NOTD: Charla & New Zoyas!

I GOT MY FREE ZOYA POLISHES!  

Hooray!  I ordered Gwin, Charla (in spite of its many dupes), and Pippa.  I tried Charla first... it's still a little too grey and rainy for Gwin and Pippa, I think.  I'll try to swatch them, though, if I have time.

I've been wearing Charla for 4 days now with my normal base and topcoats, and only have minor tipwear.  There's a little VNL (Visible Nail Line) in the picture... I didn't really notice it in real life.  I did only put on two coats, though, so I'm sure that's the reason for it.  I've gotten several compliments on the color, and I feel like the polish must be made of ground mermaid scales to be as watery and sparkly as it is.  Even the Friend-Boy was fascinated by the color when I got it... he kept picking up the bottle and turning it over in the light.

Macro/angle shot to show the duochrome effect... it is there, really, although it is rather subtle.

I'm going to change my polish tonight anyway, so this morning I decided to mix things up a bit by stamping with one of the odd Bundle Monster designs and China Glaze's "For Audrey."  I also finished it with a matte topcoat.

Another closeup for duochrome.  Meh.  I am not a huge fan of completely matte looks... I prefer my polish shiny.

Materials:

• Sinful Colors basecoat
• Zoya "Charla" (FREEEEEEeeeee!  Charla is a greenish teal with a blue duochrome effect. It has a half-dozen dupes, but this color is amazing.  Use it for all your mermaid-ing needs.)
• Seche Vite topcoat
• China Glaze "For Audrey" (also FREEEeee when I got a backup bottle of Seche Vite.  I've been interested in this color for a while, and I'm happy to have it.  More info when I actually try to do a mani with it.)
• China Glaze "Matte Magic" (This matte topcoat slightly lightens the color it is applied over.)
• Bundle Monster Image Plate BM20, stamper, scraper, and other required goodies.

Method:

• Start with clean, dry nails and a well-ventilated space.
• Apply basecoat to all nails, let dry.
• Apply Charla to all nails, letting dry between coats.  I ended up only using 2 coats, but probably 3 is better.
• Top with Seche Vite.
• Wear for several days, until you are bored and want a change...
• Stamp nails with For Audrey and the funny wiggly design from BM20. My nails are so short that I only had to stamp once with the shorter direction of the image!
• Let dry and top with a thickish swipe of Matte Magic.  I found that Matte Magic wanted to smear much more than my usual Seche Vite.

NOTD: An Excess of Geekiness

I had another design for you guys, but I ended up entering it in a nail art contest, and the rules of the contest said no blogging before voting starts, so there.  I liked it a lot, I'll show you later.  In the meantime, please enjoy this excessively silly and geeky nail art while I go sit in a room for jury duty.

So yes, I have a Super Mushroom, from the Super Mario and all their descendants.  This manicure was inspired by this tutorial on youtube by cutepolish.  I didn't have any green polish that was the right color to paint mushrooms, so I went with the red one instead.

I really love this manicure.  I had lots of fun painting it and it's fun to wear.  It seems especially appropriate for all the video games my friends and I have been playing lately!

Cast of Characters:

• Sinful Colors Basecoat
• Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Xtreme Wear "White On"
• Sally Hansen Insta-Dri "Rapid Red" (Oh, how I hate the handle of this brush!  It picks up gobs of extra polish and causes all manner of trouble!)
• Jesse's Girl "Blackout"
• Seche Vite topcoat
• Konad Image Plate M19, stamper, & other required stamping goodies (or your favorite form of french tip creation.)
• Little brush for striping.  Also, acetone
• Big and little dotting tools.  I used the back end of a paintbrush and the lead of a mechanical pencil.

Method:

(you can also see cutepolish's tutorial here, I do a few things differently.)

• Start with clean, dry nails and a well-ventilated space.
• Paint all of your nails with a base coat, let dry.  I like using a slightly pinkish tinted basecoat to give my nails a healthy glow.
• Paint white french tips on the index, middle, and pinky nail.  I used the french tip Konad plate and ended up stamping the tips three times.
• Paint a thin red line between the white tip and the pink nail bed.  I did this with a small brush and a dab of Rapid Red, which I put on a dish to dip from.  I used acetone to dip my brush in and make the polish thin enough to paint with.  This probably isn't the most accepted way to do this, but it worked with what I had.
• For the accent nails, paint thumbs and ring fingers with a coat of Rapid Red, leaving a wide, curved gap between the cuticle and the polish. 
• Make the mushroom stems/faces by swiping the white polish over the tips of the nail.  Using the larger dotting tool, make five white dots on the cap of the mushroom.
• Using black polish and the smaller dotting tool, place two dots on the white stems/ faces and drag them out vertically into eyes.
• Once everything has dried slightly, carefully apply a thick layer of Seche Vite to all your nails.
• You're done!  Go get those goombas!

How To: Stamp nails with Konad & Fauxnad image plates

 Last Updated June 16, 2011:  Pictures replaced

Okay... I said I'd do a tutorial, and here it is.  This is my way of stamping.  It's not necessarily the "right way," but it works for me.  I know there are about fifty youtube tutorials, not to mention Michele's awesome instructions (over at Lacquerized), but I figured I'd put my own out there too, just in case it helps anyone.

This is my stamping setup.  The picture is clickable and everything is labeled.  Absolutely mandatory items are in bold. For stamping, you will need:

• layer of paper towels/napkins/scratch paper/newspaper to protect your work surface (If the surface underneath is also in danger, put down a cheap placemat or an old binder to protect it from acetone seep-through)
• Image plate of your choice
• Stamper (I have the double-ended one)
• Scraper (I'm using an old gift card because the metal scraper can scratch the image plates)
• Pure acetone or other polish remover (for cleaning your tools)
• Cotton ball in a clothespin and/or q-tips/cotton swabs (for cleaning your tools.  I like the cotton ball for size, and putting it in a clothespin makes sure that you don't get the acetone on your hands & ruin your nails.)
• Nail file (for prepping Bundle Monster plates & if your stamper doesn't seem to be working)
• Stamping polish
• Topcoat

Before you begin, put on whatever base color/base coats of polish you want and let it dry completely.  You can facilitate this by using a quick-dry topcoat, if you like, or you can wait and apply stamping over a day-old manicure.  The latter can be a good option for a first-time stamper... no worries about smudging the base color, no worries about ruining a fresh new manicure.

This first step is specific to new Bundle Monster and other "Fauxnad" plates.  These plates will come with a protective film covering the image surface which must be removed before the plates can be used.  Use a coarse-grained file to get the edge of the plastic free, then gently peel it away from the plate.  This plastic film can now be discarded.

STEP 1: Clean & Prep

Once you've made sure that you have all of your tools out, it's time to prep them for use.  Put some acetone on your cotton ball and gently swab off the stamper and the image plate to remove any unwanted residues.  

STEP 2: Paint

Apply a small amount of nail polish to the image that you want to use.  With full-nail images, you don't need to cover the entire design.  Instead, only run the nail polish along one edge.  The scraping step will distribute the polish and you'll waste less product.

Change gears!  Everything up to this point can be done at whatever pace you want.  The next three steps must be done quickly so that the very thin layer of polish you are trying to transfer does not dry.

STEP 3: Scrape
Take your card and place it against the image plate at a 45 degree angle.  With firm and even pressure, scrape across the image to remove excess polish.  This will remove polish from the surface of the plate and leave only a thin layer in the grooves of the design you have selected.

STEP 4: Stamp

Press the stamper firmly and gently against the image plate.  Check the stamper to see that the design has transferred.  Be careful not to press the stamper down too hard—if the polish you are using is runny, it will overflow out the sides of the image.  If the transfer is incomplete at this point, resist the urge to panic! Stamp the image off on your paper towel or scratch paper, clean the plate and the stamper, and try again.  If you feel like the stamper isn't picking up images well, run it over an emery board a couple times lightly to roughen the surface, then clean it and try again.

STEP 5: Roll

To transfer the design from the stamper to your nail, roll the stamper across the curve of your nail.  Start by pressing one edge of the image against one sidewall of your nail.  Roll the stamper quickly and firmly over the arch of your nail, and lift it off once you reach the opposite side.  If you press the stamper down flat, parts of the design will probably not transfer due to the curvature of the nail bed.  If polish gets on your skin, gently remove it with a q-tip that has been moistened with acetone.

A note:  If your nails were topcoated before you began stamping, it is possible to very lightly swipe off a stamp that didn't turn out with your acetone-d cotton ball or a q-tip.  The shiny finish will come off the topcoat, but that will be covered up in the end, and your base polish will not be marred. 

Step 6: Seal

Once all of your designs have been stamped, seal them in place with a layer of topcoat.  To prevent smearing, I suggest waiting for a short while after stamping to allow the designs to dry.  Then, apply topcoat in a thick layer with as few strokes as possible.  Try to always keep the brush "floating" on a bead of topcoat so that it doesn't touch and drag the design.

Et VOILA, you are done!  The process really is just about as easy as it looks, and with a little practice you can get pretty good results every time. 

Questions?  Ask me in the comments below, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible! Now, go forth and be stampy!

NOTD: A Spring-y Mood

Don't get me wrong, I love winter.  On foggy, dark, drippy days like this, though, I start to get impatient for green growing  things and sunshine and temperatures over 50 degrees. 

To combat the effects of the weather, I did a manicure with Claire's Mood polish in Happy/Earthy, the obnoxious neon green/neon yellow combo, and added some leafy stamping.  I like this combo pretty well... although I think I'd like a darker/more opaque green for the stamping.  I was using a shimmery jelly, which was (obviously!) not ideal.

Sadly, this manicure only lasted a couple days before being destroyed by painting and yard work and other such fun things.  I'm definitely going to try this again as the weather gets warmer, hopefully with a better polish for stamping the leaves on.  I like that they kind of disappear into the green tips, but I don't like that they're barely visible on the yellow either.

Materials:

• Sinful Colors basecoat
• Claire's Mood Polish "Happy/Earthy"
• Sinful Colors San Francisco ($1.99 @ Walgreens.  This color is big fun... it's squishy forest green jelly with green microglitter.  I'll use it as a base color eventually.)
• Seche Vite topcoat
• Bundle Monster Image Plate BM19
• Konad stamper
• Cotton balls, Q-Tip, acetone, wooden clothespin, paper towels, old gift card/other scraper (not pictured)

(This color does strange things under different lighting.  This is in my compact fluorescent-lit "light box" that I photograph my materials in.  I wanted to show you the temperature color change.  It's not really that color, at all.  It's a dark neon green, like it was the last time I used it.  If you're under halogen lighting, it looks almost olive.  Funky color.)

Method:

• Start with clean, dry nails & a well-ventilated space.
• Put on your basecoat, let dry.
• Paint all nails with Happy/Earthy.  You're gonna need a good 4 or so coats for opacity.  Alternatively, I suppose you could later it over an opaque white polish, but that seems too easy.  Let it dry completely so you can stamp without smudging.  This won't take too long since Happy/Earthy has a matte/neon finish and therefore dries rather speedily.
• Stamp all nails with the leaf pattern from M19 using San Francisco.  I had decent luck stamping side-by-side on the thumb... be careful not to overlap the stamps too much, though, or it will look oddly dark.  (I'll have a stamping tricks post up very soon, I will, I swear!)
• Top everything with a coat of Seche Vite or your favorite quick-dry topcoat.
• Wrap your hands around a mug of hot cocoa and wait for spring.

Review: Mary Kay Satin Hands set

Hello everyone!  I've gotten a bit behind on my  posting in the last week because I've been helping a family friend set up an online class, and MAN those things take a lot of hours of work at a computer.  So anyway, when I wasn't working, the last thing I wanted to do was spend more time on the computer and now I have to play catch-up.

My birthday was a little over two weeks ago, and my best friend's mom sells Mary Kay products, so she gave me this Satin Hands set a a present since she knows that I'm interested in nail art and maintaining my hands in general.  She doesn't know I have this blog and doesn't know that I'm reviewing this product, though.  

The review is pretty photo-intensive, though, so the rest of it is after the jump.  And if you aren't interested in this, rest assured that I'll have some more nail art up soon.

NOTD: Fear No Fish!

Hello boys and girls, if there are any boys out there reading this, which I somewhat doubt, but, I digress.
I hope you're all doing well, now that the holidays are over and we've all been rudely thrust back into normal life.  I am somewhat fortunate in that I don't have to go back to school until the 24th, but there's still plenty of real-world that needs to get done.  On the other hand, there's also plenty of time for sparkles and nail polish and fun things, too.  Thank goodness.
I have a few goodies coming up... a general Konad/Fauxnad stamping tutorial (I want to get some better pictures of a few steps, but I might just bite the bullet and upload what I have.  I can always update it later...), a product review, and my very first Zoya polishes winging their way to me from the 3 Free promotion (I ordered Charla, Gwin, and Pippa).

Okay, enough of that, here are today's nails!  I've been wanting to try out a grey creme polish for a while now, and I finally picked one up at Walmart the other day while looking for Hard Candy's nail polish line.  My mom's side of the family are all avid fisherpeople, and I fish when I go up to visit them in Wisconsin, so I thought it would be fun to try out the fish skeleton pattern from my Bundle Monster plates.

 I was aiming for an understated note, so I only stamped the dead fish on two nails per hand.  Next time, I think I'm going to go a little more overboard with it! I'm sure I'll be wearing some variant on this manicure next time I go up to visit my grandparents.

Cast of Characters:

• Sinful Colors basecoat
• Pure Ice "Kiss Me Here" ($2 @ Walmart.  Interesting name...  Medium grey creme, 2 coat coverage, fabulous application.  What more could you want?  Translation: I love it & completely recommend it.)
• Jesse's Girl "Blackout" ($.99 I think? @ RiteAid.  This is a pretty standard black polish.  I find that it's more opaque & therefore better for stamping than its NYC equivalent, although it is full of nasty icky chemicals and I need to find a better go-to black.  BY THE WAY, the outer cap is off in this photo because when I bought this polish it really bothered me that I couldn't get the square cap to screw back on straight and line up.  It wasn't until I saw a picture on a blog that I realized the outer cap comes off. So, for all the other slightly obsessive-compulsive ladies out there, take the outer cap off & pop it back on straight when you close the bottle.)
• CoverGirl Boundless Color Nail Sparkle Topcoat "Blown Glass" ($??  Topcoat. GRRRRR.  This worked fine on my last manicure, but NOT SO MUCH here.  I think it only worked before because I was layering it over Seche Vite.  This stuff does not dry to a solid finish.  If you click the pictures to make them bigger, you'll see that the top coat is kind of dented and scuffed.  That's because I can still dent the topcoat over 24 hours later.  I am not using this product again.
• Bundle Monster plate BM04 (This plate is actually punched wrong, and half of one of the designs is missing.  I emailed them and they said they'd send me a replacement plate, so I'm waiting to see what happens...) & stamper
• Cotton balls, Q-Tip, acetone, wooden clothespin, paper towels, old gift card/other scraper (not pictured)

(That awkward pose where you try to show all 5 fingers well)

Method:

• Start with clean, dry nails & a well-ventilated space.
• Put on your basecoat, let dry.
• Paint all nails with Kiss Me Here.  I only needed two coats.  Let nails dry completely before stamping.
• Stamp accent nails (thumb and ring, in this case) with the fish skeleton image from BM04 in black.
• Carefully slick a topcoat (NOT THE ONE I USED, PLEASE) over all your nails.
• You're done!  Go fishing.

NOTD: Butterfly Thief

 Hooray!  I am now caught up with what is actually on my nails right this moment.  The color is Jesse's Girl Intense Color in Confetti (not to be confused with Jesse's Girl Confetti--a clear color with glitter), which is about the closest you can get to having tropical butterfly wings on your nails without killing any butterflies.  Nail polish companies, take note.  This is what duochrome should look like.

I stamped it with the butterflies from plate BM05, because I was trying to take pictures for my how-to-stamp tutorial.  Unfortunately, the polish and the stamp did not quite cooperate, so some of the butterflies are a bit distorted.  I think that, since it was brand new, the silver polish I used for stamping was too runny.  I left it out with the lid open for an hour or so, that ought to fix it for next time.

Cast of Characters:

• Sinful Colors basecoat
• Jesse's Girl Intense Color "Confetti" ($3ish at Rite-Aid, I think.  The formula is pretty good, if rather sheer.  This was either three or four coats, and it's still too sheer when the light is at the wrong angle.  I think next time I will try layering it over something more opaque.  This may be similar to Sally Hansen DVD, but none of the photos I've seen of that show such strong duochrome-y-ness.)
• Seche Vite topcoat
• Sally Hansen Insta-Dri "Silver Sweep" ($2.50 on sale at Rite-Aid.  I needed a replacement metallic silver for stamping etc. and this one looks like a winner.  Plenty of opacity, bright color... too bad the brush is so weird.)
• CoverGirl Boundless Color Nail Sparkle Topcoat "Blown Glass" ($??  Topcoat.  Works fine.  Not super quick-dry, but since everything else was dry already, it worked fine over the stamped design)
• Bundle Monster image plate BM05
• Cotton balls, Q-Tip, acetone, wooden clothespin, paper towels, old gift card/other scraper (not pictured)

Method:

• Start with clean, dry nails & a well-ventilated space.
• Put on your basecoat, let dry.
• Paint all nails with Confetti.  Many, many times.  I had to use an extra coat on the thumbs to get them opaque enough.
• Paint all nails with a coat of Seche Vite.  Go about your business for a day or so until you want to change it up.
• Stamp the butterflies from plate BM05 wherever you want them.  I put both on my thumbs and ring fingers and individual butterflies on a few other fingers where they would cover up dents I'd accidentally made in the polish while it was drying.
• Paint all nails with another layer of topcoat.  I used a non- quick-drying topcoat for this step.

NOTD: Purple Tapestry

Stamping attempt number two!

I was inspired to do a purple and gold color scheme by all of the recent posts on The Nailasaurus that used a purple base color with metallic stamping.  Needless to say, the stamping wasn't exactly clean and neat.  The polish I used to do it was very old and gloopy, and I had trouble transferring the whole design.  On most of the nails I ended up stamping extra little design bits to fill in the holes.  I love the pattern, though.  It reminds me of endpapers in old books.  I'll probably be using it again with a different color combination soon.

Even though I'm not big on the whole swatching polishes thing (there are hundreds of nail blogs that do that, it's not my goal) I figured I'd throw in a super close up picture to try to capture the duochrome in the base color. 

 It's Out of This World from ORLY's Cosmic FX collection, and although it supposedly is a purple and silver duochrome, I see purple and gold.  Unfortunately, it's really not this apparent in real life... As you can tell from the rest of my pictures, the duochrome only shows up when you go hunting for it.

Despite those flaws, I loved this manicure & I'm going to try it again when I have a little more stamping experience.  These pictures are a little lacking since they were taken late at night, right before I took these colors off.  I would've worn them longer, but I'd suffered some major untimely chipping on my right hand, so it was time for a change.

Cast of Characters

• Sinful Colors basecoat
• Orly "Out of This World" (I picked it up for about $2 on sale at Sally Beauty.  It's a really great sparkly, foil-y purple, just don't expect it to be duochrome magic.)
• No Miss "Gold Coast Gold" (Well, that's a redundant name.  I picked this up at Nugget Market, a Northern California grocery chain, when I was in grade school I think.  It's quite dry now, not to mention nearly empty, but I remember it being pretty awesome when it was new.)
• Seche Vite topcoat
• Bundle Monster image plate BM20
• Cotton balls, Q-Tip, acetone, wooden clothespin, paper towels, old gift card/other scraper (not pictured)

Method:

NOTE:  Still waiting on a "How Stamping Works" post, I might do it today with the polish I have on now, it needs stamping.

• Start with clean, dry nails & a well-ventilated space.
• Put on your basecoat, let dry.
• Paint all nails with Out of This World.  I needed only two coats to get the color opaque enough. Let dry completely.  Don't rush and smudge the first nail like I always seem to do.
• Using the all-over vine pattern on BM20 and the gold nail polish, stamp all nails.
• Add a coat of quick-dry topcoat.

NOTD: Snowflakes

Oh boy, oh boy, my first real stamped manicure!  And yes, I see the chipping, but SHUSH.  This is after at least 2 days of wear, and it was a quick and sloppy application just so I could try it out, and y'know what?  IT WORKS.  I really shouldn't be surprised, since lots of other people do these successfully all the time, but it still seemed like a magic trick.

Don't be like me, though... I was too impatient and stamped my first nail too quickly after applying the base color, and it smudged.  That would be the oddly deformed silver snowflake on my middle finger...

I think I might even like how the right hand turned out better than the left hand.  This is definitely a form of nail art that's possible to do on your dominant hand with your non-dominant hand.  I approve.  My nails, by the way, took a major shrinking after I smashed my right index finger into the rim of a glass canning jar.  Ouch.  As of the last post, my nails were the longest they've ever been (!!!) and, I think, my ideal length.  Oh well, back to growing.

Both hands at once!  Seriously, I don't know how the regular nail bloggers do it -- taking pictures of your own hands, especially both of your own hands is hard!  This involved some balancing of the camera on a pile of books.  I assume a tripod is the more widely accepted technique.

Aaaand one more picture, with the image plate.  The one thing I was surprised by when I got my plates was how small they are!  I suppose I should have realized, but for some reason the size they look in pictures and YouTube videos seems larger than the size they are in real life.  The plates are about the size of my camera's lens cap!  

Cast of Characters:

• Sinful Colors Basecoat
• China Glaze "Midnight Mission"
• Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear "White On" ($3ish, just about everywhere if I remember correctly.  this polish is super thick and drippy and seems like it works decently for stamping on light to medium colors.  It has a very odd brush, though, which is apparently standard for some of the Sally Hansen polishes.  I don't like it much.)
• Jesse's Girl "North Star"
• Seche Vite topcoat
• Konad stamper
• Bundle Monster image plate BM14
• Cotton balls, Q-Tip, acetone, wooden clothespin, paper towels, old gift card/other scraper (not pictured)

Method:
NOTE:  I'm just going to do a big "How Stamping Works" post soon, so I'm leaving out all the detail.  When I get it done, I'll just link to it in all my stamping posts.

• Start with clean, dry nails & a well-ventilated space.
• Put on your basecoat, let dry.
• Paint all your nails with Midnight Mission.  (Honestly, you should use two thin coats, but I only used one.  It looked a little less neat and I had tipwear faster, but I was in a hurry.)  Let dry completely!
• Using the silver polish (North Star) stamp the snowflake design on the outside corner of all your nails and the inside corner of your thumbs. (Um.  So, the edge of the nail towards the blade of the hand, not towards the thumb.)
• Using the white polish (White On) stamp the snowflake design again, partially overlapping with the first.
• Apply a coat of quick-dry topcoat.  All done!

NOTD: Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, all!  I hope it finds you healthy and happy.  I rang in the New Year with my family and some of their friends... we played cards and had an appetizer buffet (rather tasty, if I do say so myself) to while away the hours before midnight.  I haven't made any resolutions.  I figure I'm busy enough with the things I've been working on (sing daily, exercise daily if possible, redo manicures regularly, don't bite/pick nails or cuticles, take pictures, blog regularly, get a job, prepare a kick-ass Junior Recital, cook meals, etc.) that I really don't see the point in resolving to do much more. 

For New Year's Eve, I decided to do a blingtastic french/gradient manicure.  Since I have only received my Konad stamping plate so far, and I couldn't wait to try out something, I decided to give stamped french tips a go.  I think I saw a tutorial for something like this on YouTube a year or two ago... I'll link it if I can refind it.

 I was completely impressed with how easy the process was.  I've been looking at reviews while waiting for my products to arrive, and the general consensus was that the french tips and anything with straight lines are the hardest patterns to stamp.  I, obviously, completely obscured the edges with glitter and forgot to take any progress pictures, but I didn't redo any of the nails I stamped.  Only two of them- my left thumb, the very first nail I stamped, and my right index finger- were at all wobbly.  I did, however, have to go over the stamping on my thumbs twice because the free edge side of my nail bed (is there a technical term for it?) is very strongly curved and my thumbnails are much pointier in shape than my other fingernails are.

Cast of Characters:

• Sinful Colors Basecoat (or another pink or flesh-color tinted basecoat... I prefer them to clear basecoats for French manicures.)
• Jesse's Girl North Star (or metallic silver of your choice. This isn't the most opaque silver ever.)
• Sally Hansen Diamond Strength "Diamonds" (or another tiny glitter.  I think China Glaze Fairy Dust would work well here too.)
• Sinful Colors Queen of Beauty (or another big silver glitter.)
• Seche Vite topcoat
• Konad Stamper (Ignore that piece of whatever-it-is on mine)
• Konad Image Plate M19 (French tips)
• Cotton balls, Q-Tip, acetone, wooden clothespin, paper towels, old gift card/other scraper (not pictured)

(Close-Up to show how glittery this is. No sunlight when I took these pictures.)

Method:

• Start with clean, dry nails and a well-ventilated space.
• Prep all nails with a coat of basecoat and let dry completely before continuing.  Stamping can bump and smudge polishes that are still wet.
• For accent nails, paint the two ring fingers with one coat of North Star.  Top them with 2 or 3 coats of Queen of Beauty for added sparkle.
• For the French manicure, find the image on the plate that most closely matches the size of your nail.
• Paint the image with North Star, covering it completely.
• Scrape firmly and evenly across the image with the edge of an old gift card or credit card.  You could use the scraper that Konad sells with the stamper, but I've seen reviews saying that it scratches up the image plate after a while, so rather than chance it I just used an old card. It works fine for me.
• Firmly press the stamper down on the image, rolling once from one side to the other.
• Starting at one edge of the nail, line up the edge of the tip with the smile line of your nail.  Roll the stamper across your nail, or your nail across the stamper, firmly and quickly.  Tada!  The image should now be on your nail.  Make sure to only roll the stamp side-to-side, not from cuticle to free edge at all. If you roll it vertically, the line of your french manicure will likely come out wavy.
• Repeat the process on the rest of the nails.  You will have to work relatively quickly once you scrape the excess nail polish off the plate.  The rest of the steps must be done fast enough that the polish does not dry before you get it on your nail.  Remember, if it doesn't look absolutely perfect, don't fret.  We'll be covering it up pretty thoroughly with glitter. NOTE: If you don't have Konad plates, don't worry.  Just freehand a french tip and continue... glitter conceals a multitude of sins (and smudges.)
• Once the tips are dry, apply a coat of Diamonds.  Try to "float" the brush lightly over the nail, with a layer of fresh polish between the nail and the brush.  This will help you avoid smudging the design.
• Starting about halfway up the nail, apply a thin coat of Queen of Beauty.  Apply 2 or 3 more coats, covering a smaller portion of the nail each time. Let dry.
• Cover all nails with a coat of Seche Vite or your favorite quick-dry topcoat.
• Go out and blind people with your amazingly glittery nails!