Wedding Nail Art and Ellagee Haul: Stained Glass

Hey guys! I went to a wedding last night and I did some nail art to celebrate the occasion:

It was a gay wedding, not that that matters, but in case you were wondering about the rainbow. 

My Stained glass nail polishes from Ellagee came the night before the wedding, along with my stamping polishes from Born Pretty Store. It was fate. Although, I don't know if ill be buying from BPS again any time soon. It's free international shipping, and you get things really cheap, but they took FOREVER to come. I did email them, and they said that a lot of packages were held up in Hong Kong and to wait 10 more days. They came on like the 11th day. Also, as soon as I opened the package I smelled nail polish, and I saw that two of the polishes had leaked in the package. I wasn't too happy :(. 

Anyway...

If you didn't know, Ellagee recently released a collection called Stained Glass, which is meant for layering glitter, nail art, decals, and stamping. Basically, you do your base coat, one coat of polish, one layer of stamping, another layer of polish and another layer of stamping. I believe that the polishes are made with top coat, so you don't actually need to use a top coat in the end, but I used one just to protect my nail art. I think that this is a really cool and unique idea, I haven't seen anyone else do this and I knew immediately that I had to have them. Here is what I ordered: 

From left to right: Ruby Glass, Obsidian Glass, Selenium Glass, and Sulphur glass. 

I ordered minis because, let's face it, I will never use up an entire bottle of polish in my lifetime. I also got them on sale with a coupon code. 

Laura usually ships orders really fast, but she had received misspelled labels, and had to wait for new ones to come in. Since her customers had to wait a little longer to receive their orders, she threw in an extra gift. Here is what I got:

It's called Rainbow Syrup, and, unless I'm mistaken, it's a holographic top coat. This is really cool because I dont have one of these, and the only holos I own are the Color Club Halo Hues (although you don't really need any other ones if you own these). I think it's cool because now any color that I have can be holographic, and I don't have to spend money on more bottles of nail polish that I probably won't even use that often. 

Back to the manicure:

I started, as always, with my Orly Bonder as a base. Then I did one layer of Obsidian glass. 

The first layer of stamping: (All done with Mash Image Plates and Konad Stamper and Scraper, and Konad brand white stamping polish from Born Pretty Store). 

Thumb: M54 plate: it's the word Love written in script over and over, you can't really tell in the picture

Pointer finger: also M54: just a bunch of hearts

Middle finger: M13...I call them barbed wire hearts...they're slanty lines with hearts randomly placed. I LOVE this image, and I was really happy to see it because it's on the Bundle Monster plates (which do not work for me, which you already know if you've read any of my previous posts about stamping). 

Pinky: M38: different layers of hearts faceing different ways, I love this one too :)

Then I did another layer of stained glass, and another layer of stamping. Second layer:

Thumb: M54 the LO VE 

Pointer finger: Winged Heart (Ill double check on the plate for this, I forgot to write it down and I'm not at home right now) 

Middle finger: M28: one solid heart with two hollow hearts on either side

Pinky: M17: three hearts going in a curvy line

I covered it with a layer of China Glaze No Chip Top Coat. 

For the accent nail I attempted to do a rainbow ombré with the sponge technique. I used base coat and a layer of white polish from Julep (once again, I'll double check on the name) 

I put all 7 colors on a makeup sponge (various Juleps, China Glazes, and nail art brushes). 

Here's the thing...I'm REALLY bad at sponging. Every time I try to sponge, the polish comes off. I usually just roll the sponge onto the nail two or three times. I had to touch it up a little because some colors didn't show up as much. I just went over it with whatever colors needed touching up and then put a layer of Seche to smooth it out and make it shiney (I'm still waiting on my HK Girl top coat, which I ordered a few weeks ago and hasn't even processed :(). 

As you can see, this didn't come out nearly as good as I wanted it to. The stamps aren't lined up perfectly in the middle, the clean-up isn't completely done, the ombré is a hot mess, etc. I'm lazy and imperfect. This isn't going to be one of those nail polish blogs where the images are perfectly manicured/edited/cleaned up. I'm not a nail technician. I'm learning, and I want to share the creative process with you, both when it looks really good and when it doesn't look so good so you can learn from my mistakes. 

Back to the manicure....

I really like the stamping polishes and the whole layering idea. Something I'm not loving, however, is the fact that it started chipping the next day, BEFORE I even got to the wedding! Granted, in the car on the way I was trying to open a box (of nail polish, ironically). I don't know if it was because of all the layers or because you aren't supposed to use top coat and I did. It makes a really cool effect, it just didn't last that long for me. I'll try without a top coat next time. I'm changing my nails tonight anyway ( going to a Halloween party tomorrow) so it's not really a big deal. 

Buy your stained glass at ellagee.com!

Finally, welcome to our new readers/followers! We appreciate all of your comments and the fact that you read or follow our blog. There might be a giveaway in the works once we reach a certain number of followers, so stay tuned for that! 

xoxo,

Belle