I Am Still Here!!!

Again, not been blogging as much. Been busy from husband being ill, and myself doing something weird to my shoulder and neck. Oh and my 4 1/2 year old got sick again. Plus summer holiday has started so kids at home and me needing to find activities for them so they don't go stir crazy.


I decided to do my nails after I saw this bright blue fabric with flower and leaves patterns in purple, black and off white.

I painted my base with China Glaze DJ Blue My Mind. Then I picked my Infinity Nails by Dashica plate nr 62. MdU stamping polishes in Tutti, Violet and Bones, plus Funky Fingers Dark Knight.

youtube tutorial.

final look

but I felt like I could add some Swarovski crystals.

My new video of the Crystal Katana with some katana accessories.

Best pick-up tool ever for crystals and other 3D nail art decorations.

Get Up And Dance, Dance, Dance Nails!!!

Only a couple more weeks left of summer vacation here, and then it's back to school for kids.
It's still really hot here in Salt Lake City.
Anyways, for this Sunday's challenge in AIS it's: Plate ending in 8.
So I had to pull all my plates out and pull out all the ones ending with 8. Not that many in my collection, tho.
I wanted to do some pastel nails again, been doing those a bit this summer. So pastel Skittle nails was what I ended up with.

Sally Hansen
Mint Sorbet
Lacey Lilac
Mellow Yellow

Julie G's White Orchid with 3 coats of OPI I Think In Pink

And my franken Sinful Colors
Snow Me White that I turned into a pastel blue (I didn't have one in my collection).

Then when all the coats of base color had dried I added a thin coat of China Glaze Techno (My favorite glitter polish, it's freaking stunning DISCO BALL in a bottle).

The plate I ended up with was one of two I picked out from a contest I got 3rd place in. Konad S8 has a few girls dancing images and a french tip image on it. And I used my Wet N Wild Black Creme as stamping polish. It didn't turn out as well as I had imagined it to be, but oh well.

Now to get ready for a busy day, tons of shopping. No, no fun shopping grocery stores, Sprout's and the Asian market.

Have a smashing weekend.

Fun With Hello Kitty! A Stamping Decal....

I thought it was time to do a stamping decal tutorial. I haven't done many of these, last one I did was for Easter a few months ago. I like doing the stamping decals, but to make sure I don't mess anything up with kids bumping into my work table or climbing all over me.... So I have to do these while they are sound asleep in their beds. I don't dare to think about what the decals would look like if the kids were climbing all over me while filling in the colors.


So are you ready??? Here are all the items I used for these nails.

• Base color:  OPI Lucky Lucky Lavender
• Image Plates: FUN 9 (Hello Kitty Plate) & Dashica Big SdP F    
• Konad stampers (standard & double sided for decals)
• XL Stamper
• Konad Special Polish: Black
• China Glaze: Purr-Fect Plum
• Acrylic Paints: Oumaxi
• Detail brushes
• Water in a glass to clean your brush
• Topcoats: NYC Grand Central Station & Out The Door
• Tweezers
• Fan brush

Here's what I did for the decals:

1.  Apply 2 coats of  base polish and let it dry. Then I grabbed my Konad stampers, special polish and my FUN 9 plate.
2.  Pick an image that has mostly outline of a character/item/logo, like an image in a coloring book. Apply the stamping polish to the image, scrape and stamp.  Leave the stamped image on the stamper!! And let it dry on the stamper for a minute or two before moving on to the next step. 
3. Fill in the image with acrylic paints or polish in any color of your choice. I find it easier to do with acrylic paints than polish. Let it dry for a few minutes and do a second coat of paint/polish if needed. Let the image dry completely.
4. Apply topcoat over and around the image. Let it dry. For this I used the NYC topcoat.
5. When dry, gently start peeling off the decal from the stamper. But don't remove it completely.
6. Apply a coat of topcoat to your nail and before it dries......
7. Remove the decal from the stamper and place it on your nail.
8. Apply a coat of your favorite fast drying topcoat.

Between step 4 & 5 while I was waiting for the decals to dry on the stampers, I stamped the background image on my nails.  

Here's my youtube tutorial of this mani. Step by step how I did these nails.

Final look

Time to go to bed, before I turn into a raccoon... Takes time making video, snap pictures, editing, uploading and blogging. Thank goodness I don't think I have to go any places today, if I do thank goodness for concealers.... LOL.

Hope you liked this one. 

Have a great week.

Happy Stamping.

Haul Part 1, polishes.

I went to my local nail supply store, Lee's Nail Supply. My go to place if I want to get OPI, China Glaze, Orly, Color Club, nail wheels, swatch sticks etc.
They sell OPI for $4, China Glaze and Color Club for $3. I called in and asked him if the OPI Bond Girl collection had arrived yet, and he got it 2 days before. So I popped in to pick them up, I also wanted to look at the Texture collection from China Glaze and wanted to get my first yellow polish. I only picked up one of the texture polishes, but walked out with all 6 Bond girls, and  China Glaze Sunshine Pop. Then a few days ago I noticed I was running low on my Konad White so I ordered a Princess size from amazon.

I have added the my new liquid sand polishes and the texture polishes to the same wheel I have the Julie G Gumdrops. I have noticed that the OPI liquid sand polishes have a finer feel to them. Not as rough as the Gumdrops. Also not all 6 have a ton of glitter in them, the Chine Glaze Textured polishes don't have any glitters in them. But only one of the screamed out to me. Guess it's because it looks like Dance Baby, so I just had to grab it.

All the polishes I got this week.

Konad White & China Glaze Unrefined

Unrefined looks like Dance Baby to me, have to look at them side by side.

L-R: Solitaire, Jinx, Vesper, Honey Ryder, Pussy Galore & Tiffany Case.

(Taken with Flash)

Under my LED craft light.

L-R: Unrefined, Solitaire, Jinx, Vesper, Honey Ryder, Pussy Galore & Tiffany Case

I will do a blog post on the Bond Girl collection alone, in a day or two. Also I am doing some on the new plate sets I'm getting from Winstonia and Pueen, so keep an eye out for those posts too.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Pink and plum flower power.

The feeling of spring has hit SLC for sure, and we can enjoy some nice sunny days before the intense summer heat kicks in. The kids and I don't do well outside in the summer heat, so right now it's just perfect for us. Yesterday, we celebrated the first day of  May at a Discovery children's museum. The kids got to run around for almost 3 hours then followed by dinner at Sizzler. So they had a great day, and of course daddy and mommy felt more worn out than the kiddies..... LOL

Anyways, moving on to nails. Today I was in the mood for pink, do I picked out Piper from Zoya as base and decided to try China Glaze Purr-Fect Plum as stamping polish. I haven't tried this polish for stamping before.
I was also in the mood for a full nail image, so I spent a few looking at my plate collection and picked out Dashica XXL SdP 1. I think this is my favorite plate in my collection. But then I just love my Dashica plates. I have used the image before, but I thought if Purr-Fect Plum works the final look will look really pretty.

So can Purr-Fect Plum be used as stamping polish?? I would say so. The video tutorial and final look picture below.

Hope you all enjoy spring as much as I do. Happy stamping!!!

Moody For Purple.

My nails had been naked for 2 whole days (CRAZY, I know). But I couldn't come up with anything, and all that was in my head was French mani's. I hate it when I'm stuck like that, you see all those stunning manicures all over the place and want to do some neat designs your self. So when you sit down and try to figure out what to do you're just STUCK.
But last night I got an idea, so I worked on the base before I crashed into my pillows for the night. I used Julep's Grace and Orly's Charged Up, then on 3 nails I did 2 coats of China Glaze's No Plain Jane and 2 coats of SpectraFlair topcoat. And made some fine silver stripes with my Kiss silver nail art liner.
On the two non holo nails I picked out an image from SH 208 and used one of my Dashica stamping polishes (don't ask me the name of the color, it doesn't have a sticker on it.) Then in the center of the flower I used a decal from the little container I got in one of my NAS bags.

 

You can find Julep polishes here:
http://www.julep.com/shop/nail-polish.html#.

The base before I stamped.

Finished look.

 An other final look.

Now off to make Korean dumplings for dinner, yes I am making them. I am using ready made dumpling skins but rest is from scratch. Have a good day, and thanks for stopping by.

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day! I know I told my self to get more posts up this year, but so far I haven't done so good on posting here or stamping my nails as much as I would like. The joy of living in an area that gets really cold during the winter times comes the joy of sickness..... Just the last weeks we have had a few colds, some stomach bugs and bad coughs with fevers. Had to take my 2 year old little girl to the doctor yesterday, was an hour filled with a screaming scared child trying to get away from the doctor and nurse.
But I did my nails the other day and when that started to chip I just used a polish the next day to paint my nails. Had an idea for stamping over it, but after 2 hours of sleep the night before I felt like a zombie. Just one of those days I guess.

Today is Valentines Day and since we have small kids I don't think hubby and I will be going out to eat today, so I am planning to make something nice to eat here instead. So family V day dinner instead. But I packed a little nice surprise in my hubby's lunch bag today.

Now onto the nails, I have been babbling enough. LOL

Base color is China Glaze Dance Baby, then I stamped with Konad special polish in White and used plate Dashica SdP 35, on my ring finger nail I painted 2 coats of China Glaze BFF from the OMG collection.

I also got my nail bag from Nail Art Society, so I made a quick video. The FP polish I got was Romanticism Ruby. It's loaded with glitter, really pretty.

Hope you all have a nice Valentines Day. Thank you for stopping by.

Sunday 4th Nov Challenge and Sickness.

Today's Challenge in AIS was Over Glitter, so stamping over a glitter base. I did the base on Friday, first I used 2 coats of Elmer's glue (for easy removal), 2 coats of Color Club Magic Attraction and then 1 coat of China Glaze Techno and sealed it with Out The Door topcoat.
My plan was to do the stamping yesterday, but I have kids,hubby and granny in-law with bad colds. So I had m hands full yesterday. Well today with the colds Daniel woke up with some kind of stomach bug, so he has been throwing up left and right. But I managed to do some really quick stamping while he was resting in between being sick. So I had to make it simple and easy in case I had to rush away in a hurry.

I decided to use my Dashica XXL Big SdP 2 plate and Dashica stamping polish in black. I hope you like this one. Now back to tend to sick kids, granny in-law and hubby.

Have a great week.

Breast Cancer Awareness Nails.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. So time for me to do my Pink Ribbon nails too. I know there are a lot of bloggers who have done the same. I decided to do this in honor of one of my mother's 3 best friends who lost her battle to breast cancer a few years ago. She was an amazing lady, I loved talking to her. So many fond memories with dinner parties with her and her family and our gang.  I know my mother miss her, we talked about her a few weeks ago. Just as my parents she and her husband adopted a child from South-Korea too, a boy. He's a few years older than me, but that was one of the things they had in common. They also worked together for years, and I had the pleasure of working for my mother and her for a few weeks with people with special needs. She had this amazing laugh and her uplifting spirit could turn your day from bad to great.  So this manicure is for you, Aase. We miss you.

For these nails I used China Glaze Dance Baby as base color, 2 coats of my SpectraFlair topcoat, then Essie Miami Nice to stamp and Bundle Monster 321.

3 mani's in one day.....

Why  only do one manicure when you can do 3...

Just one of those days, you can't make up your mind on what polish or image to use. So when it hits me I change my manicure just after a few hours. 

First I used one of the polishes from China Glaze's Safari Collection as base color.Purr-Fect Plum, then I did  a coat of Orly Too Fab on my left hand. On my right hand I did some stamping with Bold Gold from Maybelline and picked CH 44 from Cheeky's summer collection. 

I kept the stamping mani, but removed the glitter one.....

\

My 3 rd look I used OPI Jade Is The New Black as base and stamped with Bold Gold again and used Dashica SdP 35. Today's challenge in AIS was leaves. I also did a French tip with Matte top coat, but it's kinda hard to see in the pictures. 

Elmer's glue as base coat for glitter?

Are you like me who love glitter nail polish? But hate to wear them because of removing glitter polishes is a pain in the butt?? There is one method that works pretty well, cotton balls soaked in polish remover on your nails and then wrapping your nails with aluminum foil for 5 minutes.
A little while ago bloggers and nail guru's on youtube started to make posts about a new method that works better.

After hearing people rave about this technique on youtube, facebook nail groups and blogs I had to try it out my self. I am testing this with different type of glitter polishes. So I went to the dollar store and got a bottle of Elmer's School glue (yes, that stuff) and put some in an empty mini polish bottle. Then I applied 1 st coat of glue on my bare nails (no base coat) and let it dry before adding a 2 nd coat. 

Glue in a mini polish bottle. I got mine from:

http://www.tkbtrading.com/item.php?item_id=1308&category_id=80

The polishes I used L to R:  Color Club Magic Attraction, WnW Flossy Flossy & Rock N' Roll (both from Fergie collection), Color Club It's A Hit & China Glaze I Herd That. On the 3 middle fingers I used WnW Black Creme as base color over the glue.

Here they are on my nails.

Magic Attraction, Flossy Flossy, Rock N' Roll, It's A Hit & I Herd That.

So after a few hours it was time to try and remove the glitter polishes. I used a tooth pick and cuticle pusher. Did it work?? Take a look at these pictures down below.

Peels off quite easy.

And not a problem on the ones that had the base color and chunky and bigger glitters.

My naked nails and the peeled off glitter polishes.

It worked!!

I would say this works really well, way easier than the foil method or the nail tip remover soak gadgets. And you don't have to wait 5 minutes to remove the polish. I stopped in between to snap some pictures but it was  like 3 minutes to remove. So easy.... I will start to wear glitter polishes more often.

If you can't find Elmer's glue in your country, try similar non toxic & washable school glues. I hope this was helpful, and hopefully you will start wearing glitter polishes more too.

Good luck, and please let me know in posts below how this worked for you.

What a week...

This week has been so stressful trying to stay calm and exited for my 6 year old for his first day of school. Then all the meetings with teachers, assistant principal and so on. And dealing with all the mood swings he's had since then, from happy to exited, to sad and scared. And all of that with a 20 month old who is glued to mommy or wants to run around like crazy.

TGIF so I decided to get some glam on my nails with some stunning glitters and stamping. So I did a black French tip with WnW Black Creme and Essie's Sugar Daddy, then applied a coat of China Glaze Techno over the black tips. Then I pulled out my Dashica SdP 40 with stars and Mickey Muse image on it, and decided to use those two images. I used WnW Black Creme to stamp with. And sealed it all with Poshe Fast drying topcoat.

Techno is stunning over black polish, just love it.

The youtube tutorial for this mani

Have a great weekend.!!

12 August Sunday Stamping Challenge with a......

The theme this Sunday's challenge in AIS was 2 images on the same hand or nail. I decided to use some of the new polishes I just got at a local nail supply store.
I did French tip on all but the ring finger, the colors I used Orly Deja Vu and OPI Suzi  Says Feng Shui, and for the stamping polishes I used Wet N Wild Black Creme and China Glaze Deviantly Daring. I picked 3 plates Bundle Monster 209 and Dashica SdP 32 and 38.

Yes, it's my first nail stamping tutorial video. Still need some more practice in shooting, lighting and editing. But I had fun making it.

On to something else, my son is starting school so we had to go to Walmart and pick up some school outfits, backpack and a pencil holder. He got to pick his own backpack, and he is SO proud. He walks around with  it and he has asked a few times if he's going to school today. He's not too happy when his little sister wants to borrow his backpack, looks like we have to get one for her too.

Have a great week. 

FYI.... Jackpot!!!!

A few years ago I was so lucky to get my hands on a few of the polishes from China Glaze OMG Collection, and it was love at first polish stroke. And since then I have been a holo junkie on a hunt for polishes as stunning as those polishes. But since I loved them so much I used them up in no time, well so I thought. After I saw a really stunning Easter mani photo by a sweet member in the FB group I'm in Adventures In Stamping. She   used a few of the polishes from the same collection to stamp with over black base color. After seeing that picture I had to go and stare at my old OMG bottles. And  then I saw it, my favorite polish from that collection FYI had a tiny bit left in it and it hadn't dried out...... SCORE, JACKPOT, what ever!!! I just had to do a mani with it, so I used Hot For Chocolate as base and Dashica XXL SdP 1 and CG FYI to stamp.
And oh, my it's so pretty. I can't stop staring at my nails, teeeheee. And the best part I still have some left for some more stamping later, YAY!!!
I never used any of these polishes to stamp with before, and I wish I had.... But I didn't want to waste the polish on stamping.... I know, weird.... But if I ever get my hands on any of those polishes again, I will soooo stamp with them. One thing I have noticed it, tricky to get the perfect picture of holo's, right light, angle to get  whole holo effect to show on the photos. Thank goodness for the age of digital cameras, could you imagine snapping pictures with the ones you had to buy film for???? I wonder how many film rolls we would all waste on getting a few perfect pictures. It's like taking pictures of your kids or pets.

Have a great week, and happy stamping!!

Early Thursday morning mani.

I have figured out if I want a cute mani, do it while the rest of the house sleeps. Why? So there's a good chance for mommy not to get up all of a sudden with wet polished nails to run after kids, answer the phone, tell dog not to steal kids snack and so on. Today I decided to do a French tip mani with some stamping. I used my Sally Hansen Triple Strong as base, then China Glaze Dance Baby (Yeah, I know I have been using that a lot lately, I just like it.), then yeah you guessed right my top coat with SpectraFlair AGAIN over the pink, and used Out The Door to seal before I used Konad Special polish in White to stamp. I decided to do French tip on all fingers but the ring finger, then I used two Dashica plates. A tiny flower from Dashica SdP 12 for the French tip, then a full nail image for ring finger from SdP 38. Then as normal sealed the images with a coat of Out The Door top coat.

Hope you like it.

Have a great day, ladies.

2 Dashica mani

So here are the 3 mani's I have had on my nails since Friday.

I had some fun with SpectraFlair and my new Dashica stamping plates, I just love using these. I am afraid I am going to run out of SpactraFlair, because I can't stop using it. Needless to say I am a holo junkie, I can't help it. So far the images I have picked from my Dashica plates have all been really great, the image gets picked up on my stamper and goes really clear on my nail. I haven't had many failed images, like I do with Konad or Bundle Monster. Next time I will try one of those other images with very fine lines and details again.

China Glace Dance Baby, top coat w/SpectraFlair, Dashica XXL Big SdP 1

& stmaping Essie Miami Nice

China Glace Dance Baby, top coat w/SpectraFlair, XXL Big Dashica SdP 1

& stamping Essie Miami Nice

Wet N Wild  Caught Red Handed, top coat w/ SpectraFlair,  XXL Big Dashica SdP 1

& Konad special Black 

Have a great week, people!

Art Deco Nails.

This nail look reminds me of some art deco wallpaper. But I just LOVE it, so I have to do this design in some other colors later on.

The products I used:
Seche Vite Base Coat
China Glaze FYI - OMG collection
Out The Door Topcoat
Konad IM plate M83
Konad special polish in Chocolate
Konad's Topcoat

Just so you know when I do my nails my 4 year old likes to watch and he likes to play with all my nail polish bottles and set them up like toy soldiers. He just loves looking at all the colors and he loves telling me what colors they all are while I'm doing my nails. Then sometimes he sneaks a finger or two closer and closer in hopes that mommy will paint his nails. And I sometimes do in green or blue, and he will then give me a BIG smile and goes away to peel it off after it's dried.Who said nail polishes was only for girls, boys can have some fun with them too, LOL.