#ManiMonday 20/07/2020

Happy #manimonday everyone! I’m super excited to share this week’s look with you, as I tried out two new products. So, let’s get into this week’s rose gold flower nail design.

Products used:

Stamping plate: Lina Nail Art Supplies “Make Your Mark 04”
Stamping polish: Hit The Bottle “Roseglow Gold”
Base: Sally Hansen “Double Duty Base & Top Coat” Essie “Blanc” and “Fiji”
Top coat: Hit The Bottle “Water Tight” Smear Free Topcoat

This week’s design was largely influenced my new Hit The Bottle stamping polishes that arrived this week! I got 5 new stamping polishes (plus replacements for the ones I already have). As I’ve only recently done a purple look and I plan on wearing the new red this week, I opted for this rose gold colour. As with all the Hit The Bottle stamping polishes, this one has a fantastic shimmer in the light.

With the stamping colour decided, I thought a nude design would look nice, as I haven’t done one of them for a while. After comparing a few of my Essie polishes, Fiji was the one that matched the best. It is pretty translucent so I did do one white “Blanc” coat underneath it, just so you couldn’t see my nail. Do note that the base definitely has more of a pale pink tone than what it looks like in the photo.

I did my nails on a different day this week (as I was at the races on Wednesday), which meant a different support worker was doing my nails. She’s done stamping a few times but is not nearly as experienced as my other support worker who has been doing it for a few years now. So to be nice, I thought I’d use one of my more expensive plates, as I know those images tend to pick up better. This then narrowed my image selection down to two plates. I opted for the flowers because they had nice solid patches which would show the stamping polish up well, plus these flowers don’t need any reserve stamping.

If you’ve been following my blog for awhile, you’ll know that I’ve had trouble picking up the Hit The Bottle stamping polishes in the past. However, I’m happy to report that these picked up perfectly. My support worker did have a few troubles, but the fact that it was just the middle of the design not picking it up, I’m going to put it down to a pick up pressure issue (human error). As she was still learning, I showed her how I pick them up and that worked perfectly. I worked quickly and use a medium pressure with a squish pick up technique, which seemed to work the best.

The most exciting news this week was the amazing result of this topcoat. Hit The Bottle was kind enough to put their “Water Tight” Smear Free Topcoat into my order and it is by far the best topcoat I’ve ever used for stamping! It’s the only one that I can paint directly onto my nails without the stamping design smudging. As of writing this post, the wear and tear are the same as the Sally Hansen topcoat I use (which sometimes smudged even when I stamped it on). The added bonus with this topcoat is that you only need a minimum amount, so the bottle with last forever! Hit The Bottle suggested that to make my nails last even longer, I could put another topcoat over the top, so I’m going to try that next week. I’m interested to see how it will go over a black stamping polish, but so far it’s blown my mind and I’ll definitely be reordering it!!

In other nail news, my new plates, stampers and doting tools finally arrived from Aliexpress. I got some nature and pattern plates, so look out for them in future editions of #ManiMonday.

Overall, I really like this rose gold flower design. It’s neutral, so will go with a tonne of different outfits, plus it’s easy to create! You can do this design in an array of colours too.

Bye for now!