If any of you are interested...

If any of you are interested, Celtic Sun is the only neon yellow nail polish I've used that didn't stain my nails. I always use a base coat, but most of them stain right through regardless. So, I'm super happy with that polish. 🙂

Did my nails last night.

Did my nails last night.  Again, not super creative, but with working so much and school I'm just throwing down something fast that doesn't require a super lot of thought and planning.  I'm not usually a neon kind of girl, but I bought this yellow for a specific reason (to do a thing that I don't yet have time to do) and thought "What the hell?"  So I put it on.

I tested a few stamping polishes over it and I liked the pink the best.  But it just wasn't sparkly enough, so I stamped over it with a holographic to give it some sparkle.  Holos aren't meant for stamping, but some will do it pretty well.  This one would have been kind of sheer without the pink stamping under it.  You can see where I didn't line the stamps up perfectly (I wasn't trying to - I wanted it to have a little depth), but I was more off than I wanted to be on my middle finger.  You can probably see it if you look close.  It wasn't bad enough that I felt the need to re-do the whole nail.  LOL  Who has time for that these days?!

Anyone interested in the polishes used?  Almost no one asks me, but most people write it out, anyway.  Here you go, just in case.  Not a bad habit to get into.  😛

• Base: China Glaze - Celtic Sun

• 1st Stamping: Born Pretty - Stamping Polish # 11

• 2nd Stamping: Color Club - Miss Bliss

Celtic Sun by China Glaze, Stamping Polish 11 by BornPretty, Miss Bliss by Color Club;
Bundle Monster plate BM-418?;
Layered Stamping technique

So... I tried another gradient!

So... I tried another gradient!  Diagonal this time.  And once again I ended up with all of my nails the same.  I think I have been getting so into what I'm doing that I forget to not do all of the nails.  Also, I have felt like crap, so my creativity is not at its peak.  Anyway, to switch it up a little I added a few stones. The two on the nail were not enough - I had to go off-nail this time!

I SUPER LOVE the way the stone on my skin looks.  I just used nail polish to adhere it temporarily, but they make some eyelash glue that is flexible and would probably hold for longer.  I've also had a run-in with some semi-permanent eyelash glue... that stuff is no joke, (just trust me), but that's what I'd use if I wanted this stone to stick all day.  😛

Research polishes;
Research plate;
Embellishments from BornPretty;
Sponge Gradient and Stamping techniques

This turned out much more subtle than I intended, but...

This turned out much more subtle than I intended, but overall I'm not mad at it.  This was my first try at a radial gradient and I guess my colors (holo pink and holo purple) were so similar that you almost can't tell them apart.  😕  Also, you can't really see the fade because of the print I stamped on there, so I may as well have saved myself the trouble of sponging the colors on there.  But I didn't, so I guess I got some practice in.  LOL

I'm not usually one to make all of my nails the same, so this is rare.  I think I was too tired to be creative enough to put together a theme.  I just honestly REALLY REALLY wanted to do my nails and try something new.  Mission Accomplished.  😃

Stamps on point thanks to my new stamper - The Big Bling by Clear Jelly Stamper.  If you are new to stamping and having issues with lining up / centering your stamps, or finding a good stamper that picks up well, I'd say definitely give this one a shot.  It's super clear and so squishy that I had a much easier time stamping my entire nail.  My C curve is strong enough that I usually have to roll, and ain't nobody got time for that!

Miss Bliss and Eternal Beauty by Color Club;
BornPretty plate BP-11;
Sponge Gradient and Stamping techniques

So... I'm digging these plates. 😃

So... I'm digging these plates. 😃 They are clearly designed so that you layer the images and that gives the pictures so much detail. It's awesome. Even when you don't line the images up perfectly (or when you roll one and stretch the outline like I did on the leaves of the larger flower) it still looks adorable.

Unfortunately for me I don't yet have a ton of colored stamping polishes so that means a lot of trial and error with regular polish. I'm not into that tonight so I only did a few nails. But I'm super happy with all of this. My new stampers are so clear that you really can't see them once you are close to the nail. They stamp pretty well, but my polish kept drying before I could pick it up. I'm sitting under an A/C vent and being too lazy to move. Also, my stamping polishes are old and probably need thinning. But anyway, it is all working. I'm super pumped today! 😃

There are not enough stickers...

There are not enough stickers in the whole of the Internet to properly express my excitement right now. MY ORDER NOT ONLY ARRIVED TODAY, BUT IT HAD FREE PLATES IN IT, TOO!!! AND CHECK OUT THAT FUCKING PRECIOUS PACKAGING, OMG. 😳

I'm so excited.

I'm so excited.  (This is nail art stuff, so if you don't care avert your eyeballs now.)  Tomorrow, my new stampers will be delivered.  I can't wait!  Woohoo!  NAIL MAIL!!!  😃😃😃

I've been wanting the super squishy clear stampers for a while now.  The two that I bought from Ali Express a while back are clear and that's cool, but they aren't very squishy and don't always pick up the images well.  My nails have a pretty strong C curve, so I have to roll more rigid stampers across my nails.  That just leaves more room for error, in my opinion.  You are more at risk of distorting your image or breaking the polish altogether if you do it the wrong way.  I know it's JUST nail polish and it's not super important to most people, but once I've invested so much time into a paint job (up to several enjoyable hours, at times), messing up a layer of stamping can really ruin my day.

Anyway.  I've been wanting a clear squishy stamper.  I'd seen these in one of the nail art groups I'm in, but the shipping from Canada was wayyy too expensive and those stampers aren't cheap, either.  But they emailed out a survey recently that gave you a coupon code upon completion and I went for it.  Since shipping was still the same no matter what, I ordered two.  Figured I might as well make the postage worth it.  LOL

So, they should be here tomorrow and I'm pumped!  They are not only clear and squishy, but they come with lids to keep the fuzz off.  One lid is even full of crystals, which does nothing except look pretty, but that's ok with me.  Hopefully, they will work as well as the reviews say they do.  Ahh!  So excited!  😃

https://www.clearjellystamper.com/

These probably look a little more fancy than they actually are...

These probably look a little more fancy than they actually are, but I don't mind that. LOL I did not want to go through the week with naked nails, so I sat down to paint them pretty late last night. Aside from the time issue, I used my new peel-off basecoat, Ready for Takeoff by UNT. I wouldn't have used that, BUT, I've been doing some damage to my nails lately. I don't know why, but I've been picking at them. Must be nerves or something, but anyway, this was an attempt to minimize the damange I'd do by picking my polish. So, since I wasn't sure how long my nail polish would actually stay on using a peel-off basecoat, I didn't want to put too much work into my paint job.

I got this glitter from Sally's. It's by Bitzy and it is called Funky Melon. Since the glitters are huge and neon and there was no purple in it, I decided to try it over purple. But first, I topped my purple with Fairy Dust by China Glaze, because DUH - everything is better with glitter! I wasn't planning to stamp over the glitter, but I really did not like the way it looked just plain. So I stamped this pattern, which was picked out by my son. I thought it would look horrible, but I actually kind of like it now. Funny how you smush a bunch of ugly things together and it sometimes turns out really cool. LOL

Anyway. My stamping is a little off on my pointer finger and thumb. I'm still using the second stamper I ever bought, back in 2011. It's a squishy eraser-colored one that I ordered from Germany, because I was having no luck with my konad stamper. I have some nice clear stampers, but they don't always pick up well, so there is no point in that. I have a few coming from Ali Express that I'm pretty excited to try, but we'll see how that goes when they get here. Maybe I won't be stamping crooked for much longer. Here's hoping! 🙂

UNT Peel-Off base coat, On a Trip by Wet n Wild, Funky Melon by Bitzy;
BornPretty plate BP-11;
Embellishment from BornPretty;
Stamping technique

I have been pretty quiet on here...

I have been pretty quiet on here, but I guess it's just because I feel about socialized out lately.  I'm not sure what it is, but I have a feeling that it's because I'm going everywhere and doing everything all the time.  Too much work.  Too much school.

At some point during all of that I have my kid and my ani-pals to take care of, chores, an online class, etc., to deal with.  Granted I'm not as stressed as last semester (yet!), but I just feel really anti-social.  In what little free time I have I've been watching nail art tutorials and nail art tool reviews on YouTube and lamenting my lack of time and money.  🙁

What I did for fun this weekend was stay holed up in my bedroom working on my Access database for Polish All the Things.  I learned a few things and it was cool.  Then I accidentally deleted part of it, but opened an older version and fixed my idiotic mistake and now I have a backup because I nearly had a heart attack when that happened and it was just super dumb to not have a backup.  Lesson learned.

Just finished my ethics homework for the week.  I think it's time to take a shower and then either work on my database some more... or possibly even paint my nails.  Nails is probably a safer bet because that ends.  I could sit here endlessly tinkering in Access.  😂

I hope you had a nice weekend.  I have no complaints.  🙂❤

Tried something new this weekend.

Tried something new this weekend. Instead of water marbling and dipping each finger I made one design, let it dry on the water, carefully took it out, and then cut it up and used them like decals. I don't know if I would always be able to make that work, but my nails are so short and nubby right now that it went just fine. I liked doing it that way because you USUALLY waste less polish, and it's USUALLY much less messy.

However, this time it was a huge mess. I spilled not only hot water on myself, but 3 open bottles of nail polish. EPIC FAIL. I was sitting there saying to Shadow (in an attempt to elicit help from him) "HOT WATER! NAIL POLISH!" Those are about all the words I could manage for a minute because I could not believe what I'd just done. He just looked at me like I was crazy until I screamed for him to get a towel.

I'm usually much more calm and prepared when doing my nails, but I had a "dying vole on my porch" type of situation to handle so I found myself suddenly chatting with Wild Mammal Care in the middle of my nail-doing. They asked me if she'd moved and when I got up to check I spilled everything everywhere because I am awesome. Also, my little porch vole didn't make it. 🙁 I'm not super surprised, though, because you don't see them out usually unless something is wrong.

So yeah. Nubs for now. That is what happens when I go a month without polish. My new nail / cuticle oil is doing a great job on keeping my nails from peeling, but having some layers of polish on is really what protects mine from breaking.

Also, pardon all the bubbles in my topcoat. It was getting too thick, but I gave my polish thinner to a friend so I just had to deal with it. LOL I gotta put thinner on my list of things to buy ASAP. Those bubbles drive me crazy!

Embellishments from BornPretty;
Watermarble technique