31 Day Challenge 2014: Day 13 - Animal Print

Have done lots of different types of animal print nails before, so I thought for the challenge I would do a different print on each nail :)

To start I painted a base coat onto my nails. On my thumb and ring finger I then painted 2 coats of W7's White. On my index and little finger I painted 2 coats of China Glaze's Kalahari Kiss. And on my middle finger I painted 2 coats of China Glaze's Westside Warrior.

On my thumb nail I have done cow print. For this I used Konad's black special polish and stamped the cow print from Cheeky plate CH1.

On my index finger I have done tiger print. Firstly I used a small makeup sponge and China Glaze's Life Preserver and sponged this over a couple parts of the nail. I then used Konad's black special polish and stamped the pattern from Cheeky plate CH2.

On my middle finger I have done a scales crocodile print. I stamped the pattern from Pueen plate Pueen10 using 3 different colours, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri's Coco a-go-go, KIKO's Lime Green and Barry M's Gold Foil. I dotted these colours in a few different places on the pattern, then scraped and stamped as usual.

On my ring finger I have done zebra print. I used Konad's black special polish and the zebra pattern from Konad plate m57.

On my little finger I have done leopard print. I used Konad's black special polish and the leopard pattern from Konad plate m57. I then used a dotting tool to fill in some parts of the pattern with Avon's Vintage Boutique.

Once all my nails were dry I carefully applied a top coat of Seche Vite and that is the mani finished!

Love this mani! All the different patterns look great together and so colourful :)

As always thank you for visiting and if you have any questions or anything to say then please comment below :)

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Stamping Tests and Swatches

So I have been wanting to order some Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Polishes for a while now, and today I got nail mail with all of them coming at once!! So I have done swatches of them and tested them for stamping and I am very pleased with my purchase :)

So these are all the polishes I bought, a couple of them I bought when out shopping the other day from a little stall, then some of them I bought from www.cosmeticsbycandy.co.uk and the rest I bought from www.directcosmetics.com. They were very cheap from these sites, Cosmetics By Candy sell them for £1.99 each, and Direct Cosmetics sell most of them for £1.50 and a couple for £1.99. Bargain! :)

I will not name them now I will do that below with the swatches...

...First four from left to right are; Lightening, Jade Jump, Brisk Blue and Lively Lilac and as shown in the picture the top is with no flash and bottom is with flash.

Next four from left to right are; Presto Pink, Speedy Sunburst, Rapid Red and Emerald Express. All of these colours are really nice but I am definitely looking forward to using Emerald Express.

 From Emerald Express and onwards these are all shimmer colours. These four from left to right are; Jumpin' Jade (although the label on the bottle of this one has gone so I will have to memorise it lol), Teal-y Fast, Grape Escape and Ruby Rush.

And the last three from left to right are; Quick Brick, Bronze Ablaze and Coco a-go-go.

So now are the stamping swatches, I will name the polishes again from left to right. I apologise in advance for the really bad stamping in the next couple of pictures. I think this happened because I was too quick to pick up the image, waiting a few seconds before doing so stops it from smudging. I think I thought that because it is a quick drying polish that I would need to pick it up quickly.

Anyway from left to right are; Lightening, Jade Jump, Brisk Blue and Lively Lilac. These have all stamped really well on both the white and black, the blue has probably come out the best and I was suprised how well Jade Jump turned out.

From left to right are; Presto Pink, Speedy Sunburst, Rapid Red and Emerald Express. Presto Pink has definitely come out better on the black and white than the rest.

I have done this picture different because with the shimmer polishes I needed to get more of the flash directly on it to show how it looks on the black. With the shimmer polishes they show up better in direct light and in non-direct light not as well, however they all do stamp very well over the black.

From left to right are; Jumpin' Jade, Teal-y Fast, Grape Escape and Ruby Rush. Again these stamp well, I was surprised the shimmer polishes did stamp so well.

And the last three from left to right are; Quick Brick, Bronze Ablaze and Coco a-go-go. These three colours are probably my favourites for the stamping out of the shimmer colours, they show up so well on both the black and the white and are very pretty colours.

So that is all of the Insta-Dri polishes I have. I hope this has been helpful.

Thank you for looking at my blog

Nail polish swatches!

So in my last post I said I was going to test all my nail varnishes and post which ones are any good for stamping. Over yesterday and today I have been testing them all. From doing this I  have discovered that no normal polish will be able to be stamped over a colour that is completely opposite or darker, a normal polish will only be able to be stamped over a much lighter colour and potentially the same colour in a lighter shade and in some cases a darker shade.
Even if a normal polish is very opaque it is very difficult for it to not be a little transparent because stamping uses such a thin layer.

Of course there are some polishes that you cannot stamp with at all, so in this post I am going to show you the swatches of all the nail polishes I own (as I haven't yet done that anyway) and also talk about which ones are any good for stamping :) (this could be quite a long post!)

So firstly I will start with my Avon nail polishes, the polishes on the left half from left to right are; Pastel Pink, Cotton Candy, Coral Sands and Casablanca. These colours are pretty simple apart from Coral Sands, this polish has got a lovely green shimmer to it in certain lights and makes it a really pretty polish.

On the right half the polishes from left to right are; Berry Shimmer, Viva Pink, Coral Beat and Lucky Penny.

These swatches are also Avon, on the left half the polishes from left to right are; Real Red, Ruby Slippers, Sequinned Turquoise and Luxe Lavender. And on the right half from left to right are; Violetta Sparkle, Gleaming Gold, Vintage Boutique, Deluxe Chocolate and Mirror Shine Luster (this one is really old).

I haven't had any nail polishes from Avon for a while so I am not entirely sure which of these Avon still stock. None of these really stamp very well, and of course the glitter ones as with any glitter polish will not stamp. However the last polish is a kind of metallic polish, this and every other kind of metallic polish stamp really well, even over black!

Now onto my Barry M polishes, on the left half from left to right are; Matt White, Peach Melba, Pink Flamingo and Spring Green. And on the right half from left to right are; Blueberry Ice-Cream, Cobalt Blue, Navy and Mushroom.

The Cobalt Blue polish is one of my favourite polishes, this along with the Blueberry Ice-Cream and Mushroom polish are the better ones for stamping as they are quite opaque, but are still too transparent for stamping over anything too dark.

Still from Barry M on the left half from left to right are; Grey, Black, Silver Foil and Gold Foil. On the right half from left to right are; Pink Iridescent, Silver Multi Glitter, Diamond Glitter and Amethyst Glitter. The Silver and Gold polishes are extremely good for stamping and stamp over every colour, I use them quite a lot.

Of course the glitter polishes don't work for stamping, but these glitters are so nice. Pink iridescent looks pink in the bottle but once applied there is no pink sheen to it and this can be applied over any colour to make it look like a glitter colour polish. Silver multi glitter has a clear background with lots of small different coloured glitter. Diamond glitter I used not long ago over China Glaze's for Audrey and I fell in love with it, there are different sized glitters and they all give off different colours in the light, the picture really doesn't do it justice! I haven't used the Amethyst Glitter yet, but it has small glitter pieces which are blue, purple, gold and a few pink and green so looking forward to using this! I ordered most of these from www.barrym.com but also bought some from Superdrug.

Now onto China Glaze, on the left half from left to right are; Sun Worshipper, For Audrey, Starboard and Grape Pop. And on the right half from left to right are; Matte Magic (over the top of Barry M's Black), Platinum Pearl, Kalahari Kiss and Re-Fresh Mint.

For Audrey, Grape Pop, Platinum Pearl, Kalahari Kiss and Re-Fresh Mint all work for stamping but again only on colours that are lighter or of a similar colour but different shade. I am hoping that Platinum Pearl may possibly work over dark colours, but I haven't tried that yet so I will do soon.

Continuing with China Glaze on the left half from left to right are; Electric Beat, Hanging in the Balance, Heli-Yum, Westside Warrior and Def Defying. And on the right half from left to right are; Life Preserver, Fifth Avenue, Spontaneous, Urban Night and First Mate.

Electric Beat, Hanging in the Balance, Heli-Yum, Westside Warrior, Spontaneous, Urban Night and First Mate will all stamp although of course not on colours that are darker.

I haven't used many of the China Glaze colours yet as I have only recently ordered all of these, but I find the formula really good as the colours are all very vibrant and you don't need to apply too much polish to get a good colour. I ordered all of these from www.nailpolishdirect.co.uk.

These polishes are from MUA, on the left half from left to right are; Shade 19, Shade 5, Shade 16 and Shade 15. On the right half are; Frozen Yoghurt and from the Love Hearts set I <3 U, U R Fab and Love U 24/7.

All of these apart from Shade 19, Shade 5 and I <3 U can be used for stamping, but they are a little more transparent so only on shades that are a lot lighter.
All these colours are really nice and they are only £1 and £2 for the Love Hearts set polishes. These were bought from www.muastore.co.uk.

These swatches are now just random polishes that I have collected. On the left half are four polishes from a make-up set I received a few years ago and the make was called Colour Works, I think it was from Superdrug. And on the right half a four polishes from a set of nail polishes I received a couple years ago and the make is called Cute or What, I am not sure where these are from. None of these are any good for stamping and I don't really use them much as they are just cheap sets so the formula isn't very good.

On the left half from left to right are; another Cute or What polish, Maybelline Nude Rose, Nails Inc Victoria and Natural Collection Topaz. On the right side from left to right are; a No7 polish (I don't know what shade it is called), OPI Quarter of a Cent-Cherry, Rimmel Sunshine and Rimmel Tangerine Queen.

I think most of these polishes I have bought randomly from Superdrug or Boots over the years and some of them are really old so not really sure if they are sold or not anymore.

The Nails Inc and OPI polishes I don't remember buying, I'm not really sure where they came from. These two polishes are also good for stamping, they don't look very opaque so I was surprised they worked so well, but they are quite dark.

On the left half from left to right are; Rimmel Green Grass, Rimmel Orange Bliss, Rimmel Golden Wonder and Sally Hansen Jungle Gem. And on the right side from left to right are W7 Gold Dazzle, Sally Hansen Fairy Teal and W7 Silver Dazzle.

The two Sally Hansen and W7 polishes I have purchased recently. I bought Jungle Gem from Superdrug and then found Fairy Teal on eBay for a lot cheaper than the one from superdrug, I think there was a £3 difference! both of these polishes work for stamping.

I bought the W7 glitters from www.nailpolishdirect.co.uk. These glitters are really nice, they can be applied so they don't completely cover the nail, I just put about 3 coats on the swatch wheel so that they did.

So that is all the polishes that I own and my opinion on normal polishes for stamping. I also tested the above polishes which are a set of nail art pens that I bought from eBay before I had discovered stamping. I was really hoping that these would work as most of them have gone quite thick and the polish inside is really opaque, but unfortunately they didn't work :(. I think this is probably because the quality of the polish is not very good as these were really cheap.

After researching on the internet I have seen a lot of people saying that Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri polishes are very good for stamping. I am going to order some of these as these can be found for a similar or cheaper price to Konad Special Polishes, but the good thing about them will be that they can also be used to paint your nails unlike the Konad polishes.

I hope this post has been helpful :)