The shade is cool and the shimmer is silvery rather than gold. I wore the plain polish for one day, but it's so light that I felt it needed some spicing up. I happened to have a MoYou London stamping plate called Gothic 3 that I had not had the time to try, so I pulled it out and basically wanted to try all of the patterns! So I did a collection of different stamps just to see which I liked best. In the end the arabesque and a lacy skull pattern were my faves, but all of the stamps were quite nice. The stamping was done with Konad stamping polish and a clear jelly stamper.

Roses with fishnet and a lace skull, perfect stamps for me!

The lovely arabesque stamp. In this one you can also make out the resin
cat skull I'm holding!

Duo Chrome Nails

F.U.N. Lacquer Blessing is just my type of shade: duochrome with teal and purple that shows gorgeous glitter in direct sunlight! I took a little video of how the polish changes depending on light, but couldn't be arsed to go through all the steps to get the video to show, so here's a flood of pictures instead ;D

This is three coats and Seche Vite top coat on natural nails.

Petrol.

Petrol and purple.

The light purple shows best in artificial light.

Lavender.

Direct sunlight brings out the green/petrol glitter!

More purple.

So versatile! You get like five polishes in one ;D Blessing wants to go on a bit streaky, but three coats pretty much hides the problem. With four I doubt it would show at all. The finish is so metallic and shiny you can't really see if the polish is a bit thinner in some spots. You can see slight streakiness on my nails, but mostly it's down to nail surface being a bit uneven, as I'm still growing out the last few millimeters of the filed surface after removing acrylic nails.

I have plenty of teal and purple nail polishes, as those are my favourite colours, but no other polish gives me the opportunity to wear both at the same time!

Pastel Demon Nails

Pastel polka dot nails for the pastel demon! Naturally I needed matching nails for my lavender outfit, so luckily Anniina had just the perfect polishes. I rarely wear light polishes, so I didn't have anything that would match, so this was perfect! There's an opaque lavender base with a shimmery topcoat, and dots in pure white on top. I made the dots differ in size, so I wouldn't have to concentrate on making matching patterns on each nail. Simple but works for this outfit!

Super Colourful Nails

I think these are the most colourful nails I've ever worn! I've been wearing acrylics because my natural nails were super dry and brittle after the winter. With long nails, I've been much more into nail polishes, it seemed a waste to paint the short, breaking nails, as the polish peeled off very fast. I recently bought a silicon nail decal mat by Messy Mansion to get some more colour into my nail stamps. The basic idea is that you paint clear polish onto the mat, stamp on that, colour the stamps, then peel them off and add them to your nails with more clear polish. This way you can paint the stamps without accidentally painting over lines, as you can flip the decal so that the stamp is the topmost layer on your nail and the colours are all under it.

These are my second tries with the mat, and I quite like it! The stamping plate is QGirl 25, it has lovely paisley like pattern across the whole plate. I stamped random parts with black on clear polish and coloured some parts with Opi Color Paints in yellow, pink, purple and teal. I left my nails nude with just a layer of clear polish and added the decals on top, leaving some nails bare. Some had little melting problems, but most came out nice. Next time I'll try some lace pattern!

Opi Color Paints Help?

Have you tried water colour nail polishes? I got myself a mini set of OPI Color paints, partly because I was interested in trying them, and partly because the tiny bottles are just too cute <3

I like how all of the colours work together, but after a few tries I still have not come up with any nice looks. If you have any favourite tutorial or looks, please let me know so I can try some!

Silver base colour that can be used under the sheer paints.

The set consist of yellow, orange, pink, purple and teal sheer nail polishes, and a normal silver polish.

Drawing Blood Nails

I took the plunge and removed Sub-Zero from my nails and tried something new. This is Essence "Do you speak love?", a dark red, painted only on the edges of nude acrylic nails. I really like the effect, it gives the nails just that tiny bit of colour they need to stand out! PS. My lucky three footed frog agreed to pose for the pictures, isn't she lovely?

Dance Legend Sub-Zero Nail Polish Review

I first saw this nail polish on Bunnytail Nails blog (check out the awesome nail designs there, you won't be disappointed!) and thought it looked nice. The idea of a thermo polish with black and blue-green stuck, and eventually I just had to hunt eBay for it! This is Sub-Zero by Dance Legend. It's a thermo active polish, meaning that it changes shade depending on the temperature it's in. In warm conditions the polish base is a blue with hints of green. In cold it goes black.

What really makes Sub-Zero stand out from other thermo polishes I've tried is the amount of shimmer and flakies in it. The polish has green shimmery flakes and very fine copper shimmer in it, making it change tone depending on the light as well. The flakes and shimmer give it depth and work perfectly with both the blue base and the black base colour. It's also the only thermo polish I've come across that actually almost always makes a visible transition effect while in room temperatures.

I have acrylic nails at the moment, that might affect how the thermo effect works, but on my nails it's absolutely gorgeous. When I go out, the polish turns dark, and when I come back in, it makes my nails have a lovely smooth gradient from blue to black.

Room temperature

Outside temperature (simulated with cool water ;P)

Sub-Zero is satin finish, but glossy top coat makes the polish even more vivid. You need 3-4 coats to get an opaque result, but the polish goes on nicely and does not streak easily. I've been wearing Sub-Zero only for two weeks and I think I might neglect my other polishes because of how wonderful it is!

Transitioning from cold to warm.

Lavender Nails

I wore this look just before I had the acrylic nails done. The polish is KPS Nostalgia, a thermo polish that's lavender in warm conditions and goes darker purple when it's cold. It's been quite warm so I don't usually get to see the darker shade, but when I wash my hands with cool water the polish creates this lovely gradient when the nails slowly warm up. The polish has a satin finish, but I use a top coat on it so it becomes shiny.

Shimmery Acrylic Nails

Got my nails done! I've been wanting to try acrylic nails for some time, and now I finally got them. These babies are made of shimmery acrylic powder and look super pretty even when nude. And there's lots of room for decoations once I get my nail polishes out!

Brocade Nails

Here's my latest stamped nail look! The base is a thermo polish that goes from lavender to dark purple called Nostalgia by KPT. With this heat it stayed light, but that just made the pattern show better :) The stamp is done in plain black and I'm so proud of how well I got the patterns to match!

Green and Purple Swirly Nails

More stamping, I love the technique! This time with darker shades. The base polish is F.U.N Blessings, a cool duo-chrome that shifts from petrol/turquoise to purple. Just my kinda polish! On the top I stamped some swirly patterns in Konad black with a W-217 plate. I'm having some difficulties aligning the patterns straight with my nails, but they look okay still. The black doesn't show too well on top of this polish, so I might try white next time.

This way the purple shows a little!

Another Set of Lacy Nails

I fell in love with the lace stamping plate I used for my black lace nails, so naturally I needed more lace plates to have some variation. I chose to buy a few from Born Pretty, as they had a nice selection.

These nails are done with the same polishes as the previous lace nails: GinaTricot Puff Powder for a base and Konad black stamping polish for the patterns. The plate used is BP-02. Compared to the previous lace nails, this lace pattern is less dense, but also trickier to stamp without it breaking up a bit. I decided not to mind a few imperfections, as the lace is not symmetric anyway. Maybe next time I'll get the stamps to go on even better!

Black Lace Nails

I've been having fun with nail polish now that I finally mastered stamping. Currently I'm wearing nude nails with black lace stamps that I'm especially fond of. This lace is from a Hehe 018 plate, but I got so excited I ordered a few more lace plates to get more variation ;P I like how simple and elegant this Hehe lace is, and the pattern is large enough to let the colour beneath show nicely. I mostly own dark polishes, but I think I might need a few light shades that would work well the lace. Or I could stamp the lace in white on top of dark shades maybe, so many options! I see my nail polish collection in a new light now that I can use them for stamping too.

GinaTricot Puff Powder as the base and Konad black stamping polish on the patterns.

I keep having problems with Seche Vite top coat yellowing in a few days. Has anyone else experienced this and can something be done? Nude nails start looking nicotine yellow after 3-4 days of putting on polish and I don't like it.