#ManiMonday 06/07/2020

Happy #manimonday everyone! It was fun to finally do a pop of colours on my nails this week and a different look. So, let’s get into this week’s purple under the sea design!

Products used:

Stamping plate: Beauty Big Bang “XL-001” and Harunouta “L080”
Stamping polish: Born Pretty “BP-Q03 Last Dance”
Base: Sally Hansen “Double Duty Base & Top Coat” and Essie “Nice is Nice”
Top coat: Sally Hansen “Double Duty Base & Top Coat”
Shells: Essie “Tart Deco”

Sadly, I had a funeral to attend on Friday, but in memory of the person, we were asked to wear colourful socks (because that was his thing). I got these really cute “what the puff” socks from Jay Jays, so I decided to match my nails to them this week.

As I had something to match this week, the colour choice was pretty straight forward. The base purple nail polish is basically the same colour as my socks, so that worked out really well! To then tie in with the tone of that polish, I opted for a dark purple stamping polish. In a way, the dark purple almost gives the fish and coral a shadow-like effect. I probably could have used black as well, but it might have been too stark on the pale base. To make things a little bit more interesting, I added a pop of colour to match the pufferfish, by colouring in the shells orange. Purple and orange are best friends too, as they’re on opposite sides of the colour wheel.

With the image selection this week, I did have a rough idea of what I wanted but things did change slightly along the way. Ideally, I would have loved a fish that I could have coloured in orange, but of course, I didn’t have an image like that. I also only have two plates that have ocean images on them, so this did help narrow down the process. The first plate only had single images, which wouldn’t really make an impact on my feature nail nor could I do reserve stamping with the orange on them. This is when I saw the seashells and thought they would be perfect! I also like how small they are, so I can fit quite a few on my small nails. The single images on my other nails were then chosen to compliment my feature nail plus I considered which ones would look good together and fit the size of my nails. I always feel it’s fun when you have a different design on every nail, though it does take more time coming up with the design then.

In terms of pick up rates, it certainly wasn’t the best week! We did the shells first (so the reserve stamping could dry while we did my other nails) and they picked up perfect. However, the single images did cause a few headaches. I have used this plate before when creating a blue ocean mermaid design, and from memory, it did cause a few dramas back then too. With that in mind and considering how well the shells picked up, I think it’s just this brand of plate. I have four of their plates and from memory, this one and another one are difficult, another one is ok and the last one, some images picked up perfectly while other images didn’t work out all.

You can tell things are getting desperate when I say to my support worker (who does my nails) “here let me have a go”. I find the round stampers easier to hold, so I used that one and it picked up perfectly! Considering that I can’t press very hard, we decided that a very light touch in a squish motion was required (plus we also work quicker when my support worker does the polish and scraping and I do the pick up). One thing we also noticed was the way I hold the stamper, in what we’re now calling the syringe hold. I place the stamper between my pointer and third finger, with my thumb on top of the stamper. Honestly, I only do it that way because it’s easier for me, but we think it gives better control over the pressure of the stamper when picking up. It’s an interesting technique that we’ll both be trying in the coming weeks, so I’m curious to see how that goes.

Overall, I think this design turned out very well. It did take a while to create but once we got the pick up technique worked out, it went smoothly from there. You’d think traditional ocean colours would look best (as I’ve done in the past), but I’m really liking the look of the purple. It has quite the summer fun vibe feel to it which could probably be achieved with any contrasting pastel combination!

Bye for now!