Tuesday 8 November 2011

31 Day Challenge day 7 - Black and White

Howdy!

Today's mani theme is black and white nails, and to start with I had no idea what to do. Polka dots? Zebra stripes? Both of those are covered later on in the challenge, so I thought I'd do some stamping. I looked through my stamping plates and found a keyboard image - perfect for a black and white theme. So, I duly painted all my nails with 1 coat of Wet n Wild Black Creme, except the ring fingers which I did with 2 coats of Wet n Wild French White for accents. Then it all went horribly wrong. Could I get the blasted stamp to work? First time it transferred ok (not perfect but I could have patched it up) but totally wonky, and then every time after that it just wouldn't work. I think I need some pure acetone for cleaning plates inbetween stamps because I'm sure the moisturising ingredients in polish remover play funny with the stamp. Anyway, instead of having crappy stamps or none at all I reached for a trusty fail-mani-saver. Good old crackle. I actually LOVE this look, it got lots of compliments and it's held up through a day of intensive housework with just a little tipwear (which is a good thing because I had a meeting tonight and didn't get time to change it...). I used W7 Earthquake white and MUA Jailbreak crackles, then Seche to shinyfy it. You definitely need topcoat over white crackle or it looks like you've been at the tip-ex.

Excuse the cat hair *shakes fist at fluffy fiend*


This would have been a super fast way to get a  really striking mani if I hadn't faffed around with the stamp. Somehow I can never get WnW Black Creme to stamp well, although I've seen it used successfully on other blogs. Well I ended up loving this anyway, so it seems I'm not over crackle yet. I think it looks great when done properly.

Hx
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1 comment:

  1. Very cute!

    Sorry your stamping failed, that's frustrating!

    I use WNW Black creme for all my black stamping! I wonder why it won't work for you. Hmm.

    AS far as cleaning the plates, if you use pure acetone it will leave your plates looking cloudy. Use instead, NON acetone polish remover. Not the moisturizing type that has some acetone in it. Just get plain non-acetone and use a Q-tip to clean it :)

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