#ManiMonday 29/07/2019

Happy #manimonday everyone! Let’s get into this week’s blue geometric design!

Products used:

Stamping plate: Born Pretty “BP-L004”
Stamping polish: Hit the Bottle “A Bolt from the Blue”
Base: Essie base coat and “Blanc”

It’s been quiet around here lately, with nothing much on besides getting ready for the new university semester which starts today. This, however, has allowed me to play around with different nail designs and this week I’m wearing this blue look.

I wanted to try one of my new Hit the Bottle stamping polishes, so I searched Pinterest for some inspiration. With my blue stamping polish in mind, I came across some European tile looks, I guess you could call it. It was either that or a blue China bowl look.

I’m super happy with how this look turned out. It’s a very fresh look and something different from what I normally do. The blue has a really nice shimmer in the light, similar to the Hit the Bottle polish, Expresso Martini, that I wore the other week.

While some spots picked up slightly thinner than others, it was relevantly easy to pick up. As I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, I had some trouble originally with the Hit the Bottle polishes picking up. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m making sure the polish doesn’t dry out before picking up or if its because the Born Pretty plates seem to be engraved deeper; whatever it is I’ll take it though.

My only warning with this stamping plate is to make sure you have short nails. This image literally just fitted on my fourth finger and I wouldn’t say my nails are particular long at the moment.

This week I also tried a trick I learnt from the nail stamping group I joined (Nail Stamping Sisterhood if you’re interested in joining). The trick is to spray hairspray on your nails before applying a top coat so that the nail design doesn’t get smudged. I only did it on two nails as it looked like the design was smudging (I used the Hit the Bottle “Shining Armour” top coat), as the white had a blueish tint to it. However, when it dried this did seem to go away. Now I’m not sure if the hairspray stopped it from smudging dramatically (there was still a slight smudge on one finger) or if the Hit the Bottle top coat just works better with their stamping polishes and I would have gotten the same result without the hairspray. I’ll have to do a few experiments and I’ll let you know what the results are in the coming weeks.

Bye for now!