BornPrettyStore: Big Sheet Animal Water Decals…

So this ‘Big Sheet of Animal Water Decals‘ has some super cute designs, there’s something for everyone – pandas, rabbits, cats, dogs and deer! It was sent to me by BornPrettyStore to be put through it’s paces and before I show you how some of them look on my nails, I just want to break down what great value this sheet is.

You get 12 designs, each with 10 fingers worth, which equates to 120 water decals for the measly price of $2.87/$1.59 sale price (correct 29/4). This means each decal is costing you $0.02, amazing right? So the first design I’m going to show you is a good example of how to make your money stretch even further by using just one decal per mani as an ‘accent nail’.

I chose to use a decal from the deer set with a white background as this allowed me to paint the rest of my nails the same colour. Then it was just a case of cutting out the decal I wanted and applying it as normal. (If you’re unsure or need a refresher about this, keep scrolling as I’ve included a sort of step by step next) Ta-da! Simple, quick mani for $0.02.

So I might have go a bit carried away about how cheap it is, so lets do the re-cap on how to actually use and apply this product properly. With them being water decals you will need; a shallow dish of water, tweezers, scissors, nail file and a tissue. I’ve chosen this super cute panda set to demonstrate the application steps.

The first step is to cut out the decals you wish to use. With this big sheet you need to be quite accurate with your cuts as there are no borders between each design – take it slow and steady.
Make sure you remove the clear, protective layer covering the decals and trim them to size before you submerge them in the water.
Leave them there for around 15 seconds, at this point the decal should be able to slide off the backing paper with ease and use your tweezers to remove them from the water. Place them on your nail in the correct position, gently dab with a tissue to remove excess water.
Then remove the excess that may be hanging off your nail with a file.
Ta-da!

The length of the water decals is quite generous and easily fitted all my nails. Personally my nails are all different lengths, so sometimes I trimmed off the top part of the decal to help the design sit better meaning I wasn’t having to file off parts that I liked.

Now came the biggest test – the top coat. Unfortunately sometimes decals melt, like the design squashes and the colours bleed and things that that. However, these guys actually look better with a top coat! They didn’t melt and it actually helped to iron out some of the wrinkles. (I used Seche Vite)

You may have noticed that I added some glitter on to the little water orbs the pandas are fascinated by. This totally isn’t necessary but helps to demonstrate how easy it is to customize the decals!

Aren’t they cute! They sailed through the top coat challenge, but how about the well known ‘3 hours in a  pool, teaching children to swim’ challenge? Amazing. Very minimal chipping, and even though the top coat may be helping this I’ve previously had the whole water decal float off my nail in to the pool. (Anyone else had that kind of problem?) But not these guys, look at the results!

I’m so very impressed with how they did over-all, and I still can’t get over the price. I had another idea about creating a pretty, but very economical gift with them. Why not pair up a set of decals, with a matching polish for base colour, and an inexpensive but cute nail file? (Make it way nicer than the one I threw in for example…) So lets add it up, shall we say $1 for the file, $4 for the polish, $0.23 for the sheet of decals and maybe $1 for the pillow giftbox – that’s only $6.23/£4.81! How about that? A gift for under a fiver, amazing! What’s nice about these decals is that they don’t look poor quality or feel cheap once applied, so there’s no way someone would know.

Do you ever have one of those items where you just have too many ideas for it and get a little obsessed with using it in different ways? Well I’m afraid that’s what happened with this sheet of decals. I really didn’t intend to do three different designs but after cutting out the dog set purely for the example gift set, the little dachshund was crying out to me to be used. I went for some super colourful, dry brush nails and used him as a pinky accent, cute no? And it only cost me $0.02 😉

I can’t wait to use the little rabbits they’re so cute, but the cat set…. Anyone fancy them? I’m unfortunately not a cat person. Hope you enjoyed the review and that I gave you some ideas to think about!

If you’d like to order the whole sheet for yourself or friends head on over to BornPrettyStore. Anything in your basket that’s full price will recieve a 10% discount when you use the code ‘AZYW10’ at checkout.

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Dream-catcher…

So here’s another item bought way back in April ’16, which were some ‘leaf’ metal studs. However I thought they looked way more like feathers than leaves, so I turned this one in to a dream-catcher.

I used the dry brush technique (which I seem to be a little addicted to right now) to smoosh all the colours together and then used a very fine brush to paint the dream-catcher details. It’s a very spring/summer design for this time of year!

Multi-Foil Leopard…

So this looks waaay better in reality. The camera just did not pick up how shiny and cool this turned out. It was one of those dangerous designs, serving as a distraction at work and whilst driving. I used 4 different colours of metallic nail foils and then used leopard print nail vinyls from BPS.

MiniBead Burst…

So my weekend was a strange combination of too busy and too lazy, so I didn’t produce any new nail art. I created these nails when I was reviewing the minibeads, but just didn’t include them in the original post. GIF making is fun, I just wish I’d taken a picture of every additional circle, how cool would that have looked!

Macarons…

So one thing that I needed to pick up on my trip to London, were some Macarons from the Laduree shop in Covent Gardens. I love macarons but don’t have the opportunity to purchase them very regularly (probably a good thing), so it’s a real treat to buy some posh, tasty ones.

By the time I’d finished painting my nails I’d already munched through three of them, but fortunately had plenty left to pose with! I decided to leave them without a top coat, as I’d spent time texturising the larger macarons and Seche Vite would have wiped that out. Aren’t they cute?

Gilded Vomit?…

So here’s another for the fail folder. I was trying to go for a sort of mother of pearl look, but instead hit upon a golden edged puddle of vomit. And not just any old puke, I’m visualizing the ‘I’ve just been to a party where I ate and drank everything of unnatural colouration’. Anyone else getting that?

I think I went too brown, I should have stayed light and blue and gilded it in silver like a proper mother of pearl shell. Never mind, onwards!

Bright Flowers and Black…

So my flowery mood continues with the painting of this design. I created the flowers by painting negative space; I used my stamper to create a colourful, shooshed up base and then painted black around where I wanted the flowers.
I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, however I wished the flowers were a little larger as I feel I lost a lot of the colour that should have been in this design.

Shattered Glass…

So the ‘shattered glass’ trend is now pretty old but I had still to try it – until today! I bought some of the shattered glass foil (?) way back in October from BornPrettyStore, they’ve called it shiny laser foils and I chose pattern #2.

Shiny laser foil does sound pretty awesome and oh my gosh IT’S SO COOL LOOKING! I decided to go for the literal shattered glass look, by sizing up my nails and cutting shards to fit. I applied some nail foil glue then arranged them on my nails using tweezers, I found it too tricky to do with my fingers. I then top coated them twice with Seche Vite and ta da!

Look how it changes in the light! I think it’s so amazing that there’s nothing and then BAM look at all those wonderful colours. I genuinely believe they’re going to be a major distraction at work today for not only myself but also others.

Sprinkling of Spring Flowers…

So my index nail has kind of recovered, but it’s still a horrendous shape. At least I know it’s growing and I didn’t do much, if any, permanent damage to it. As the weather has been quite sunny lately, and my tulips and daffodils have started to grow in the garden, I decided to crack out my tiny dried flowers for this design. I think they’re really cute and delicate, even though they’re a bit of a pain to work with; bits end up everywhere, some of them crumble to dust, sometimes they don’t lie flush and so on.

It looks a lot prettier in person as the photo didn’t really pick up the glitter, booo.

Happy New Year! (Almost)…

So to state the obvious – it’s almost a new year! To celebrate I’ll be playing some sort of video game maybe Jurassic Park Lego, Harvest Moon or maybe even Watchdogs. We’re usually a little more retro and go for a board-game, Risk or Monopoly, but neither of us feel up for it this year. I’ll of-course be having some rum for refreshment too!

Fireworks were an obvious choice for new years nail art. I’ve seen a lot of them on Instagram, but guess what b*tches – mines actually light up the night sky!

I’ve yet again used a wonderful LED Nail Chip from BornPrettyStore. I honestly urge you to get some as they’re so cool to use. Right now (31.12.2015) they’re on sale at $2.25 so why not just get one to try it out, remember it’s free shipping! If you order anything full price, use my code ‘AZYW10’ to get 10% off. I also used some silver glitter, a holo topper, and nail foils to create this super busy fireworks display.