Batik Art on Nails

Back in those days, nail painting were just a necessity to putting on your lipstick whenever you go out to avoid looking pale. Now, nail painting is not just another makeup essentials but an art, a trend and a ‘STATEMENT’. Your nails can be an ice breaker to every occasion, whether it’s just a casual outing or a beautiful au aperÇu at gala events. The base color (black) is from Skin Food BW#701 while the vines were stamped with Konad Special Polish (White) to give it that ‘Batik’ feel, and to top it off with a layer of China Glaze Wireless Holographic Top Coat to give it that extra bling.

St. Patrick's Day - Luck 'O the Irish

Hiya babes! As promised a second themed nail in conjuction with St. Patrick's Day. Granted it's a tad late but I do have a regular 9 to 5 work, but then again; it is still 17th on the most part of the world, therefore I am considered early 'USA time'.

I wasn't able to mimic the exact shamrock but I'd say I did a pretty good job at this marble.

Base colour was from China Glaze's Kaleidoscope Collection - He's Going in Circles. Dig the holo on this baybeh.

The websites describes this as a green holo but to me it leans towards blue/silver.

I decided to do the water marbling with the base colour and China Glaze - Emerald Sparkle and the closest I came to a shamrock design was this...

I alternated the placement of the polish but I think I should've stuck with the Emerald Sparkle (that's the darker colour) in the middle of the design. Out of all the nails, I think my left thumb looked the closest to that of a shamrock.

I named this Luck O' the Irish considering the shamrock-like design and the bling factor of He's Going in Circles. What do you think?

Here's more pics of me playing with the lomo camera of my iPhone with this design.

TGIF!!!!

St. Patrick's Day Themed Nails - Going Green

We Malaysians are blessed with abundant holidays compared to other countries and yet it doesn't seem to be enough for us. During recent years, we have seen a huge increase in promoting holidays celebrated around the globe (especially if it's fashioned around booze).

Tomorrow marks yet another well-known and celebrated day in Ireland. St. Patrick's Day people!!! Yeap. It's that time of the year to don the colour green, the leprechaun hat and shamrocks!

Nail-ChitChat has our own way of celebrating St. Patrick's Day this year and we have come up with two (actually three but the 3rd one is more of a second attempt) different ways we'll be wearing our nails to celebrate this festival (who doesn't like an excuse to drink?). Plus green looks oh so lovely againt a pint o lager.

Ok. Enough chatter.

Going Green (Attempt 1)
This was actually my very first attempt at drag marbling but at that time I didn't have a theme in mind and whilst browsing through my albums sorting them into posts, I thought this would go very well since I did it in different shades of green.

This green was from my very first haul which also marks my first China Glaze Polish. Re-freshmint from China Glaze's Up & Away Collection. A pale mint green with a cream finish.

I did the dragging with some nailart strippers (as shown) which I bought from the local night market. Selling at RM10 for 3 bottles I believe but they dry out pretty fast. I'm not sure if these are still usable or not. Will need to check on it.

This picture was before topcoat. You can see bald spots where I dragged the polish. I also got this like super topcoat in my first haul which claimed to be super fast drying and from the reviews of other nail bloggers it seems to work as promised.

Introducing Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat and Seche Restore. Apologise for the blurry photo. I was so excited to get my very first nail polish haul in brands of polish that I have not heard of ever in Malaysia. Basically Seche Restore is a thinning liquid in case the top coat gets dry as they claim no other brands are suited to thin the topcoat if the consistency gets too thick. Being kiasu & kiasi I didn't dare test that out as I only have that one bottle of Seche Vite top coat. But both these items were patented so it should not be pulling my leg right?

The topcoat description at the back of the box.

And.... walla... as promised... No more drag marks has been reduced to a bare minimum. Very happy that this top coat delivered.

I wasn't very happy with the outcome of this and since I already got the gist of the technique I decided to redo it (I'm fussy that way).

Going Green (Attempt 2)
I used the same base colour and the dark green nailart stripper but replaced the light green with a gold this time and I was much happier with this colour combination.

 

Apologise for the lousy photo quality as they were all taken with phone camera. Owner of Nail-ChitChat is working to improve on this.

Behind the Scenes (Epic Fail) & Love, Love Me Do

Playing catch up once again. I do apologise for the delay in posts. I did have a short hiatus between CNY and my current mani.

These few manis were actually done before CNY so my nails were a tad longer then. I'd like to share some experiments I do when marbling and why sometimes it doesn't always work out (hence the reason why most shops refuse to do em).

A question I get ever so often is if my nails where of my own so here's a shot of my nails (before the CNY chop) au naturel... 

I wanted to try marbling with claire's mood polish as some nail bloggers did a really awesome job at it and I figured I wanted to recreate the same look. The colour of choice I used was claire's bored/excited. A pink with a hint of orange.

Now I find claire's polish a bit hard to work with as they're really streaky and they need at least 3 coats to even out the colour. I initially thought my nail painting skills were bust until I checked out the reviews at other nail blogs and found that even the most seasoned of them had trouble with the formula.

See what I meant by it being streaky? This was two coats and you can just barely see the two tone on the ring finger and thumb.

This picture is the closest I could take of the actual colour and the cool & warm tones were showing up very clearly. Excuse my messy nails... It was a work in progress after all... 

Test marbling on thumb. The patterned turned out just right and the black didn't bleed too much into the pink. But everything went downhill from there... (Yes, that was a scotch tape around my finger to minimise the cleanup).

I have no idea why... but the rest of the marbling didn't go as smoothly as the first... the black bled too much into the pink and it defeated the purpose of having a marble as you can't see the different tone so I did try to salvage it...

But I think I'm too much of a perfectionist that I just couldn't make myself wear this so I promptly removed it and filed this polish combination for water marbling an epic fail... =.=

I still wanted to use this colour so I decided to just do some stamping.

I call this Love, Love Me Do... Something with a Valentine's touch to it although V-day was eons away when I did this.

This picture shows the mood effect. I noticed it's more obvious when I'm in an aircond room. Apologise for the tip wear as I only decided to take a picture of this manicure wayyyy later. 

More nail post coming up soon... Stay tuned. 

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