#ManiMonday 03/08/2020

Happy #manimonday everyone! After the false start last week, this week I actually went to the races to see Clairvoyance run (who won). So, let’s get into this week’s grey unicorn and star nails.

Products used:

Stamping plate: Beauty Big Bang “XL-054”
Stamping polish: Hit The Bottle “A Flock of Seagulls”
Base: Sally Hansen “Double Duty Base & Top Coat” and Essie “Blanc”
Top coat: Hit The Bottle “Water Tight” Smear Free Topcoat
Unicorn: CoverGirl XL Nail Gel “Haughty Lemon 740”

Don’t get me wrong, I adore going to the races (and couldn’t imagine my life without it) but coming up with red and yellow horse nails is hard some weeks. This week I decided to mix it up a little bit and go with a unicorn instead!

To start with I wasn’t too sure what I was going to put on my nails this week, but as with all my race day nails, it has to have a horse element of some kind. After flipping through my nail plate folder, I came across what I call my space plate. It has this cute unicorn image, plus the name Clairvoyance kind of reminds me of the stars, so I went with that. The unicorn and “make a wish” are actually part of the same image on the plate but because of my small nails, I decided to break the image up between my ring and middle finger. Then to compliment the unicorn and “make a wish” I opted for this constellation like pattern.

As I incorporated red into my nails last week, I thought I’d go with yellow this week. I’ve recently done black and white with yellow, so I wanted to do something different. This Hit The Bottle grey was one of my new polishes and I wanted to try it as well. It’s also not as stark on the white as black would be while also probably showing up better than silver. To then bring in that yellow element, we coloured in the unicorn. This week my support worker used my new dotting tools to colour in and she said they were much easier to use than our old technique of using a toothpick and bobby pin. So, if you’re someone who does reserve stamping often, then invest in some of these (I got mine off Aliexpress for like $3).

When it came to picking up this week there was definitely a trick to it. For some reason, the stamping gods are shining on me, so I did most of the picking up this week (even though my support worker who is great at doing my nails was back). This does suggest that a light touch is required. We think that it may have been to do with the type of stamper as well. I prefer the round stamper just because it’s easier to hold. However, as the unicorn was drying on that, we tried to use the cube stamper to do the stars while that was drying. It picked up well enough for my left hand (which I don’t photograph) but was missing a few lines here and there. After getting slightly frustrated, once the unicorn was on my nails, we tried the round stamper with the stars, and it picked up perfectly! The unicorn and “make a wish” part took a few more goes, though nothing drastic bad, just one or two spots wouldn’t pick up perfectly.

In between trying out the different stampers, I thought I’d give my new round stampers and cube stamper ago. They were absolutely useless, but I had this trouble with my current stampers before (which now works perfectly fine), so I wasn’t too worried. The trick is to place the stamping heads onto some paper to draw out the oils. It’s amazing to see just how much oil came out of them in just a few hours! I shouldn’t have any issues the stampers working now, but I will report back soon to let you know.

Overall, this design is really fresh but it’s still able to make an impact with that touch of colour. I think this design would look amazing too in a pastel (purple, pink, orange, etc) metallic polish on the white background.

Bye for now!