#ManiMonday 25/05/2020

Happy #manimonday everyone! It was back to the old non-inspiring isolation days this week, but luckily Mum was there to save the day. So, let’s get into this week’s blue geometric pixel design.

Products used:

Stamping plate: Born Pretty “BP-L006”
Stamping polish: Born Pretty “BP-WN04 Pure” and Hit the Bottle “A Bolt From The Blue”
Base: Sally Hansen “Double Duty Base & Top Coat” and Essie “Lapiz of Luxury”
Top coat: Sally Hansen “Double Duty Base & Top Coat”

Once again, nothing was happening this week in isolation. I actually didn’t realise how hard it was to come up with designs week in week out when there aren’t any outfits to match. So, hats off to those nail art Instagram accounts that do 2-3 designs a week.

When discussing with Mum what I should put on my nails, she said let’s go geometric because we haven’t done that in a while. Fair enough I thought, plus I only have 3 fully geometric plates (plus a couple of other plates have a few geometric images) so that narrowed down my options a lot. When talking about colours she also had something in mind, so this week was basically a trust exercise! Luckily, it turned out fantastically.

Her original design was something different from what ended up on my nails. Firstly, she wanted something that was more lines than boxes but unfortunately, I don’t have an image like that. The lines I do have were either too thick or too thin for the design she was after. The original colours were also going to be this blue base with pink stamping. However, both my pink Hit the Bottle and Born Pretty didn’t really pop on the blue (this is probably where the white stamping base technique would come in handy) and at this stage, the blue base was already on my nails so we couldn’t swap. We also tried a silver polish which looked amazing in the sunlight at a certain angle, but otherwise didn’t show up well. I suggested this Hit the Bottle blue because it has an amazing shimmer through it and looks great with a lighter blue (as seen in my dolphin nails).

After the overall colour scheme of two blues and white was decided, we then add to decide on an image. We flicked through my plate folder (which makes them so easy to see) and Mum came across this checked design (which is from one of the first plates I got). So, you could see both colours and to make it interesting, she decided to offset the blue stamped image. I’d done this sort of thing before in pink and silver, so I was excited to do it again.

In terms of pick up rates, it was pretty good this week. I’ve always found the Hit the Bottle polishes a bit hit and miss (which I’m disappointed about because their colours are amazing and they’re Australian) but for some reason, the blue worked this week. It’s probably not 100% but you can get away with it because of the layering. When layering like this, Mum does find it easier to line things up perfectly using a cube stamper rather than a round one (where the stamper head is more round than flat) as it’s easier to see through.

The biggest issue this week was that the image did seem to distort in some places when stamping it onto the nail. To avoid this, we used a lighter touch, but it then made it a fine line between stamping too hard and distorting or not stamping hard enough and missing the edge of my nails. After a few nails though we got the pressure right.

Overall, I really love this design and colour combination. It’s different to what I normally do (I don’t think I’ve actually even done a solid check design before) and I think it has this fun pixel-like look. If you had a gaming party to go to, then this design would look amazing, especially if you did it in Minecraft colours and then put a gaming image on your feature nail. Otherwise, the monochromatic colour scheme is always a winner.

Bye for now!