31 Day Challenge (v.2!) Day 12: Stripes! (and a quick Salon Express review)

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Morning Ladies! Welcome to day 12 of the Challenge! Today's challenge is Striped Nails, and I gotta tell ya, I love the idea of this mani, but the stamping plate I chose to use is less than stellar and really frustrated me.

Awhile back (and I mean a loooong while back), when they first came out, I picked up one of the Salon Express Stamping kits. I was pretty stoked that there was finally a stamping kit that I could just run down to CVS and pick up, and for $10 for 5 plates and a stamper and scraper? Well, you can't beat that, right? So I picked up the kit, and it sat in my stamping drawer until last night when I decided that the striped image would be awesome for the mani I wanted to create. The plates are sturdy and seem fairly well etched, deep etching, clear images. I figure that would make for some really good stamping. Well, I was wrong. Despite the deep etching, I had a very hard time getting the image to pick up clearly. Since they are etched so deep, they hold a lot of polish, which meant that I had to scrape either very hard, or several times. Scraping hard just scratched up the plate, and multiple scrapes meant the polish would dry partially before I could pick up the image. I did manage to get the image to transfer okay, but.....and this is a big but for me...the full nail images are very narrow. Which meant that there was no way to get the image to cover my entire nail. That always drives me crazy. My nails aren't very wide, and even smaller images usually work for me. I have the first set of Mash plates, and those images are tiny, but still cover almost the entire the width of my nails. The Salon Express images left alot of uncovered space, which makes for some less than stellar looking stamping. All in all I wasn't that impressed with these and probably will not be using the full nail images again. I'll stick to my Konad, Bundle Monster and Mash plates for now, thanks!

Despite the less than stellar stamping, I do dig this mani. I wanted to do multicolor pastel stripes, so I grabbed my Wet N Wild Megalast polishes in Candy-licious, On A Trip, and I Need A Refresh-Mint to stamp with. I used Revlon Powder Puff, a matte white with lovely iridescent shimmer as my base (I love this color but the formula is nightmarish. Gloppy, goopy, and takes FOREVER to dry, even with SV!). I had seen Amy Grace do a rainbow mani kind of like this and loved it (oh how I wish I had her nails! Perfection!), so I was realy looking forward to doing this one.  Although I like the color combo and the idea, the base polish refusing to dry and the really irritating problematic stamping kit made for a less than stellar mani. But, in the spirit of showing you guys everything, here is my striped mani.

All in all I guess it didn't come out that bad. It's tolerable, but my eyes are just drawn to the naked spaces where (no matter how many times I re-did the stamping) the stamp just abruptly ends. I'll have to try this idea again with a different plate soon.  Strangely enough, the least of my manicure annoyances was the cat insisting on rubbing her tail against my freshly topcoated nails! Usually that drives me batty, but I was already swearing and threatening to take a blowtorch to those plates so the cat was the least of my worries!

Be sure to check out all the Varnished Vixens and their Striped Manis! I sure hope none of them had to battle with stamping plates! ;)


Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner
-Kat at Hooked On Polish
-Diana at Nails By Diana
-Aly at Wonderland Beauty
-Meredith at Perfectly Polished
-Nicole at The Color Republic
-Kate at The Painted Pony Nails
-Cee at Absolutely Cee
-Sam at Polished Art
-Nail Narcotics
-Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed
-Shelby at Shelby's Swatches
-Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful
-Mixed Mama
-Joanna @ Sweet Polish of Mine
-Patty Greenberg
-Liz and Lisa @ Lozlosa 
-Mari at Nailista
-Miss L at Beauty by Miss L 
-Gini at Sassy Paints 
-Chameleon Stampede 
-Pam at Nail-E-Glance
-Me, Myself, and Polish 
- Robin Sparkles  

Thanks for stopping by! I should have some swatches of Sally Hansen Lustre Shine in Firefly and Copperhead over the weekend for ya!

Happy Polishing!
-Kimber

30 Days of Blue: Gradient and Stamping

As you guys know from my previous post, I am very sick at the moment, so I'm keeping this short and sweet.

Awhile back I came across Oooh, Shinies! and just fell in love with this woman's stamping. Seriously, if you haven't seen her manis, you are missing out! Anyway, I came across an awesome stamped gradient that she did, and I just had to try it out. I used different polishes, but the end result is what I was looking for. Now if only I wasn't attempting this mani while struggling to breathe and so loaded up on medications that I shake like a Parkinson's patient. No, really. The high doses of Albuterol have my hands so shaky that was literally the best images I could manage while stamping. It's sad, but at least IRL the smears and inability to line up my stamps very well isn't noticeable. In fact, this mani received a ton of comments while in gradient form during my 6 hours in the ER yesterday, and even with it's funky stamping job it's been noticed today. I can't wait to be back to normal and be able to stamp normally. Seeing all those awesome stamping manis really makes me want to whip out my plates and play!

So here is the gradient: I used 2 coats of Wet N Wild Megalast I Need A Refresh-Mint, then sponged on Heaven Nail Lacquer in Honolulu Orchid, and added some Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Blue Me Away! on the very tips. I apologize for how unforgiving my macro setting is. Makes the gradient appear all lumpy! I promise I top coated it to smooth it out!

 And here it is with the ultra shaky stamping: After 2 days of wearing just the gradient I finally grabbed my Konad Special Polish in Black and stamped with the Zebra image from Bundle Monster plate BM 223. I'm so bummed that these meds make me so shaky since I just love how this looks! Sometimes I get caught up in sharing my latest and greatest polishes and forget how much I love to play with my polish and create awesome, bright, fun manis. I really need to get back in touch with that. The entire reason that I started really getting into polish again was due to manis like this! How soon we forget, right? You guys don't mind if I do fun manis, do ya?  Anyway, feel free to point and laugh at my wonky lines and inability to keep from smearing my darn stamps! Yikes! Oh! Also enjoy how unforgiving my macro setting is. Dig the drops of cuticle oil that you can actually see hanging out on my nails! *head desk* See how sloppy I am when I'm sick? I'm playing. Trust me, I know just how sick I am and these are great shots of one hell of an amazing mani considering how close to hospitalization my happy ass is. :)

Hope you are all having a better week than I am, and thanks for dropping by!

Happy Polishing!
-Kimber