Tutorial: Lead-lighting over dark polishes

(Nothing to disclose)

Hello!

I had some interest in a tutorial about the interference lead-lighting technique I showed you recently, so I put one together. First I'll walk you through it, and at the end I'll summarize it in a single image for you.

Step 1) Okay. So. First, you're gonna stamp your image over your dark base. You can use any color that shows up over your base; in this case I'm showing you the most extreme version, a black base with silver stamping:

Step one: stamp your design over your dark base

I stamped with Barry M Silver Foil using Cheeky Jumbo plate 04.


2) If you haven't already done so, select the interference polishes you want to use. What I'm calling an 'interference' polish is a polish that shows up over dark colors, but not over light colors. There are a lot of special effect top coats that look very different over other colors, and there are duochrome polishes that do this, too; if you have a polish that you have to put over black or another color, that's the kind I'm talking about.

I'm going to use four polishes; for the first example, I'll show you Glitter Gal Transitions Soft Red and Glitter Gal Transitions Soft Green; notice how they just look pearly white in the bottle:

Glitter Gal Transitions Soft Green and Transitions Soft Red

For my second example I'll show you CND Crimson Sparkle and Sapphire Sparkle:

CND Crimson Sparkle and Sapphire Sparkle

 Step 3) Put a dot of your polish(s) on your nail plate (or other surface):

I use my plate because I'm going to have to clean it anyway. :)

Step 4) With your dotting tool, pick up your polish:

Use your dotting tool to pick up that polish

Step 5) Use the dotting tool to apply the polish where you want it to show on your design:

Apply the polish to whatever part of your design you like.

Step 6) Look at the awesome pretty you just created!

First, let's take a look at how the glitter gals transformed:

Lead-lighting with interference polishes

Notice how the polishes show up green and purple-red where I applied them over the black; where they overlap with the silver stamping, they don't show up at all, so it looks like I painted inside the lines perfectly. :)

Here are CND Crimson Sparkle and Sapphire Sparkle over the black:

Lead-lighting with Interference polishes

These show up slightly differently; they are more glittery, and they have a multi-chrome effect in the sifting light. Just stunning...:)

I've showed this over black, but you don't have to limit yourself just to black; you can use a variety of bases, just play around with different polishes to see what works. You can see the other manicure I did, over a green base, by clicking here.

This is a really simple technique, and depending on the image you use, so hard to mess up. If you choose an image with thick lines like I did, it's very easy to say inside your designated area.


As promised, here is a graphic summarizing the steps for you:

Interference Lead-lighting tutorial

Let me know if you have any questions, and I'd love to see what you do with this technique; link below if you try it out. :)

Hugs and loves,
M.

Before & After: Misa BreakAway

Hello!

Today's theme in the challenge is 'Merge or Melt'. There was a bit of discussion about what this meant, but we decided that anything that combines polishes would count. So I decided to do something I've been meaning to do, but that I keep procrastinating on--try out some of my non-glitter toppers. The idea is that the combination of the two polishes merging creates something new, that neither polish is on its own. :)

The one I like and think accomplished this goal was the combination of Misa BreakAway and CND Sapphire Sparkle.

First, here is BreakAway alone (a beautiful purple polish in its own right):

Misa BreakAway

I love the way they look paired together (that's the CND bottle in my hand):

Misa BreakAway + CND Sapphire Sparkle

I love the way these two look together, and they looked even better in real life, with the play of light over them. This reminds me of some of the really expensive duochrome-effect polishes that you can get from places like Glitter Gal, but with a lot more versatility and for a lot less money, lol. I've waited far too long to play with my CND toppers, and I plan on doing a lot more of it!!

Do you have any favorite toppers or combinations? I'd love to hear about them since I don't have very many of these types of polishes. So now it's YOUR turn to enable ME!! :)

Thanks for looking--please check out the other melty-mergies below. :)

Big hugs and Namaste,
M.

Before & After: Pumpkins

Hello!!

Today's prompt in my CNT Halloween challenge is 'pumpkins'. I did the manicure for this one ages ago, because I love pumpkins, and couldn't wait! I actually did it before I knew officially when I'd be posting it, because I knew one of my challenges would have a pumpkin prompt in it. :)

I started off with a base of Revlon Orbit; this is a polish I got on one of the dual-ended polishes, with a flakie on the other end. It's a deep purple that goes almost to black. On the accent nail  put two coats of The Nail Junkie's Tiger. I wanted to spice up the purple a bit--it's sort of flat on its own--so I put a coat of CND Amethyst Sparkle over it:

Revlon Orbit + CND Amethyst Sparkle + The Nail Junkie Tiger

To make the pumpkin look, I stamped using Sally Hansen Orange impulse, and the pumpkin image from Bundle Monster plate BM222:

Pumpkins, indirect light

Pumpkins, direct light

Pumpkins, shade

I love this shade of purple with this shade of orange, and I was so excited that the stamping polish was so close to the color of Tiger when put over that orange! Something about this combination just makes me happy. I hope you enjoy it, too. :)

Thanks for looking, and please take a look at the other pumpkin manicures linked below. :)

Xoxox,
M.

MSMD Monday: Saran-wrap interference FAIL

Hello!!

Today's Monkey-See-Monkey-Do manicure is my attempt to recreate this manicure on Imperfectly Painted, which I fell in love with. I just become a part of the great world of toppers, and was excited by this cool way to use them that went beyond just painting one color over black.

I recently got two Glitter Gal transition toppers in my birthday haul, Transitions Soft Red and Transitions Soft Green, so I thought I'd start out with them, over a blackish polish by Ulta.

Bad idea.

Basically, when I was done, they just looked like semi-tinted whiteness on the black nail. So, I tried to fix it by adding some CND on top of it (CND Crimson Sparkle and CND Jade Sparkle), and here's how it came out:

Not bad, but nowhere near as pretty as the original. Still, I can see these being a cool base for galaxy nails, or something like that.

However, I had in my head a vision, and it hadn't come out the way I wanted it to, and I was not happy. I wanted more pretty, more bling, and I was darn well going to get it. I tried putting more of the topper on. That just made it look muddier. I didn't know how to pull out of the tail-spin until--flakies to the rescue!:

 I added on a coat of the flakie half of Revlon's Orbit. It did give a little bit of an extra oomph, but I'm still not sure I can call this a success. Next time I do it, maybe I'll just follow the darned directions and try it directly with the CND first!

Thanks for looking, and please check out the other MSMD Monday manicures by my fellow bloggers, linked below. :)

M.