Witchy hypno nails!

Practice makes perfect! A stamping success! For those of you who visited my blog yesterday, you might remember that I was quite disgruntled about my stamping skills. I did however vow that I would practice until I got better at it, and I'm not one to procrastinate indefinitely (well, not when it has to do with nail polish anyway). Here is another attempt at stamping. I think it went better this time! What do you think?

I really like this look. At first I wanted to stamp that design with matte top coat, but it didn't really work out. Nothing showed up at all! So I decided to do another stamping/taping combo and ended up with this look, because I really wanted to include matte effect. I love matte... have you figure that much out yet? :P

The colours are a bit Halloweeny/witchy and the pattern is quite hypnotizing... I really like the matte/shiny contrast, too. Overall I'm pretty happy with this mani... too bad I'm going to take it all off because I just love doing my nails! Haha.

Also: NEWSFLASH! I would like to say that yesterday, my blog hit 5,000 page views! I'm so excited! Thank you all for checking out my nail art, it really makes me quite happy! I have therefore decided something pretty awesome. This is an official announcement!

When my blog hits 10,000 pageviews and 20 followers,

I shall host a lacquertastic giveaway/contest!!!

Ain't it awesome? I can't wait! :D

The polishes used:

• Base coat: Essie - All in One Base (did I ever tell you how important it is to use a base coat?)
• Purple: Julep - Morgan
• Flakie: Nfu Oh - 51
• Intermediate top coat: Sèche Vite (this one is great to reduce time when you do taping or stamping)
• Matte effect: Essie - Matte About You
• Black: no name bottle of stamping polish simply labeled "nail paint"
• Stamping design: Bundle Monster plate BM 301 (2012 set)
• Shiny top coat: Essie - Good To Go

The technique:

As usual, I applied a base coat, then two coats of Julep Morgan and two coats of Nfu Oh 51, followed by Sèche Vite.

I could have skipped the Sèche Vite and just used Matte About You right then and there, but I was planning on doing something else. I tried to stamp with Matte About You at first and that didn't work out at all - the stamp didn't even show up on the nail. And so I got upset:

So that's when I decided to just make the whole thing matte. So I added a full coat of Matte About you.

When that was dry, I taped off my nails diagonally and stamped my design in black. I added a coat of Essie Good To Go over the stamp, removed the tape and waited for the whole thing to dry. Voilà!