Green, White & Red...

So time for another lot of christmas nails.  This time I had the idea of presents & luckily had the Konad plate to go with it.

I used Christmas colours as my base coats, two red, two green & one white nail.  I used a cheap red from Korea called Dear Face (gotta love their use of English).

W2000 (korean won)

For the white & green I used the konad polishes (although you're not technically supposed to use them as base coats.  It doesn't specify why, but from experience I'd say its because their thicker & take way longer to dry).

The plate is Konad M65, sorry for the crappy picture, there hasn't been a nice sunny day to take pictures yet (so much for a hot kiwi christmas!).

I used the striped looking whole nail plate.

I used multi colours for stamping each nail too & on the middle white nail I used Konad Wine Red, Green special polish & Gold special polish.

Konad wine red (it doesn't come out this dark, but it tends to look like black in the bottle).

W4000 (Korean won)

Konad special polish, white.

$5.99 NZ

Konad special polish green.

(which I also used as a base coat)

$8.99 NZ

Konad special polish Gold.

$8.99 NZ

Those last two polishes are a pre christmas present myself as I realized I was missing two vital christmas colours for stamping my nails :)

Anyway here is the finished product:

I blobbed Green, Red & Gold onto the plate & it seemed to work out okay.

Close up of my thumbs (these are using a mix of Konad plate M12 & Bundle Monster plates BM-213 & Bm-225)

So christmasy!

And view of all my nails & yes I have painted my toes to match :)

Till next week (with yet another set of Christmasy nails)

Nikki

:o)

Red, White, Gold & Green - Christmas Swirls...

Its December - yay! Cause that means 4 weeks of christmas nails :) I had wanted to try out water marbling on my nails for a while so after checking out a few blogs & youtube videos I decided to give it a go.

The first attempts weren't so flash - its harder than it looks!  Here's a run down of a steps I took.

Tools I used

Masking tape + skewers (tooth picks will do but we didnt have any)

plastic cup (or something that it won't matter if it gets nail polish stuck to it) half filled with water.  And of course a piece of newspaper or cardboard to catch any drips.  Also use a table or stable surface, I used my bed & every time I moved, so too did my design floating on the water!

My Christmas colours:

A mixture of expensive & cheap.  The two revlon ones worked best, although cause their were quite thin they spread quickly.  The green was a cheapy from the Korean chain shop, Skin Food & the white is from a french manicure set by Kiss.

Step 1.

Tape masking tape around your nail as close as you can (I used about 4 pieces).  Any skin you miss will be covered in nail polish so tape well :)

Step 2.

Drop colours in one at a time inside one another to create a bulls eye.  I had to play around with this due to the different thickness of the nail polishes.  Also you need to do this fast otherwise the nail polish sets & when you try to stir it, it sticks to the toothpick.

Step 3.

Create pretty swirly patterns using the toothpick.  You don't have to make many lines, as too many may 'burst' the outer edge of the polish & it will get very messy looking.

Step 4. 

Dip your taped up finger into the water.  Once you've submerged your finger, use the toothpick to collect all the extra polish that's floating on the water still otherwise it will recoat your nail as you pull your finger out.  Found out that the hard way :/

Step 5.

Remove the tape once dry & add a top coat to seal in the colour.  The other thing I did was touch up the gold on a few of my nails as it spread a bit too thin on the water so didn't coat my nail very thickly.

Now I have to confess this was the first nail I did & I was quite impressed with it.  Sadly the rest of my nine nails didn't look half as good as you can see below

They look marbled, but not exactly pretty!

So I had another try the next day and they turned out much more to my liking

I didn't use white & had to repaint the gold but at least they looked christmasy this time!

Till the next set of Xmas nails

Nikki :o)

Green, Brown & Black..

It was the Mount Christmas parade last Sunday & my roller derby crew entered a float. This occasion of course, called for some themed nails - something millitary, camo or red:)

After fighting for 2 hours I finally managed to chip off & partially destroy my nails remove the Gelish with the help of some acetone.  Just a note for those thinking of getting Gelish or Shellac done, make sure you have the patience to soak it off.  After 15 mins soaking, it did soften the edges but I still had to use a sharp edged cuticle tool to scrape the rest off.  My nails aren't it too bad of condition but already the snapping has started at work :( ah well I have another Gelish manicure booked for after Christmas (darn those cheap one day site deals).

I looked at a few pictures on google & after raiding my Mum's polishes (because green & brown aren't really my colours so I don't own any polishes in those shades) decided to make my own camo pattern.

These are the colours I picked:

Loreal Jet-set 420 (about 6 years old but still works well)

LA Girl Flare (which is actually green, not the blue this photo looks like). Picked up from the make up sale the other month.

Mode Trend Setter (no idea where this one came from but thinking possibly Korea)

Miki (the only decent 'cheap' nail polish brand in NZ, bout $4 for a cute tiny bottle)

 I don't have step by step instructions.  I basically did a coat of the Loreal brown over a base coat & dabbed the other colours on top, waiting between each to let them dry.

Here's a few close ups of the finished product:

Not exactly a work of art, but looks camo enough, which is more than I could find for my outfit.

And to top it all off we won 1st place in the sport section for our float.  

Go Mount Militia Roller Derby Crew!

Nikki

:o)

Pink, Black & Stripes..

This week my nails didn't go exactly as planned.  As you'll see from the final pics, I have a different design on my thumb nails to the rest of my fingers.  That's the design I wanted but sadly I have used my konad special polish so much its almost gone :( So had to use a less polish using design.

Anyway I still have the green Gelish on my nails so had to paint over it with white polish first so it wouldn't show through the pink.  Ended up using white French tip polish I got as a gift years ago (seeing as I'm hopeless at doing French tips figured I should use the polish for something).  Ended up being such a performance to get it evenly covered, dried, etc that next week the Gelish will be gone (and possibly I will have much shorter nails after a week of work!).

After the white cover up and base coat I used Maybelline Express Finish Fushsia Fever.

Then started on my thumb nails.  Gave up after the left hand stuck more to the stamp than the nail! 

I used this plate

Konad black special polish

And here's the close up

I also attempted to add white to the gaps, didn't work that well....

After the thumb nails mini disaster, I decided to try out zebra stripes.  It worked pretty well.

I used this plate

Here's the finished product

It didn't turn out as bad as I thought :)

This sunday is the Xmas parade & as I'm skating with Roller Derby for that, I will be christmasing up my nails for that so no doubt my next post will involve red, green & white.

Nikki 

:o)

Green, Black & Blue....

After years of doing my nails & trying to show them to as many people as I could find, I figured the easier way was just to start a blog.  So here it is. Apologies in advance for the crappy/blurry pictures.  I'm still figuring out my new camera & the best angle to photograph my nails.

Anyway here's a short history on how my addiction to doing my nails started. I moved to South Korea to teach English in 2008 & received a set of Konad nail plates, stamper & scraper for my birthday.  After struggling for a few months on how to use it, a fellow Korean teacher finally showed me how to use them & I've been stamping my nails (and many other people's) ever since.  My collection of polishes has grown to about 30 & due to nail accessories being so cheap in SK, I have a ridiculous amount of stickers, jewels & nail art pens.  I also picked up a few more things while in the US last winter & the other week ordered 25 new plates from Monster Bundle (also in the US).

So without further ado here's my first manicure.

Here's what my nails looked like at the beginning of the week

As you can see they were starting to chip after a few days at work.  The blue you can see underneath is Gelish (goes on like a polish but you cure it under a UV light & it wears like a Gel or fake nails).  I've had that on for just over 4 weeks & am slowly loosing the battle to keep it on - working in fast food is NOT a job where your nails stay long for long. 

For these nails I used this greenish-blue colour I brought for bout 4000W ($4 NZ) from Missha (one of many beauty shops in SK).

Then covered my little fingers in LA Girl Cracked I got from a beauty sale for $10NZ (pretty cheap for polish here!).  It works just as well if not better than the OPI shatter polishes. Tried to get creative with the tips of my other fingers (hit and miss there as I'm less shaky with my right hand than my left).

Finally I sealed it with Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Nail hardener & painted Revolon Calcium builder stuff under my nails (helps to prevent breaking, a tip I stole off someone else's blog ;)

Then on Tuesday my package from Bundle Monster arrived - I was so excited I was skipping down the drive from the mail box.  I'd ordered 25 knockoff plates that were the same style as the Konad ones I already had but had heaps of different designs for 1/4 of the price. After reading a few positive reviews I crossed my fingers & got out the credit card.  They did not disappoint.  Here's all 25 plates

Its pretty far away I know but you can check out Bundle Monster for a close up (cost me $33NZ including postage. Took 7 days.)

So after much admiring & peeling off protective plastic on top I chose my pattern & nail polish colours.

After a base coat I used Calvin Klein Crushed Rose (which is a strange name considering its blue), which is alot darker than the picture shows.

The plate I used was BM-205 & it was the flower pattern at the top.

I used Konad special Nail polish in White (and yes those are bite marks, sometimes its really hard to open the bottle, ok).

Vola! the finished product.

And a close up.

I think they came out pretty good & can't wait to start trying the rest of the plates :)

Nikki

:o)