Hello!  I hope everyone is ready to get flooded with lots of indie polish manis in the future, because I am about to go shopping. 

This weekend I’m going to my first ever Indie Shop!  And I’ve been so excited that I just knew I had to make this manicure with indie-polish only, and nail polish themed.  It’s just a little show of support to all of the smaller polish makers out there.  And since I don’t have many polishes from the makers going to the event, I used what I could.  I bought this adorable Bundle Monster Kawaii Emoji stamping plate back when I got the celebration plate.  But had no clue what I’d use it for.  I’m glad that I finally found an excuse.  For inspiration I Google Image searched the emoji plate to try and get ideas.  But I stumbled on this design from @vics_nails, and it’s not the exact same plate, but I like how easy it looks.  Of course you’ll soon see that I find a way to make “easy” much more difficult.

What I Used:

• Base Coat:  Glisten & Glow – Base Coat
• 1st Color:  Moon Shine Mani – Totality
• 2nd Color:  Bundle Monster – Bam! White
• 3rd Color:  Glisten & Glow – Your Mountain is Waiting
• Top Coat:  Glisten & Glow – Top Coat
• Bundle Monster Mini Lotus mat
• Bundle Monster BM-XL325 stamping plate
• silicone stamper & scraper
• lint roller sheet
• Bundle Monster double sided nail art brush & dotting tool
• Twinkled T clean up brush, size #2
• acetone polish remover

I started with my Glisten & Glow base coat, and about two and a half coats of the red glitter and white.  I say two and a half because I fell asleep before my nails were dry, and had to do some spot fixes the next day.  The Moon Shine Mani polish actually surprised me.  This was only my second time wearing it, but I remember last time it needed more coats to get opaque.  As for the Bundle Monster polish, that was a bit of a disappointment.  I should have known that a stamping polish would be difficult to use, but it was just so thick and unmanageable that I’ll have to remember not to try using that polish as a base again.

Then, I went to my handy dandy mat to do some test swatches.  I was really struggling to find a stamping color that would actually show up on top of that deep red.  Until I had the “brilliant” idea to use white.  It was bright, and vibrant, and worked well with the red.  It was perfect.  Unfortunately, I didn’t think about the fact that my base color was white until I was done.  I made all of the little decals and waited for them to dry, and then even placed one on my nail when I finally realized something wasn’t right.  So I took off the white-on-white decal and started all over again.  Of course by this time, I had put almost everything away so I needed to run back and get it all out again.

Test swatches

The white on white did not work out

I went through my stamping polishes, testing colors as I went, and landed on an adorable pink.  I knew for sure that this color would pop on the white and the red, so I went through the decal process all over again.  I applied a square of top coat to my silicone mat, let it dry, stamped the design in pink, and then filled some of the blank spots with red.  I’m so glad I only put designs on four of my nails, because I was so tired by this point.  My brain was hardly functioning.  And it always feels like it takes so much longer to wait for things to dry, or to clean up, when you’re tired.

Test swatches, round 2

Adding the new decals

Well the last step was top coat.  Simple, right?  Unfortunately, I didn’t notice just how low my only bottle of top coat was at.  I was really struggling to get a decent amount out to apply to the nail.  And then I would try to Frankenstein spots of top coat together, but it all just ended up a thick, uneven, mess.  It’s a really good thing I have a chance to buy some new top coat at the shop.

So, this wasn’t my best work.  Tired brain can really screw with you.  But I put a lot of thought/heart in to it, and I love the mauve color that the red behind the pink ended up making.  Let’s just hope that I’m so distracted by the new polishes in front of me, that I don’t pick at the rough patches on my own nails.

Final look – left hand

Final look – right hand

Have a great week everyone!  Find a way to treat yourself this week, I’m sure you deserve it

Update:

I don’t know if I was subconsciously trying to make myself take off this polish and try on something new, but I would not stop picking this week.  At one point, the entire top half of my middle finger was missing polish.  I had to fill all the spots that I picked at to keep myself from doing any more damage.  You can definitely see how rough these ended up.  Oh well.  At least now I can finally go play with something new

You can see all the picking I did to my ring finger

Can you see where I had to fill in new polish?