Various Adulations About Life, Screencapped

Nail Diary: 2 New Teal Designs & 1 Tutorial!

TUTORIAL: GOLD TIPS with GUIDE STICKERS

Easiest nails ever. For once, the nails on my right hand don’t look like crud compared to my left one. The secret is: nail guide stickers!

Materials:

1. Bottom color: I wanted teal, so I used La Girls Disco Brites in Turntable. You can use any bottom color you want, though.

2. Gold Tip color: You’ll need a really pigmented, one-coater gold for this one. Sheer gold polishes won’t work. I used Caress Frosted in Pure Gold.

3. Nail Guide Stickers from Onestop Kikayshop, who is my go-to seller for my nail foils and other cute thangs

4. Top Coat: Revlon Color Stay Always On Sealant

5. Tiny brush for fixing mistakes. I dip it in polish remover and work it around my cuticle after my manicure’s done to remove excess polish.

How To:

1. Paint your nails with the bottom color.

Wait until your bottom color is 200% dry before doing this next step or else you’ll wanna cry if it gets messed up, lol.

2. Remove stickers from pack, and then stick to your thigh to remove some of the “stickiness”. The less sticky it is, the less likely it will pull up your bottom color with it when you peel it off.

3. Apply nail guide stickers to completely dry bottom color.

(sorry about the photos. It would get cloudy/sunny randomly so I had to keep moving to different parts of the house… heh)

4. Apply Gold color on the tip of the nail not covered by the sticker. Wait a few minutes, then apply another coat. Wait 2 more minutes and remove sticker. (you can apply stickers to all 5 nails and then apply the color, or do it a nail at a time.)

My favorite part about these stickers is that I don’t need a particularly steady hand or any amazing artistic skills to make my mani look consistent or symmetrical, which for me is the hardest part about doing your own manicures.

5. Dip the tiny nail brush in polish remover and clean up around the sides, crevices, and cuticles.

6. Apply your favorite topcoat and you’re done.

Enjoy your snazzy new mani! <3

***********************

Here’s the other teal look I had for the week: Teal, turquoise and yellow dots!

It’s pretty easy, just paint all your nails except one your main color, and paint the remaining nail with a complementary color. Then use a dotting tool to make dots!

{p.s. Figured out a new setup for photographing nails at night. Seems to work well, I’m just using my kit lens for this!}

Right hand:

Left:

I’m pretty smitten with this design, it’s so simple but it really catches your eye. <3

p.s. I’ve actually been trying not to bite my fingernails so much, and because I’ve been sick I haven’t been able to play gigs. It’s amazing what a few weeks of not playing guitar makes, LOL. I actually have passable cuticles now. I’ve also been massaging them with olive oil - it seems to really help moisturize them.

P.P.S I was cleaning out my camera memory cards and found this old photo (withless fab cuticles lol) of a yellow, orange and blue design tip design:

Happy manis,

Jad

{More nail posts here. :)}

Give Chipped Nails a Makeover!

Summer’s here! I had teal/sea-green nails from a photoshoot, but I wanted to spruce them up. So I did a simple tape manicure.

1. Paint nails any bright teal/turquoise color. I used Sea Green from San San. I also have a thin layer of Chunky Holo Bluebell by Kleancolor on top of the Sea Green, so there are little holographic flakes.

2. Wait for your nails to be 200% dry. In fact, tape manis work better if you do the taping part the next day! It’s because half-dry polish will come up with the tape when you rip it off. To make sure tape isn’t super sticky, stick it on and off your arm before taping it to your nail.

3. Tape over the part you don’t want any polish on. Check out Nailside, the queen of all tape manis, for instructions! I used the regular white masking tape because it isn’t too sticky, but it’s also opaque so i just winged the placement. :P

4. Paint over with 2nd layer color. I chose Goldhearted from Caronia.

5. Carefully remove tape right after painting. Don’t wait for nail polish to dry.

6. Top coat and you’re done! <3

<3

Chunky Holo Bluebell from Kleancolor… or is it?

So I’ve had this SERIOUS lemming for Chunky Holo Bluebell (#235) from Kleancolor since forever, but up until this year I had no idea how to get it short of ordering it on eBay, and I hated the prospect of buying it for 10 USD and paying shipping (another 10 USD) when Beauty Joint was selling it for $1.75!

So, when I heard about Kleancolor Philippines, I was ecstatic. I went to their facebook page, chatted them up, and they were really accommodating. Chunky Holo Bluebell wasn’t even on their list of polishes available, but I messaged them privately and asked if 235 was ever going to in stock. Surprisingly, they replied that they had it!

It was more expensive at P140.00 per bottle, plus P65.00 for shipping, but I wanted it enough to pay P205.00 for ONE bottle. And I knew it would be worth it.

When the bottle arrived though, I was a little confused.

Was this really Chunky Holo Bluebell?

I knew that Bluebell had a blue jelly base, not orange. This looked like Chunky Holo Poppy!

However, when I checked the labels, they firmly said Chunky Holo Bluebell, #235. *headscratch

Is there a different formulation for Chunky Holos in the Philippines? Or did i get a mislabeled bottle?

When I swatched it, the base color really was orange, not blue.

I was kinda ready to get all lip quivery and stuff (ok I exag) but I knew from posts I read on the internet that the Chunky Holos are pretty much identical when layered on dark base polishes…

(photos from here)
(l-r: Purple, bluebell, black)

(l-r: candy, poppy, fuschia)

All these polishes were layered over a black base polish. As you can see, they’re pretty much all identical, even though the bottles look really different from each other.

(photos from here)

….so maybe I could still get a Bluebell effect with this weird bottle I got.

I put on a dark blue duochrome base polish - my L.A. Girls Rockstar Laquer in PunK:

It’s a duochrome glittery polish that shines blue or purple, depending on the light.

Then I layered two coats of Chunky Holo Bluebell on top of it, and took better DSLR photos. Here are the results:

(fluorescent light)

Depending on the angle you hold your hand out, the photos can look pretty different. Here the red and purple holos stand out.

(halogen lights)

Here’s a blurry photo to show how many colors there are when you shift your fingers around.

All in all, I’m happy with the end result, but it was as much a choice of the colors for layering as it was the contents of the Kleancolor Holo polish. If I had chosen an orange or red base color, I wouln’t have gotten this satisfying range of colors. So, I’m happy that this polish looks great with the right choices, but disappointed that I got a bottle that doesn’t look anything like Chunky Holo Bluebell!

What do you think? Do you think it’s a mislabeled bottle?

UPDATE:

Okay, so I messaged Kleancolor Phils and they said it’s absolutely not a mislabeled bottle, but they could be doing it for good business, right? Deny all mistakes and all that? Anyway, I’m tired of feeling bad about a bottle of nail polish lol.

CONSISTENCY:
I’m updating to blog a little more about the formula and consistency of this polish - the consistency is average, and if you buy the glittery kind, it will go on thick and goopy after a couple of coats. Which is normal. It’s also crazy long-lasting.

DRYING TIME:
Longer than average. I had to use my insta-dry topcoat just to make it dry faster, but I didn’t mind. If you’re impatient, this polish might frustrate you. It took like 10 mins for my hand to dry, and even then it still felt mushy-wobbly when I touched my nail. I made sure to spend the next hour just typing or surfing the net instead of eating, washing my hands, or handling any linty stuff.

SMELL:

The smell is really strong, in the paint-thinner range kind of strong, so if you’re sensitive, this polish might not be for you (and I heard it’s not 3-free).

I also found the smell REALLY familiar. I’d bought a couple of other bottles from a different brand called Max Makeup Cherimoya that smelled EXACTLY the same as this bottle of Kleancolor polish. So I rummaged through my nail polish bin and held it side by side with the KC bottle.

WAT, IT LOOKS EXACTLY THE SAME AS MY MAX MAKEUP CHERIMOYA BOTTLE

Same smell, same shape, same consistency.

Same drying time, same holographic glitter sizes (with the exception of the stars, also holographic)

Sister company? I know nail polish companies totally produce a bazillion different lines of the same polish formulas, renaming them, re-inventing old colors and combinations and just releasing them under new marketing ploys, so I’m thinking this is one of those things. *shrug

Here are the names of these two polishes. The Max Makeup Cherimoya one, a clear jelly base with holographic glitter (small round ones and big stars) is called Silver Star.

Swatches of the Cherimoya polishes soon!

<3

More nail stuff here.

If you’re like me and you were born in the 80’s, then you most certainly spent your childhood in the 90’s watching Rude Dog and the Dweebs or Rocky and Bullwinkle, thought Hulk Hogan was really cool, and listened to a lot of No Doubt and The Refreshments (or Backstreet Boys, depending on your preference, heh). You also got the crap scared out of you by Silence of the Lambs and had all the Spielberg movies rented for you by your dad over at the VCR shop.

And if you were aware of all the prints and patterns back then, you knew that almost every kid had some sort of neon tribal print on them somewhere. Seriously, this print and pattern was all the rage:

I totally owned like three pairs of sneakers that had this print. I thought I was FUNKY FRESH lol.

So anyway, I was looking at my new XL-C plate and I noticed that one of the patterns looked just like that 90’s print:

And I decided I would do a 90’s mani to commemorate my neony, rap-infused but quite endearing childhood.

I like to lay out everything I need before starting a manicure. This is because you don’t want to be opening packages or rummaging around in a bin looking for a tool or particular polish bottle while your nails are wet. It’s really annoying. Cavewoman predilections may surface under duress (i.e a smudged manicure that you spent 2 hours on) otherwise.

L-R:

I’ve got my basecoat, quickdrying topcoat, and my revlon one (i’ll explain why I have 2 topcoats later), my acetone dispenser, caronia in pumpkin(orange), caronia in sweet surprise(yellow), bobbie in some greeny color, a pink L.A. colors disco brites one, a P10-bottle of teal, San-San in Sea Green, Caronia in a purple color, SkinFood Matte Black(for stamping), and a Disco Brites one in white (base color).

I also have my super soft stamper and scraper set, and my XL-C plate.

I get my image plates from my favorite nail-related things seller, Onestop Kikayshop. I just love her shop, and the seller herself is a complete sweetheart.

Plus some Q-Tips and a big cardboard square as my work surface, that i put a piece of paper on. (You don’t need the paper - I put it there for better photos).

Not in photo is a big ready bag of round cotton pads (like cotton balls but flat and shaped like circles), and an old organza bag that I chuck used Q-tips and dirty cotton balls in.

Step 1:

Paint all your nails in a bright white polish. Use anything you like, and it doesn’t have to be super neat either. You’ll be covering all the white in other nail polish colors.

Reason for white undercoat: The colors you lay out on top will be AMAZINGLY BRIGHT. You want the brightest possible colors you can get because the 90’s prints were neon and could put your eye out.

TIP: For even whiter white, use acrylic paint underneath and layer a white polish over it. But if this seems like too much work, skip the acrylic paint step.

STEP 2: Brush stripes or streaks of color over the white. You can mix up the pattern, but I just made straight lines.

My left thumb has yellow, orange, pink and purple.

See what I mean about really bright colors? Plz to excuse my gross palm with polish smears.

STEP 3: Put a coat of basecoat over the mani. Then layer a quickdrying top coat over it to make it even more durable.

REASON FOR THIS STEP: The next thing you’re going to do is stamp an image over the stripes. If you make a mistake, you can go back and erase the top layer where your stamped image is without damaging the mani underneath becauuuuuse…. yep. You put a basecoat and topcoat before you stamped. You can only do this once or twice though, so try your best not to make too many mistakes.

STEP 4: Take your stamping plate, your stamper and scraper, and your stamping polish. You will also need to have your cotton balls pre-soaked in polish remover before you start. Now stamp the chosen image on your nails.

I won’t be posting the pictures of how I stamped the image on my nails because I only have 2 hands lol and I can’t take pics and stamp at the same time. But you can totally view like ten thousand tutorials on youtube on how to stamp your nails:

Here’s one that I randomly picked. (she says in this video that you can’t use normal polish for stamping, but you can. Just use the thickest, gloppiest polishes you have for stamping. Experiment first before trying it.)

I used SkinFood Matte Black for stamping. It’s thick and gloppy and I hate it for polishing my nails because it’s ridiculously expensive (P360) for a teensy bottle, has a lame satiny finish that’s not really matte, and it gets oily and shiny after about 2 hours. Terrible polish for regular use, amazing polish for stamping. Problem solved!

Here are my nails after I stamped the image on them. As you can see, the images on the XL-C plate are quite large and cover my whole nail and part of my finger!

Do NOT clean them yet. Just leave them like that until you’ve finished stamping all your nails.

Here’s my other hand. This photo was taken with a flash - the colors really stand out!

STEP 5: Put basecoat over all your nails.

TIP: Pull up a moderate amount of basecoat on the brush, enough so that when you hold it over the nail you get a little round bead that you can now proceed to spread out over your nail without really touching the mani underneath. This is called “floating the bead” and prevents your manicure from smearing. I used a basecoat because it is much less likely to react with your manicure and smear it than a regular topcoat.

Once your basecoat is in place, you can apply a topcoat as normal. I used my Revlon top coat for the final coat.

STEP 6: Once all your nails are dry, take a Q-tip soaked in polish remover and clean up around your nails carefully. Take care not to catch the Q-tip on your finished mani - if it already has a top coat on it, the layers underneath will have all fused together and will come away when it comes into contact with a polish-soaked cotton ball or Q-tip.

Ya ready for diz? I took a whole buttload of pics:

I love my Remembering the 90’s Mani!

For more nail posts on my blog, click here.

p.s. I got my soft stamper (I will never go back to regular stampers again) and polish remover dispenser (which I absolutely love, because now I don’t waste polish remover and I don’t have to hold the bottle to dispense it!) from Awesome Nails. She is an absolute doll. She always sends me freebies every time I order!

XL-C Image Plate and Gold Aztec Nails

There are large (well, XL to be exact) nail stamping plates out on the market, and they go all the way from A to G, if I’m not mistaken.

But I only wanted one, yessiree. I knew exactly which plate I needed in my life, and that was the XL-C plate.

I get my image plates from my favorite nail-related things seller, Onestop Kikayshop. I just love her shop, and the seller herself is a complete sweetheart.

Anyway, the plate arrived yesterday!

As you can see, it’s not quite XL as the name says, as it’s smaller than a document pouch. But, it is significantly larger than most image plates being sold on the market, like the Konad or Bundle Monster ones.

Here’s the label engraved on the lower right side of the plate. It’s covered in thin blue plastic, and I managed to peel off a little bit of it to show the true color of the plate underneath.

(It was a bitch peeling off all that plastic! It felt like it was melted ONTO the plate, it stuck so well. But it wasn’t.)

I tried to keep my annoying reflection out of the photos, ok. But I couldn’t figure out a way to do that and STILL get a good photo. heh.

But anyway, just look at that paisley detail! I kinda let out a little scream when I saw all the perfect images. I love aztec prints, I really do, and this plate has them in SPADES.

Guh, gorgeous images.

I tried out a Gold and Black combo for my first XL-C image test and here are the results below:

(Base coat: Caress Frosted in Pure Gold
Stamping Polish: Skinfood Matte Black
Topcoat: Revlon Always On Colorstay Scellant
Stamping Kit: NOT Konad lol. I have a brandless China set that works just as well!)

I didn’t stamp perfectly and probably put top coat too soon so some images are smudged. But the images themselves when transferring from image plate to the stamper are crisp, clear, and incredibly detailed.

For other posts about this image plate (i.e. gurls with bettah nails and more photos of the plate), check out these links:

http://spellbindingnails.blogspot.com/2011/07/xl-c-when-jade-met-black.html

http://thenailphile.blogspot.com/2011/01/che-delaney-xl-plates.html

I absolutely love this image plate and I’m so glad I got it!

I decided I was sick of black and white and wanted some color. Hazmat nails in da heezy.

More Nail Designs on my blog here.

I missed having cute nails so I did a Navajo/tribal-ey mixed print design on them. I also used acrylic paint for the first time, and I’m pretty happy with the result!

I used student grade acrylic paint from National Bookstore. All I can say is, they work JUST as fine as any old fancy schmancy acrylic paint you buy from overpriced nail sellers!

Oh and kaman, guys. Don’t buy those ridiculous brush sets that are obviously makeup brushes repackaged as nail brushes and priced waaaaaaay over the regular cost of art brushes. Why would I pay 500 pesos for that?! I went to a local art supply store, and bought a set of redonkulously cheap art brushes (12 brushes for 40 pesos). I asked for the thinnest ones they had. Lo and behold, they had them.

I had some that weren’t as thin as I wanted, so I got out a pair of scissors and trimmed them to the thickness, length, and taper that I wanted.

Voila!

Really Lazy Nails of the Day

I’ve been very busy with work and music related stuff, so there’s been a decided lack of fashion or nail-related posts on this blog. I only had time to do this really easy nail design the other day, and it wasn’t even properly dried before something had to be attended to.

I also can’t post any designs meant for long nails, because I play the guitar and need to keep my nails short.

Aaaaanyway, I just made small stripes using the colors teal, yellow and orange on a gray background:

I like designs that have good color payoff for such a small amount of effort!

The Caronia Sweet Bliss Collection is a very good range in my opinion, in terms of color intensity. They work rad for stamping!

ps. I tried mattifying my thumb, but I liked the colors better when they were glossy so I put a glossy topcoat over my thumb after I took this photo.

Here’s everything I used:

Caronia Sunkissed, Revlon Colorstay “Always On Sealant” topcoat, San san gray nailpolish (I forgot the name), Caronia Sweet Surprise, and Caronia On-The-Go.

1. Apply gray base on all nails first. Let dry.

2. Apply longest streak of color first on all nails. I did this first with On-The-Go.

3. Apply other streaks of color. I used orange first, and then yellow.

4. Apply topcoat.

5. Done!

I’ve been feeling sick all week, so here’s an appropriate nails of the day post.

I also realized that using a design is as much dependent on colors as it is on the form.

I used a zebra print stamping image over alternating red and light yellow nails, and they came out looking like veins.

You might say they look like brilliant Filipino designer Kermit Tesoro’s hypertrophy shoes.

I don’t really pay attention to designer labels very much, but I couldn’t help but notice Kermit Tesoro’s designs, which walk that fine line between morbidity and instant, instant love. What an amazing eye for marrying the strange with wearability!