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Stamping

    Stamping, Uncategorised

    Daisy Daisy…

    I always feel so guilty when I go more than one or two days without posting. It’s blogging withdrawal! I can’t concentrate because all I’m thinking about is when I’ll have time for all the photographing and editing and writing.
    Do any of you other bloggers get this way? I’m not complaining though, I love being dedicated to my blog. It’s the only serious commitment I have in my life at the moment!

    I’ve had an awesome bank holiday weekend so far. I’ve been on an open top bus tour, partied with my old school friends and had some alone time strolling around the shops where I found some incredible bargains. Today I’m off to my aunt’s house for her birthday lunch and then heading in to the city for my friends birthday meal. I wish my life was always this exciting!

    My favourite bargain from my Sunday shopping trip was some white Wet N Wild polish which has kind of solved my stamping dilemma for the time being. Wet N Wild products aren’t really sold anywhere here, the only place I’ve ever found them is in bargain or end-of-line stores so my jaw literally hit the floor when I spotted a few dozen of these on the shelf. I still have a lemming for that Sally Hansen Whirlwind White though! Thank you for all the help you guys gave me with that, you know who you are 😉

    Konad Plate: Bundle Monster BM205
    Base Colour: No7 – Stand Back
    Konad Colour: Wet N Wild – French Manicure White
    Top Coat of NYC

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    Stamping, Uncategorised

    Thicken Up

    I know it’s well documented that polishes will thicken as they get old and used but I definitely notice it most with Barry M polishes. When you first buy them, they are fairly runny and nearly all of them need at least two coats for full coverage but after just a few months, they are thick enough to use for stamping. 
    Great for those of us who are always on the lookout for stamping polishes, but perhaps not ideal for people that want their polishes to last until they need to scrape the stuff from the walls of the bottle!
    The weather here was kind of crappy today and I could really tell that winter is setting in. Unfortunately that means more pictures with this crummy lighting will be coming very soon as the days get shorter and generally more morose. I got some advice from Cristina about her lighting and I think I need to get some white fluorescent lighting from somewhere so I too can have pretty, colour correct pictures!

    Plate: Bundle Monster BM208 and BM209
    Base Colour: Cult Nails – My Kind of Cool Aid
    Stamp Colour: Barry M – Bright Purple
    Top Coat of NYC

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    Review, Stamping, Uncategorised

    Born Pretty Plate M73 and White Stamping Polish Review

    As you may have noticed, or read here before, I never use Special polishes for stamping. This is partly because of the price tag but mostly because I have been lucky enough to find plenty of regular polishes that work well for stamping. You can see my list here, although it needs a bit of updating!
    The white I use for stamping from Stargazer isn’t 100% opaque so I wanted to try a special polish to get the extra oomph!
    From the Born Pretty Store, I ended up ordering a white stamping polish [here] and the duplicate M73 plate [here]. 
    I’ve written a quick post in the past with my thoughts on the BP plates [here] and everything I said still stands.
    The image of the musical notes is not very well ‘carved out’ at all, there is next to no definition so I don’t think I will be using it. But this is clear in the picture on the product page so at least you know with BP that what you see is what you get and they aren’t using pictures that misrepresent their products.
    I went ahead and decided to use the white polish with the swirly flower design which is the one I was most excited about and I cannot express how disappointed I was when my mani turned out like this!
    My stamper hardly picked up any of the design and I’m inclined to blame it on the plate since my stamper has worked perfectly forever and the polish worked (albeit not that well, but we’ll get on to that later) on the geometric design.
    I don’t think this white qualifies as a stamping polish. It’s actually less opaque than the Stargazer White I use currently which you can see stamped here.

    Konad Plate: Born Pretty M73
    Base Colour: Collection 2000 – Hot Purple
    Konad Colour: Born Pretty White Stamping Polish
    Top Coat of NYC

    So to sum up, I am disappointed with these two prodcuts from Born Pretty. If I was desperate for a white stamping polish this would probably suffice but I don’t think I’ll be using it. I’m going to leave it on my windowsill with the lid off for a few days to see if it works any better then. Also, the bottle is very small. I can’t find exact details anywhere on the site or on the bottle but I would guess it’s about 5ml.
    If you are looking for a white polish for stamping, take a look at Marta’s post here. She uses Sally Hansen Whirlwind white and it looks incredible, completely opaque! If anyone knows where to get this and would be willing to send it to me, please get in touch because I need it in my life!

    As you can see, I only tried two of the designs from the plate. The scattered square design works great but the flower one isn’t usable. It’s no devastation because I only paid a few dollars for it but still, you expect your designs to come out no matter how much you pay. If the designs don’t work, is it even an image plate or just a slice of metal?

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    Stamping, Uncategorised

    Internet > Chocolate

    I have such a short attention span! I’ve been sat here since about 9pm with these photos open in Photoshop, getting them blog-ready and I’ve been distracted at least 4356 times. It’s now just after 1am and I have managed to focus long enough to upload them and write this post!
    When I sit down in front of a computer, I go in to a complete trance and until I snap out of it don’t realise that I’ve just spent 4 hours of my day watching The Shaytards and amusing myself with every single #Parks and Recreation post on tumblr. If I have one addiction in life, it’s the internet.

    Plates: Bundle Monster BM201, BM224 and BM211
    Base Colour: W7 Black Cherry
    Stamp Colour: Collection 2000 Moonlight Shine
    GOSH Metallic Purple
    Top Coat of NYC

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    Freehand, Stamping, Uncategorised

    Like A Broken Record

    Todays Pink Wednesday post is insanely similar to last week’s but I love the comic book/onomatopoeia design so much so I had to try it again! This week, it’s a bit more exaggerated and ‘in your face’!

    Plate: Bundle Monster BM209
    Base Colour: Nails Inc. – Paris (for Diet Coke)
    Stamp Colour: Collection 2000 Hot Looks – Dynasty
    Black acrylic paint for the outlines
    Top Coat of NYC

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    Stamping, Uncategorised

    ♪♫ Move with me or get out of my face

    Wowsa, I’m tired tonight! You may be able to tell from the mass of incoherent sentences that I’m surely about to write. I’ve had a headache all day which is probably a sign that I should have gone to bed at a reasonable hour but I was determined to blog tonight.
    I’ve been banging on about these lipsticks that I bought all day! I found some Rimmel lipsticks for £1 and ended up taking home 3 colours, I am in LOVE with the Coral shade and can’t believe I never tried coral sooner. It could look shockingly bad on me (orange hair and orange lips, whaaaaat?!) but I absolutely love it. I did a quick blog post about them here if you want to see the colour I mean.

    Plate: Bundle Monster BM208
    Base Colour: Rimmel – Sunset Bronze
    Stamp Colour: Sally Hansen Chrome – Amber
    I used a little brush to fill in parts of the design
    Top Coat of NYC

     


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    Stamping, Uncategorised

    No Animals Were Harmed in the Making of This Post

    This amazing snakeskin look is Kari‘s brainchild. When she posted it a few months back it quickly spread all over the blogsphere and I fully intended to do it myself but never got round to it.

    I was looking through my stamping plates, trying to decide on a design for today’s manicure and I decided that I wanted to use a plate I hadn’t used before. I still have a few of the 25pc Bundle Monster plates that still have the blue plastic covering on so it had to be one of those. I spotted this plate in the pile with it’s shiny blue protective layer still attached and Kari’s snakeskin idea came flooding back to me!

    Plate: Bundle Monster BM215
    Base Colour: Barry M – Berry Ice Cream
    Stamp Colour: BYS – Glittering Purple and La Femme – Grey Cream
    Top Coat of NYC

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