Loki's Nail Vinyls

Oh my...its been too gosh darn long! But DQN is back blogging to show you all some great products from Loki's Nail Vinyls. Nail vinyls are durable stickers that you can use to stick over your polish, or as a template to create negative space manis like this one I've done for you guys today. Tara kindly sent me so many different designs to try but I could not go past the explosion one, it called to me! 

To create this mani I started by placing the vinyls on my naked nails. They were really sticky so I chose not to use a base coat. I worked out half way through this mani that to reduce the stick just place the vinyls on the back of your hand a couple of times and then you can use it over a base colour no worries. The stickiness is really beneficial though as it creates a very tight line for crisp edges. 

This is the mani before I added the glitter. I used a small brush to add glitter over the black. The glitter is a multi-chrome flakie by Fun Lacquer. The vinyls were super high quality, very strong, especially when I used tweezers to remove them, no ripping at all!

Loki's Nail Vinyls have a HUGE range of vinyl designs plus nail aprons which are a genius invention! Tara is also having a super special month of posting on her blog, an entire month of stamping related tidbits and tutorials....its Stamp-a-palooza! To celebrate Stamp-a-palooza DQN customers get 10% off at Loki's Nail Vinyls in February CODE DQN10. Please head over to Tara's blog here, its sure to be a great read. 

This final mani is one where I used the vinyl over my polish, as a decal. The possibilities are endless! Thanks Tara for sending me all these amazing goodies to play with xx

How to make decals on your stamper video

So the challenge wrapped up last week and I've taken a few days off from nails to recharge myself and spend some time with my family. It was bliss! But it wasn't too long before my pretties called me back.

Before the challenge I wrote a post about how to make decals on your stamper with some pics. But during the challenge I used the decal method so much and refined it each time so I decided to make a video for you guys to show you how I do it now.

          

The two biggest changes I've made are taking the decals off after 30-45 min, don't leave them too long so that they stay sticky. Secondly not using any base coat to stick them on. They stick on by themselves like a sticker and you don't get pesky bubbles and rips. Yay!

I hope my video helps you out and that you give it a try. It's pretty easy. Best advice, when you are pulling the decal off the stamper don't pull in the same direction all the time, the decals will stretch and distort. Alternate the sides you pull from so you don't distort the image and if it still starts to rip leave it another 10 minutes. If you leave it over night these decals go brittle and cant be used, they don't stick or curve to the nail. 

Polish:

• Zoya - Dot
• BC - Shade 8
• OPI - Alpine Snow
• Mundo de Unas - 29

I should mention that I live in Brisbane, Australia which is sub tropical (30 degrees) most days at the moment, so I'm pretty sure that has effect on dry time. If you live in colder climates and find the decals are ripping when you pull them off adjust dry time. I would be really interested to hear from you guys if this is an issue. If you live somewhere cold and you try this out please let me know how you go xx 

Stamping decal tutorial - The easiest and quickest decals you'll ever make!

There are multiple ways to create coloured stamping designs and each technique has its pros and cons but I promise you that after trying this version you will be making decals quicker than ever before!

In the past I have done coloured stamping by using either a small paintbrush to add colour over the stamp (colouring in), this technique called Reverse Stamping or the lead lighting technique. A pro to colouring in is that's its quick. A drawback to painting colour is its hard to stay in the lines. A con to reverse stamping is that it takes a really long time between each step, however you can make 10 decals at a time meaning your can do an entire mani. Lead lighting has its drawbacks too in that you need to build a collection of suitable sheer or tinting polishes and you may get "smearing" especially with black stamping polish both when you apply the tints and also when you apply topcoat. However a bonus with lead lighting is that again you can do an entire mani and if you are sneaky you can make your own tinted polishes by thinning them and mixing with clear polish. 

If you want to smash out a punchy opaque accent design quickly and easily using the polishes you already own,  then the stamper decal technique is a beauty. There are a few tutorials floating around the net on how to do this but every one I have seen used a squishy stamper. I wanted to test a theory that I had that you can create these decals with any stamper, meaning that you can make a few at once by using all the different stampers that you have. So lets have a look at the results and how to create the decals. White squishy stamper vs. Konad mushroom stamper vs. firm green stamper - all available here.

STEP 1: Pick an image with parts that you can fill in that also has large amounts of background space for your secondary colour to shine through. Choose your outline colour and stamp the image onto your stamper of choice. I used Konad special stamping polish in white. Now the best part, you really don't need to wait very long before the next step, I left mine about 3 minutes. This heart design is from the Bundle Monster 2012 (300) collection, plate 317. Available here.

STEP 2: Use a small paintbrush and your polish of choice to colour in the parts of the design you want to highlight. I chose Orly - Beach Cruiser. Obviously choosing semi-sheer to opaque polish will give you more of a "pop" of colour but sheers and tints also work well because of the way the background colour becomes "undies" to the sheer polish. It's ok if you go outside the lines a little bit because once you flip the design over you won't really see it.  By the time I had coloured all the hearts in on all 3 stampers, the first one was dry so I moved on to step 3 right away.

STEP 3: Paint a thick layer of your background colour over the whole design. I ussed Barry M - Baby Pink which is a creme that is slightly sheer, it needs 2/3 coats for full opacity but for the decals I just did one coat. You can see the design showing through which highlights the density of the polish.

STEP 4: Now this step seems like it would take ages before you could do it. Not so much. I was tricked because the polish looked shiny, like it was still wet. But after 10 minutes it was completely dry! And shiny! Gently slide your nail under the edge and start to peel your design off.

The squishy rectangle stamper which you can get here was a little hard to get started. I jimmed my thumb around the whole edge to make sure it was lifting away but once I got the whole thing free it came away easily. You could also use a dotting tool to poke under it but I would be worried about dinging my squishy stamper. My nail worked fine. I noticed that the decal from this stamper was the most crisp and the stamping itself the most opaque.

It peeled cleanly away with no holes or tears or sticky spots. It may have left some while stamping polish behind but I couldn't see any spots in the design so I'm assuming it didn't.

With the Konad red mushroom stamper available here - it came away SO easily and seemed to be much stronger than the squishy one, more flexible and less likely to break.

It peeled off very easily, it did leave a few teeny tiny bits of white stamping polish on the stamper though and you can see in the outlines where the polish is spotty.

The super firm green rectangle stamper, available here - This one needed some gentle nudging to get it started and I accidentally made a couple of rips because I was being impatient and jabbed at it with a dotting tool. Whoopsie! It was the most difficult to peel but once I got it started it was fine. No polish left on the stamper but the outline was a little spotty.

Here is the end result with my decals ready to apply to my nail. Pretty! Left is firm green stamper, right is white squishy stamper and bottom is Konad mushroom stamper. The squishy stamper one is definitely the best but the others also came out fine, just a bit muted in comparison.

STEP 4: Trim your decals to your approximate nail size.

STEP 5: Apply a layer of base coat to your naked nail then gently place the decal over it whilst it is still wet. Use your finger tip to GENTLY smooth out any wrinkles and also fold over the tip of the nail for a clean edge. When it is firmly in place and the base coat underneath has dried (no decal movement when touched) use nail scissors to trim off excess. You don't need to go to crazy with trimming as you can remove the excess decal with nail polish remover and your clean up brush.

STEP 6: Now this part has options. You can apply topcoat first, wait for it to dry then clean up OR clean up first then apply topcoat. I did the first option. The topcoat will smooth out any dings or wrinkles, its like magic!

I loved how these decals turned out however I was most impressed by how quick each layer dried on the stamper. There was virtually no smearing when I applied topcoat and the finished product is vibrant. Can you just imagine the possibilities of all the different designs you could make! The white squishy stamper was the clear winner in terms of quality. If you give this technique a go we would love to see and hear how you went xx

Neon Blocks

It's Tetris meets Aztec in this week's inspiration nails. I follow a lot of nail blogs but Polish All the Nails is a favourite of mine because she has a "thing" and that thing is using decals and sequins to create amazing patterns and tessellations. A few weeks back she did a series of manis with neon rectangles and squares and yes whilst it does take a very long time to place the decals the end result is really amazing and creative. BAM! Neon blocks. 

To create this mani is really very simple. I used square studs which are available here. Begin by painting a base colour then top coat it and let it dry completely. The top coat layer is essential, it creates a slidey base so that you can push the squares into place. Around the cuticle I cut some decals to fit using my cuticle trimming nippers.

I use base coat to stick my decals on. I use a dotting tool to dip into the base coat and place a blob on my nail where I want the decal to go. This then makes the dotting tool a little sticky so that you can pick up the decal. Place it on the spot where you want it then use the dotting tool to push it into place and line it up.

I do each decal one by one otherwise the blob of base coat you put on your nail dries too fast and the decal doesn't stick. Yes it takes a long time, but when you only do a couple of nails it's not too bad.

Finish off the mani by applying a layer of topcoat over the whole lot, this adds shine and seals down the decals. Watch out for bubbles between the decals, stroke over the bubbles with the topcoat brush to remove them. Click here to get the decals. Love these XD 

Crafty Zig Zags - Making Nail Decals Part 1

Today is the first in a series of upcoming posts about how to make your own nail decals. So what exactly are decals?  Basically they are images you stick on your nail that are made out of nail polish or in some cases special paper, called decal paper. For today's tutorial we are going to have a go at making zigzag polish decals with pinking shears to create this modern and very popular nail art look.

To create this look you need to prepare the polish beforehand to allow it to dry. If the polish isn't completely dry this technique will not work so realistically give your polish at least 6 hours dry time. I left mine overnight. So here's what you do. Cut strips of baking paper that are approx 3 cm wide. This size fits through the pinking shears perfectly and will create zig zags that are wide enough to cover even your thumb nails. 

I chose to paint squares of a range of polishes because I had no idea which polish would work the best so I  wanted to try a few different ones. There are cremes, liquid sands, glitters, jellies and indie polishes in the mix. You need to paint two coats of polish on the baking paper allowing the first coat to dry before applying the 2nd. Leave overnight. 

The next day I used these pinking shears to cut the decals. The plastic craft version of these scissors did not work for me, they weren't sharp enough. I got these from Spotlight for around $20. I cut my decals with the baking paper still attached to the polish however you can also peel the polish off the paper and cut it on its own. A good trick to help you line up the shears is to work with a lamp in front of you. Hold up the paper with the polish on it and the light with shine through creating a guide shadow so you can line up the shears and control the thickness of your decal. It took me many oddly shaped diagonal decal failures before I figured this out!

From the above sized sqaures I ended up with 6 zigzag decals but not all of them were usable as you may end up with a few that are too thick or too thin. So if you are set on a colour I would paint at least double the width to ensure you have enough.  The colours I used in this mani are:

• OPI Skull and Glossbones (grey)
• Essie Where's My chauffeur (aqua)
• Picture Polish Heavy Metal (glitter)

To apply the decals to your nail peel off the paper if it isn't already. For best results ensure your base colour is completely dry or apply a fast drying topcoat before applying the decals. I used base coat to stick my decals on and because I had top coated my nails it was easy to move the decal and make adjustments to straighten them without damaging my base colour. Gently press down on the decals to stick it to your nails, especially at the sides. Use your fingernail from your other hand to press into the decals on the side of your nail to cut them to the correct width. Apply topcoat to seal down the decals. I used 2 coats to really flatten mine.

I cut up a whole heap of colours and left most with the paper on to use another time. Once I figured out how to line the scissors up I was on a roll! I hope you guys give this technique a try, its heaps of fun and looks really great. Stay tuned for part 2 of making nail decals.....