Happy International Day of Happiness!

I started my day watching a solar eclipse, so why shouldn't my nails be smiling? I only wish I were further north! Did you see it too? If you're not smiling, do something nice for yourself, and turn to happy! :-)☺:-D

I started with white nails, and stamped the smileys with Bundle Monster BM-304 and Mundo de Uñas #2 Black, and my new Creative Shop stamper that worked from the start.

I used the leadlight technique and lots of sheer polish. I finally bought some polishes for leadlighting. What I didn't think about was that the different polishes didn't have the same pigmentation. So I had to apply two coats of some colors or mix some of the colors. It might have looked better if I only used one brand...

Sheer polish used:

Ellagee: Cadium Glass - yellow
El Corazon, Aquarelle tints: #07 - red
Dance Legend, top coat aquarelle collection: Chagall - purple
Dance Legend, top coat aquarelle collection: Levitan - green
Nailstation: Whisper - orange with orange glitter
OPI: Houston We Have a Purple -blue toned red

The OPI, the green and the purple were very pigmented. The yellow was as I expected, but I needed two coats. In comparison the other two looked more pastel, even after 2 coats.

Levitan makes me think about the movie Leviathan. Have you seen it? It kind of made me feel that there's no point fighting for something...

I've not been very active here and on G+, twitter and facebook lately, but I'm trying to share photos on Instagram. If you are on Instagram, I would love to follow you. I'm nailphotosbylani. If I don't already follow you, please write your IG name in the comments section.

Can you tell that the photos of the plate are inspired by the solar eclipse? LOL!

Happy polishing!

Lani

My Entry for Nail Polish Canada's Summer 2014 Nail Art Challenge

Hello everyone!

I was invited to participate in Nail Polish Canada's Summer 2014 Nail Art Challenge. That made me very happy! :-) This is my entry. You can look at all the entries and vote for your favorite here.


Products used:

OPI: My Boyfriend Scales Walls
Butterfly nail stickers from Born Pretty Store
Snails Nail Art Pen: Truffles
Palette
Small round brush
Dance Legend Wow Prism: #35 Inhale
Dotting tools
Ellagee: Cadium Glass
Kleankolor Chunky Holo: #228 Candy, # 233 Teal, #230 Fuchsia
+ base coat and a lot of Seche Vite


I will write a separate blog post about how I did this and about these products. I'll link to it here when I've written it. But the short version is: 1. white nails 2. butterfly stickers 3. draw flowers 4. paint green background 5 LeadLight technique.

I was given the nail stickers for review, and Born Pretty Store wanted me to give you this 10% off discount coupon code: NPBL10K31, in case you want to buy something. But it looks like they have a 80% summer sale this weekend. :-)
Thank you Born Pretty Store! ♥

The Elagee polish and the nail art pen were bought from Norway Nails, and almost everything is 50% off there this weekend if you use this discount coupon code: ENDOFSUMMER.

♥ I hope you like this nail art! Have a nice weekend! Thank you Celine for inviting me! ♥

Lani

MoYou Butterflies - stamped and colored with the LeadLight technique

Hello everyone!

BUTTERFLIES was the theme for day 28 in MoYou-London's nail art challenge on Instagram. And it was one of the themes for the Sunday stamping in Adventures of Stamping. I really wanted to try the LeadLight technique after seeing a tutorial, where you create a kind of stained glass effect by painting over a stamped manicure with jelly/ sorbet/ LeadLight polishes. Thank you Messy Mansion for teaching me the technique! Unfortunately they don't ship their LeadLight Lacquer Collection outside Australia yet. So I had to improvise. Luckily I had seen a tutorial about how to use the technique with regular nail polish. I'll include both tutorials below.

I'm surprised by how well this turned out. Isn't it strange that I make the nail art that I like best when I've had a bad day and feel sad?

How I did it:

I started with white nails. For the stamping I used a butterfly plate; MoYou-London Collection -01, and Konad SN Black. Then I found a tiny brush and a dotting tool, and my different sheer polishes, and added some color. I don't have many jellies, so to make more colors, I mixed some drops of polish with clear on a palette. I used the back of a Messy Mansion stamping plate as palette. If it was opaque, I tried to mix with clear, and some jellies were not pigmented enough so I tried to mix them with polish. The glitter came from some Kleancolor Chunky Holo minis.

Here you see the palette and the products I used:

And here you see how this manicure evolved:

As you see, some of the polishes I mixed were too opaque because they covered the black stamped details, but it's not bad for a first try. What I've learned is that the polish needs to be sheer enough to not cover the stamping, and pigmented enough to color what you want in one coat. I wish I had the LeadLight Lacquers, because they also contain glitter.


Here are the ones I used that worked best that I didn't have to mix:

OPI: Houston We Have A Purple (used here)
Kleancolor 228 Chunky Holo Candy (used for nail art here and here)

Kleancolor 230 Chunky Holo Fuchsia

Kleancolor 232 Chunky Holo Clover

Here is the plate:

♥ Here are the tutorials! ♥
If you click on "YouTube", you can find their channels, see all the tutorials they've made, and subscribe.

Messy Mansion's LeadLight Technique tutorial. Messy Mansion's tutorial shows the LeadLight technique using jelly nail polish with glitter from their LeadLight Lacquer Collection, created for this nail art technique:




Eleonora Palma/ Nail Art Stamping Mania shows "the LeadLight technique in which you can  paint directly on the images stamped without covering the details (using jelly polishes)" with any type of polish:




I had fun trying this technique, mixing colors on the little palette, and finding out which of my polishes that work, and which LeadLight polishes I need. I'm waiting for some water decals, and want to try the technique over them next time.

Lani