Mosaic Tiles

Hiii! Hope everyone is having a good Sunday!

I was in the mood for a fancy-ish design recently unlike the simple stuff I was feeling the past few weeks so I pulled out some stuff and got to work. I've seen this design on several Instagram pages in past months and figure I'd give it a try.

Products Used:

ORLY Bonder Basecoat

Wet N Wild French White Cream

OPI I Just Can't Cope-acabana

OPI DS Reflection

OPI DS Extravagance

ORLY Luxe

Glisten & Glow HK Girl

Striping Tape

#00 Nail Art Brush

Tweezers

Scissors

Clean-up Brush

Here's how it went down.

I did one kinda thick coat of French White Cream on my middle and ring fingers and went over with a thin coat of HK Girl. I wanted it to dry quickly so I could apply the striping tape.. Be sure to wait until the base is completely dry before applying the tape. Once that was dry I applied striping tape horizontally and then diagonally in a criss-cross style to create little triangles on the nail. I then filled in each little triangle with DS Reflection, DS Extravagance and Luxe in as random a design as possible. Once all the triangles were done I pulled off the striping tape and went over with a final coat of HK Girl.. 

My other naked nails got two coats of I Just Can't Cope-acabana and everything was then sealed with HK Girl.

Here's the finished product. It reminded me of mosaic tiles hence the name of the post.

Hope you like it. Until next time...

My First Stamping Attempt

Last night I got bit by the stamping bug and got up and tried it today.

I purchased my first stamping plates from galcosmetics.com about four years ago. It's so long I can't even find them online (not sure if their name changed or they're no longer in business). I bought them, used them once and failed and never used them again. I love stamping designs and everyone seems so good at them but I'm forever hard on myself so after my first attempt was a failure I gave up.

Fast forward to last night...not sure what got into me, but I wanted to stamp and I knew I wouldn't fail lol *toots own horn*. I started by testing out my gold and silver polishes over different colours on a blank sheet of paper and settled on an oxblood and gold colour scheme.

Products Used:

Orly Bonder Basecoat

Essie Sole Mate

Orly Luxe

Gal Cosmetics GA35 Stamping plate

HK Girl Top Coat

Konad Stamper

Konad Scraper

Clean Up Brush

Fair warning, It's going to be picture heavy.

I started with a base of 2 coats of Essie Sole Mate followed by a coat of HK Girl top coat to speed up the drying time. Once that was dry I picked out my stamping plate and selected a design. Stamping is easy the tricky part for me is lining up and the design and getting it onto my nail in the position I want.

Gal Cosmetics GA35 stamping plate

the image I used

Quick breakdown of the steps:

Step 1: Paint ever stamping design with polish of choice

Step 2: Using the scraper, scrape away the excess polish

Step 3: Press/roll stamper over design

Step 4: Line up design and press/roll on nail

my Cinderella hand

I like how it came out, it's not perfect and I definitely need practice.

On another note, I am beyond frustrated with the quality of my pictures.I'm using the camera on my Iphone 5s because I can't afford a fancy schmancy camera right now. I know of other people who use their phone cameras and get good results so no idea what I'm doing wrong.

Any advice is welcome.

Until next time...