Leadlight Manicure

Hello Jellos!  

I am very excited to show off this manicure.  It reminds me of Tiffany lamps.  I wouldn't be surprised if this image has been used with the leadlight technique before but I haven't seen it.  If you know of a link or you used it, please leave the link in the notes so I can take a peek and maybe discover a new blog! :)

1 coat Billie Cosmetics White

Stamped using a frankened black and stained glass image from Cheeky XL Plate "A"

Filled in with a small dotting tool and all my franken sheers

1 gentle coat of sparkly SH Diamond Strength Diamonds

Seche Vite to finish!

 

This manicure wore like iron.  I lightly sanded my nails, and because I knew I'd be adding a coat of sparkle I didn't want to stack up too many layers, I opted to only use one thin coat of white.  I applied it as evenly as I could get it.  Once the stamp and sheers went on top the unevenness was hardly noticeable.  I wore this for a full week! Big win, considering the time it took to meticulously fill in all those little spaces.  Totally WORTH IT.  I got tons of compliments and they felt SUPER pretty! Even when the tips began to chip a bit it was not really noticeable. 

The winners of my Gone So Long Giveaway have responded by the deadline, and their parcels are going in the mail this afternoon!  Congratulations!  I can't wait to start amassing some new goodies for the next giveaway!

Do you have a favorite leadlight manicure?  Please send me to see it!
Thank you for peeking!
♥
JQ

Franken Sheer Easter Manicure

Greetings Jellybeans!

How was your Easter?  I wore this eggtacular mani for the weekend.  Alas, it is chipped so I can't keep it much longer, but it was fun while it lasted!

 2 coats Billie Cosmetics white creme

Blobs of all five of my home made franken sheer goodies!

Stamped using Billie Cosmetics white creme and a formerly untried image from Cheeky XL A

Seche Vite to seal it all up!

What did you wear for Easter?  Go ahead, give me another lemming!  I definitely don't mind!

In other exciting news, my Gone So Long Giveaway has ended!  The winners have been notified via email from my fripperydigitsblog gmail address. Congratulations! Please email me back asap!  I realize now I never put a deadline for response in my Giveaway announcement post, but it's usually 48 hours.  I will give you until the end of Wednesday April 23 to respond. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you all for peeking!  Happy Polishing!

♥ ♥ ♥

JQ

Bright Bundle Monster Arrowheads

Summer is around the bend and I'm busting out the sunshine!

2 coats Pure Ice Superstar!

Vertical gradient using Franken Sheers: Pink and Yellow

Stamped using BM-410 and Billie Cosmetics White

Seche Vite

I designed this image from the Bundle Monster CYO 2013 images plate set.  I'm super proud of it!  I submitted another 10 images for this year's contest and I'm looking forward to finding out what kind of images make this years set(s).  I'm in love the CYO 2013 set because it was basically designed by a bunch of nail heads and ALL the images are totally badass.

 

I'm really happy with how the pink and yellow blended to make that awesome peach colour in the center.  This manicure looks amazeballs in the sun and shade, and if I do it again I want to try using some very fine glitter between the gradient and the stamp.  Maybe some Cover Girl Boundless Color Pink Twinkle or City Lights.  Or China Glaze Fairy Dust.  ALL THE SPARKLY.

What's on your nails today?  Do you have or know of a cool nail art blog I should check out?  Did you design any of the images from this set--or do you have a favorite image? Leave a link if you like!  Thanks for peeking!

♥

JQ

Psssst!  Only 4 more days to enter my  Giveaway! 

Black and White Blended Stamp on China Glaze Concrete Catwalk

Ooooh! I really love this one! 

Base: Seche Clear

Main Colour: China Glaze Concrete Catwalk

Stamp Colour: Claire's Black Hole, Billie Cosmetics French White

Image Plate: BM-221

All images should be click-able for a closer look! I hope you like it... 

Thanks for peeking!

♥

JQ

Born Pretty Nail Art Tape Hex Glitter Review

 

Hooray! I have always been excited at the idea of receiving products for review and in March I was contacted by Born Pretty Store to choose 1 or 2 products that came to less than 10$ to try!  I was really excited to have the opportunity and I and selected  Nail Striping Tape and Hexagon Nail Glitters!! 

Born Pretty advertizes free shipping worldwide, and shipping within 24 hours.  I was told my goodies would be here anywhere between 3-5 weeks.  My order went in on March 12 and I received my parcel on April 3, almost bang on 3 weeks. I live in Canada and they ship from Hong Kong/Singapore, so I was quite happy with that.  Typically, if I get free shipping I am happy with whenever it gets here unless I'll be old and grey.  ;p

I was about halfway back to my house from the mailbox when I busted into the envelope. The items were neatly packaged, and the glitters were sealed, so there wasn't any shrapnel. Not that it wouldn't have been pretty seeing all the colours of glitter burst out into the air and land willy nilly in the snow. (Yes, we still have snow.  A lot of snow.  TOO MUCH SNOW.)

Onwards! 

 Pretty! (Canada penny for size, eh?)

Now for the nail art! I thought a skittle manicure would be appropriate.  That way I could try a few different things.  I got the pink and blue nail tapes so I chose the pink and blue hex glitters to go with them:
 

 My base white is Billie Cosmetics from the Dollar Tree.  

I'm really happy with it!  It was super fun to try the honeycomb hex manicure, even though I obviously need to practice my placement, and I always wanted to try a woven tape manicure.  It took a long time to just do that little section, but I'd love to try an entirely woven accent nail.

I like the way the tape peels off quite easily to be repositioned, but would recommend doing this as little as possible because I think it eventually discolored the tape a little wherever it bent, stretched or overlapped.  I will also have to experiment with different topcoats.  I used Seche Vite on this, and the discoloration became very noticeable on the woven tape.  Again I think this has to do with just how much I messed with it to get it just right. The tape is uniform, shiny and easy to work with, but tweezers are pretty much a must have because it is so fine.  

 

I admit I am most excited to use this tape for masking purposes, as I am not a fan of stickers on my nails, and have a tendency to pick and peel them off no matter how I try to seal them in with topcoat.  I have seen some pretty manicures where the tape was used horizontally on the nail, and I think I might try that, because it is less likely the tape will peel, or that I will pick at it.

The Color Club clear coat I used to adhere the Hex glitter didn't stick them to my nail as strongly as I would have liked.  I think if I do a hex mani again I will just use dots of nail glue and do each one individually, to ensure that I can wear it for a few days or more.  If it's gonna take that much time and effort I want it to stick around.  

 

I found the glitters to be mostly consistent, with the occasional misshapen one, or chunk where they weren't totally cut.  You can click on any of these images for a bit closer look.  You can see some of the odd shaped glitters in the shot above.  I just tipped out a bit of glitter on the paper to get an idea of  uniformity.  I think for the price I got a great variety of colour that will do just nicely for my needs.  I kinda like the odd shaped ones or half glitters for filling spaces when I am getting close to my cuticle or the tip of my nail.   You can even see one pink weirdo on the tip of my pointer fingernail.  ;p  I think it adds character. 

All in all I was very satisfied with my purchase, and will definitely be looking around the Born Pretty Store for more fun nail candy to try.  I think my next adventure will be flocking powder.  

If you are into nail art like stamping, stickers, foil, tape, glitter or flocking powder this is definitely a cool place to shop. My only other note was that I had to double check pricing on some of the products I was looking at because on the initial listing it looked like I would be paying one stellar price for a set, but once I clicked to get more information I realized I would have to pay per unit.  The pricing was still reasonable though.

If you are thinking about going shopping at Born Pretty Store, please feel free to use this coupon code for a 10% discount!  If 10  or more people use this code we can have a giveaway!

Have you tried an Born Pretty products?  Do you have a favorite nail goody?
If you have any other questions about these products I will be happy to answer them. These items have been provided for honest review by Born Pretty Store, and I appreciate the opportunity to share my opinion of these products with you!

Thanks very much for stopping by. Happy Polishing!

Cheeky Image Plate Review

GUYS. I got some seriously CHEEKY mail a week and a half ago. ;p

I splurged and ordered these fabulous rectangular nail plates from Cheeky.  AND THEY ARE SO BADASS.

I am a Bundle Monster gal.  I have 6 Konad plates from when I first started and the rest are all BM. I LOVE THEM. 

But a good friend and fellow nail head let me in on the fact that you could get these other image plates through amazon.ca  And that they had pretty much a whole plate full of PAISLEY. I got 8 plates. The price has even gone down slightly from when I bought these, but my order averaged to less than 10$/plate, which I think is pretty reasonable.  I did the math, counting all the images over 8 Cheeky plates. There are 563.  In the 3 BM sets there are 440. I also took the average images per BM set.  (140, 150, 150) which is about 146.5.  Then divided the number of images in the Cheeky set by 145.5 to see how many BM sets it is the equivalent to. 3.84.  Anyways.  I'm not a math wiz by any stretch, but that was enough to tell me I got a pretty decent deal. SO. PICTURES.

The packaging was great.  Inside the bubble wrap lined envelope, each plate had a little sleeve of bubble wrap.  I got a cute little card congratulating me.  It's a party!  A nail art party! 

 

They all had that nice protective blue film that just peels away, and a really cool touch is that each plate is backed with pink plastic and it extends beyond the plate, so it gives a really nice finish, while keeping your paws, the table, and the other plates from getting scratched.

Shiney!

 

Another thing I really appreciate is the size of the full nail images.  They are nice and big! Big enough that I can select the area to paint and transfer to the nail. Every full nail image has one concave edge that makes them very versatile;  It eliminates the need to have separate images for french tips, and gives me the option for a moon manicure effect as well.I have decent sized fingernails, and I really dislike trying to double stamp.  It's so hard to get a good seam. 

For reference here is a picture of the large Cheeky images next to a larger BM image and the original BM full nail image:

I also like that a lot of the images have reflections so you can stamp the other paw, or mess around with mirroring.



Not only do they do reflections, but also a few different sizes of the same image.  So you can do that darn pinky finger the same as the others, or give the thumb a big one.  :)

 

 Thanks Cheeky!



I'm a fan!



Here are a few pics of the manicures I have done so far:

 

The very first one was the celtic image.  I absolutely HAD to find out what that looked like.

Base: China Glaze Concrete Catwalk 

Stamp: GOSH Metallic Green.  

Plate: Cheeky D

Top: Seche Vite



Manicure #2 kinda reminded me of circuit boards.
Base: Finger Paints Go Van Gogh
Stamp: Essie Good as Gold
Plate: Cheeky B
Top: SV



 Manicure #3 was subtle. I only got a quick shot in the evening, but irl it looked way prettier.
Base: Sally Hansen CSM: Wet Clay
Stamp: Billie Cosmetics Reign
Plate: Cheeky B
Top: SV



Currently!

Base: Sponge gradient OPI Off With Her Red, CR #89, Billie Cosmetics Orange
Stamp: Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Black Heart
Plate: Cheeky A
  Top: SV


Thank you so much for popping by!  Happy painting!

♥
JQ