Golden Oldie Thursday #7: Chevron Fail

If you're a regular reader of this blog you probably know about my tendency to share my nail fails on a fairly regular basis. This is one of those days...

My nails have a fairly deep c-curve which can make stamping a bit challenging at times - in particular if you don't have a squishy stamper and the design itself need to be very straight, like chevrons. At the moment I use an XL stamper that has a more firm silicone head which gives me slight problems to say the least. I didn't really realise how bad the problem was until this mani. But I'll return to that in a moment.

Most of my Illamasqua polishes are more than a year old because ever since that awful debacle with Royal Mail last year their shipping prices have gone up considerably so I've found myself only wanting to purchase when they have sales - and then I still only buy make-up AKA I haven't bought them in more than a year. So off I went and dug into my Illa polishes for this week's challenge.

Illamasqua Elope       Illamasqua Nomad     GOSH Forest Floor       BarryM Gold Foil

And since my freehand Chevrons sucks big time I decided to try stamping them instead - as if that would make any difference :D

The base for this mani is a "circle gradient" where I applied the polish in a circle like a layer cake diagram and then pressed it on the nails, making sure to get a smooth transistion by moving the sponge in all directions when I applied the polish.

As you can see the chevrons are all wobbly due to the c-curve. When I stamp I can't push the head down enough to get a perfect transfer so instead I have to roll the stamper, which results in these very much curved sides on the chevrons...a loose-loose situatuation.

Hopefully my next stamping session will go more smoothly - and my next GOT challenge for that matter ;)

Remember to check the other awesome manis:

Challenge Week 20 & 21: Bow Mani and Fruit Mani

So another couple of challenges went past and here they are:

My bow mani got done when the good weather got absolutely marvelous with days and days full of sunshine and that made me get in holo mood. I chose to stamp the bows and pulled out my Essence plates for this. I still need a lot of practice stamping, but I find it loads of fun when I do it even though fails are the order of the day.

Base colour is China Glaze DV8 and stamping is GOSH Holographic. I used CND Stickey as base coat and decided to try with top coat since DV8 was a bit gloopy and there fore dried a bit uneven. I think it took some of the oooompfff out of the polish but I got some good wear from it.

Definitely not as oooomphy as Nubar Reclaim

I took ages for me to decide on the fruit mani but in the end I took a relatively easy design: Strawberries and Kiwi. As per usual I did my mani in the evening though this time it wasn't until 1 in the night and therefore a somewhat tired polishaholic that did her nails. The leaf on the strawberry should have been made with a nail art brush. Instead I decided in my tired state to use the polish brush instead which made the leaves a tad more...strange. The Kiwi was just...*decides not to go into details about it*.

This is how the non nail art nails looked.

I used China Glaze Phat Santa, Essie Pretty Edgy, a-england Camelot, Sinful Colors, nails inc. Floral Street - with Cult Nails base and top coat.

Thanks for looking, hopefully you enjoyed it!!