Tag Archives: Winstonia

Beauty Tips for Women: Mermaid Tale Inspired Manicure

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I recently picked up some neon and glitter polish from Milani that called an ocean / mermaid feel to them when placed in combination.  The colors are Milani Neon Fresh Teal, Milani Neon Blue Dude, and Milani Teal (glitter polish).  I decided I wanted to try a Mermaid Tale or Mermaid Scales manicure.

I totally forgot to take pictures of the polish and plates involved.  It simply has been just one of those weeks.

Since the two polishes are neon colors I decided to do a basecoat of white polish.  I did a gradient using Fresh Teal and Blue Dude on thumb, index, and pinky. Middle finger got a coat of Fresh Teal and ring finger got a coat of Blue Dude.  I did this because I wanted to see if there would be a difference in the way the glitter polish would look on each color (there was no difference at all).  I was a bit torn between the two images I had for scales.  I could either use Winstonia W111, which has a large scales image, or Cheeky plate B, which has a smaller scales image.  I decided to try the look out on my left hand before committing to a final look.

I wasn’t thrilled the way Winstonia W111 looked when compared to Cheeky’s image.  The scales effect I was looking for was achieved more with the image from Cheeky.

Below is a series of photos of the completed manicure.  Unfortunately the gradient effect was lost under the stamping.  I only did two coats of the gradient thinking that would be enough but clearly to make it pop under the stamping I would have needed more coats.

Overall I loved the final results.  I’m totally in love with Milani Teal; it is an amazing glitter polish.  The way it shifts under light between the teal, blue and silver glitters is beautiful.  I’m still on the fence with Fresh Teal and Blue Dude.  When compared to other neon colors they just don’t pop.  Another con is that they both stained my nails horribly. Setting aside those two things, it turned out great.

 

Beauty Tips for Women: Tropical Manicure (3)/ Moai Sunset

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This is my third tropical manicure for the Hukilau 2013.

I came up with the idea to use Winstonia W114 plate, which has a cool Moai image on it.  I highly recommend checking out the Winstonia stamping plates.  The quality is awesome and the images are very unique.  You can find them at http://www.winstonia.com/. 

Here is the polish list used to create the look:
WnW Black Crème
Essie In The Cab-ana
Konad Black
Sally Hansen Lightening
WnW French White Crème
WnW Sunny Side Up
Seche Vite

 

My husband suggested a sunset type background, so I went with that idea.  I started off with one coat of WnW French Crème on all nails.  Next I did one coat of WnW Sunny Side Up.  Picked the largest dotting tool and with Sally Hansen Lightening made the sun shape.  Using Konad black I stamped the Moai images on my nails except for the thumb.  Using WnW Black Crème I made the land for the Moai to sit on.  Toped with Seche Vite.

Since I have more space on my thumb I wanted to add the ocean to the sunset.  For the ocean I used Essie In The Cab-ana.  I made little waves with WnW French Crème and a nail art brush.  I then stamped the Moai with Konad and used WnW Black Crème to make the land on which they sit.  Toped with Seche Vite.

I had mixed feelings about this manicure.  Close up it looked cool but from afar it looked like a mess since the detail is lost.  Just taking a picture proved challenging.  This is definitely an idea that I need to play around with more.

Beauty Tips for Women: Earth Day Manicure

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I wanted to try my hand at doing an Earth Day manicure but I wanted to steer clear from using green.  I was inspired by two things, my daughters Earth Day celebration flyer that had a rainbow recycling theme and to continue with the blue theme for Autism Awareness month.

I used Jordana – Sapphire.  Sapphire is a bright blue shimmer polish.  I used only two coats.  The formula was easy to apply; I had no problems, just love it.  I used Wet ‘n’ Wild – French White Crème for the accent finger.  I used two coats of French White Crème.  I have a bit of a love hate relationship with French White Crème.  It is a beautiful white and is a good stamping polish but I find this formula very streaky.  I really liked how this looked, very simple and clean.

Winstonia came out with a great series of plates.  They have images for holidays that are unique like plate W104 with the Earth Day stamp.  I used that image for my thumb.  For the rest of my nails I used Cheeky CH33 recycling image.

For the stamping I used Konad white and on the accent finger I used red, blue, green, yellow and orange to stamp the recycling images.  In my mind this manicure looked good but when I but it together I disliked it.  I don’t have long nails so fitting the recycling images in different colors was a real pain.  I ended up overlapping some of the colors and it just looked bad.

In theory this manicure should have worked but I couldn’t pull it off.  Perhaps if my nails had been longer it would have looked better.  But also I think my choice of blue wasn’t right either for this manicure.  This whole manicure was an utter fail for me.  It truly is tough to have short nails and pull off nail art; you just simply need the room. I don’t mind sharing a failed manicure; it is all a learning curve.