Without hesitation, I picked Essie's Mirror Metallics to show off on the metallic nails design. So, I thought I'd use a matte polish as the canvas and stamp with the shiny metallic colors - silver, gold & copper.
The dark navy blue color and matte finish helped each of the metallic colors pop. It almost seemed they were floating on top.
These polishes are known to be good for stamping, although they dry quickly. I'm not quite sure I worked fast enough; but, from a distance they looked pretty cool.
Come to think of it, I haven't stamped this many times in one session before; as each nail was stamped three times (plus several "rejects" that wound up on paper). Also, I got to try out my new Winstonia stamper (purchased on Amazon, link here) and found I like it quite a bit. It is a "squishy" one, but not as squishy as one I had gotten from Ninja polish. So, now I have several stampers with different squish/hardness factors to experiment with.
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| Not a great photo - but I felt the need to show both hands. Lots of stamping! |
Below is a picture of the matte blue cream on its own. Had I intended to wear this alone, I would have used a ridge-filling, smoothing base coat.
Finally, to insure the design stayed on my nails for a couple days, I sealed it with top-coat. I think it looked better without it though.
Swatches below:
Materials Used:
- Orly: Bonder (basecoat)
- Orly: Blue Suede, 2 coats (needs about 20% more patience to apply than I had that day)
- Essie: no place like chrome, good as gold, and penny talk (stamped in that order - next time might like a smaller stamp image that could be overlapped better)
- Salon Express: plate SE20 (from the "As Seen on TV" package)
- Seche Vite (shiny topcoat)
Wacky Laki - Anutka's striking nautical blue nail design was influential in my decision, see it here
"31 Design Challenge" (see my intro post here)
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| courtesy of Chalkboard Nails |
Till next time,
Kimett