#ManiMonday 20/01/2020

Happy #manimonday everyone! Let’s get into this week’s Australia Day nails featuring a koala!

Products used:

Stamping plate: Beauty Big Bang “XL-038” and Born Pretty “BP – L063”
Stamping polish: Born Pretty “BP-WN03 Throne”, “BP-AC05 Lucky Clover” and “BP-ML01 Scenery”
Base: Essie base coat, “Blanc” and W7 Nail Polish “85 Summer Fields”
Top coat: Sally Hansen “Double Duty Base & Top Coat”
Koala: Maybelline Colorshow “Audacious asphalt 390” fur and Essie “Blanc” ears

Can we just start this post by saying how cute these nails are? I think they’re actually one of the best nails I’ve had in a while. The other great news is that they were fairly easy to create.

Australia Day is just around the corner, so I thought it would be appropriate to do Australia themed nails. I actually don’t have any Australian images on my stamping plates besides this koala, so that was the basis for this design. Having a koala on all of my nails would be too much though (and slightly boring) so leaves it was. Eucalyptus leaves are very hard to find on plates (and I don’t have any) so we opted for this general leafy pattern.

As I previously said, this design was a breeze to do, with the drying time between coats taking the longest. This was my first time using either images and the new green stamping polishes. Surprisingly they picked up very well, with the leaves only missing parts on a pick up once. These designs did, however, pick up better with my old, harder Born Pretty stamper than my new, squish Beauty Big Bang stamper. Ideally, it would have been nice if the koala picked up well on the second stamper, as its grey fur could have been drying while we stamped the leaves on, but that’s ok. To save a bit of time, we prepared one koala while we were waiting for the base colours to dry.

This was my second time using the W7 nail polish. It went on really smoothly, with a runny consistency, so it got into the sides nicely plus it has a nice brush on it. I also waited for it to dry fully between coats so there was no bubbling this time. For a polish that is only $2.99 at Chemist Warehouse, I would highly recommend it and I might get some more colours to try.

Lastly, to achieve an interesting look with the leaves and to add some depth, we used two shades of green stamping polishes. We found it was best to scrap the image twice though to ensure that the two colours mixed enough so that there were no obvious blobs of one colour. In this case, we used more light green than dark, just because we thought that the dark green was a bit too heavy on this base.

Overall, this is a great look and perfect for Australia Day or even just summer, as it has a really fresh feel and look to it.

Bye for now!