Hello and welcome! This week’s mani turned out to be a little darker than expected, but it started out as a summer theme.
My design idea was all about using things that I’ve had for while, but haven’t used. When it comes to polishes, there are plenty that I haven’t used yet. But I chose one that was a gift. And it’s green which is something I don’t normally use. For the design, I have been eyeing this koi fish stamping plate that I bought forever ago, but just haven’t taken out to use. And I chose to do just a simple stamp on top of the green. Nothing crazy, but also nothing that’s too easy.
What I Used:
- Base Coat: Glisten & Glow – Base Coat
- 1st Color: Quixotic Polish – Matterhorn Vibes
- 2nd Color: Bundle Monster – nation’s treasure
- Glossy Top Coat: Glisten & Glow – Top Coat
- Matte Top Coat: Essie – Matte About You
- Bundle Monster mini lotus mat
- Bundle Monster BM-725 stamping plate
- silicone stamper and scraper
- lint roller sheet
- acetone nail polish remover
I started with base coat, and then three coats of the jelly green. I didn’t realize that it’d be so sheer, or so dark. The swatch that I have made it look a lot lighter, but obviously I used thicker/more coats to get the nail line hidden. But it’s definitely a beautiful, mountain green.
Then I decided to practiced the stamp real quick. But it turned out to be not so quick after all. My first few tries were just not working. Since I couldn’t get it to stamp I pulled two other colors to see if it was the stamping plate, and if not, to see if I could do a makeshift gold look. After a few more tries, I decided to take a minute to eat and rethink things. But when I came back to try the gold one more time, it worked perfectly! Turns out I was just being too gentle and needed to man handle it a bit more.
It should have been a simple stamp on to the nails, but I forgot I was using my pink squishy stamper. So I kind of missed my thumb. There’s more of a half fish on that nail, but I made sure to be more careful with the rest. And since the fish were made for someone with larger nails, only about 3/4 of the koi fish shows.
When it came to applying top coat, I applied my Glisten & Glow glossy to all the nails. But I didn’t feel like details were popping enough through the shine of glossy top coat. I knew matte top coat would show off every detail, so I did a test on two nails to see what it would look like. Matte definitely showed the difference between the green and the gold, but on the other hand, glossy made it feel more watery.
In the end I went with matte top coat. I just really wanted the details of the koi to pop. And I know by the end of the week, between life in general and a few sloppy applications of cuticle oil, that they would slowly turn into satin. It’s definitely not the most summery look, I hope you don’t mind the quick change of pace. We’ll be back to summer looks in no time.
Hope everyone has a good week!
Update:
I can’t believe just how quickly this week has gone by. It feels like yesterday I was painting this design, and now I’m taking it off. But anyways, just as I expected, these nails went from matte to silky satin. If you ever want super matte nails for a special event or something, I would recommend doing them the day of (or at least applying the matte top coat day of). So these didn’t have any major chipping, but they were just worn out enough on my thumbs to be tempting. But I tried to behave as much as possible and only messed with them a little.
Weekly Nail 