Pastel Leadlighting Skittlette: May NCC #4

Leadlighting: if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a great technique to make beautiful multicolored nail designs with stamping as an alternative to the time-intensive stamping decal. As far as I know, the ladies at Messy Mansion were the first to do this (or name it leadlighting). You stamp over a light polish base, then use jelly polish to color in the negative space.

I actually only have one jelly polish, so I made my own! The lovely Jacqui at CraftyNail suggested this to me after I envied her leadlighting mani using OPI Sheer Tints. I basically mixed my existing creme polishes with a little bit of top coat to make the pastel jelly. I think I probably should’ve added more of the top coat since mine is still fairly opaque, but I think it came out alright!

Skittlette #1 for May Nail Challenge Collaborative

I’m sorry for my recent lapse in posts! I was lacking in inspiration and feeling blah about any manicures I tried. And then I went on a lovely vacation, but now I’m back! I sat down last night and had a little nail party while binge watching all the shows I recorded on vacation.

First up is to catch up on May’s NCC, which is Skittles. This one is probably my least favorite, but no worries – I will spam your feed with a few more that I like a whole lot better!

And to show off the glitter better:

Index finger: Illamasqua Purity, dotted with China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint

Middle & Ring: China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint dotted with Illamasqua Purity

Pinky (and thumb, but not pictured): OPI DS Classic. I bought this a long time ago but never wore it. I thought it would really wash me out, but it’s actually a stunning nude scattered holo!

And here’s a gorgeous macro of my pinky:

Again, not my favorite mani. I think it washed me out a little bit. The Re-Fresh Mint looks a lot nicer in person at least!

Anyways, get prepared for more posts from me! Oh, and check out the other skittle/skittlette manis:

An unfortunate foray back into stamping

I’ve been doing either simple one-color manicures or varieties of gradients, so it’s been awhile since I’ve done any nail stamping. After getting some amazing image plates for the holidays, I decided I needed to get back into it.

I got a few plates from Messy Mansion and am obsessed with them! I really wanted to feature the chevron images, so I decided to do a skittlette manicure.

 

Not my best work here. Apparently it takes a little bit to get back into the swing of stamping again! So I only kept this manicure on for a day.

• Base color: Julep Malia (a pretty coral polish from Julep’s recent Resort Collection that I got as an add-on for the January 2014 Maven box). Malia is very nice, but it was pretty thick and gloopy (yes, that’s the technical term for it). Maybe that’s because it was a mini sample size bottle.
• Stamping color: A England Saint George (an absolutely gorgeous emerald green holographic polish). These pics don’t do it justice)
• Image plate: Messy Mansion MM12 – I am in love with the image on my thumb and middle finger (too bad I didn’t stamp the middle finger very well).

I almost didn’t post this, but I figured I should share failed attempts too. Plus Messy Mansion deserves high praise!