Mermaid Nails!

Two of my favourite things combined, mermaids and nail polish!

This week's manicure is mermaid scales. I did my nails like this sometime last year as well, but I didn't have any embellishments. Here are last year's ones:

When I first started getting into stamping, I was browsing eBay for some cheap ones to start with. I came across a plate H31, no idea what brand it is, but it had a scale pattern on it. As soon as I saw it I knew it would be perfect for mermaid nails, so I bought it and it's great.
I really liked these when I did them; almost couldn't bring myself to take them off, but I felt like they were missing something. That is until.....

I was shopping on the Born Pretty Store website (www.bornprettystore.com) when I found a rhinestone wheel of different sized half pearls and 3.5mm and 5mm gold and silver shells. I bought these straight away because they were what last year's mermaid nails were missing!!

So here's some pictures of Mermaid Nails 2.0!

I just clustered half pearls of different sizes, silver rhinestones of different sizes, gold and silver different sized shells and gold micro beads together. Inspired by a hairpiece a mermaid might wear.

My XL stamper hasn't come yet, it will come tomorrow while I'm at work, just you watch. So not having my XL squishy stamper, made it quite difficult to stamp this full nail design because my nails are too long for it and the stamper is too stiff. As a result, I had to paint on some scales at the tips and around the edges :/ After stamping the scale pattern, I used some glue and nail foils to fill in a few individual scales one each nail. I got that idea from the story book The Rainbow Fish.

Colours Used:

Blue - Maybelline: Timely Turquoise 

Green: Sinful Colors: San Francisco

Dark Blue - OPI: Swimsuit....nailed it!

Gold - OPI: Glitzerland

Gold for stamping - Essie: Good as Gold

I really love how this turned out, even more than last year's. The colours are so 'mermaidy'. It turned out so shimmery, so majestic, just like a real mermaid's tail ;)

MoYou London Stamping Plates II

A couple of weeks ago, I did kind of a review of my first purchase of some MoYou London stamping plates. When I received them and was very satisfied, I bought some more that same day. These were also purchased with my own money.

I was very satisfied with the ordering, postage and packaging last time, and I was not disappointed the second time. My plates were shipped the day after I ordered them, they were wrapped well to avoid damage and arrived well within 10 working days. I couldn't be happier with them. More details about them are in my last post about MoYou London Stamping Plates. 

I bought 10 at once the second time but I'm only going to show 4 at the moment because otherwise there will be too many pictures. These 4 plates are all from the Fairytale Collection.

Again, these plates came in individual plastic packets with the blue protective sticker. There's no way these babies are getting damaged in transit.

This is the Fairytale Collection Plate 5. I think it might be inspired by Cinderella? This one's sooo pretty! So many different patterns and designs. I'm looking forward to using the wheels and the windows of the carriage as well as the dress.

This one is Fairytale Collection Plate 6. I think this is inspired by The Little Mermaid? This one has more patterns to use as full nail designs but it does have some cute sea creatures and bubbles. The mermaid's hair and tail is made up of several different patterns. So pretty!

 This is Fairytale Collection Plate 8. I think this one has got to be inspired by Sleeping Beauty. Just by looking at it, I think that perhaps some of the patterns may be a little small to use as a full nail design, depending on the size of you nails I suppose. I really like the pattern in her hair, the borders, the roses and the cute little birds.

 Lastly, this one is Fairytale Collection Plate 9 and it is the last one from this collection that I got. And it must be inspired by Snow White. This one is really cute, I love the squirrel, the deer, the tortoise and the little mushrooms. The patterns on her dress and the water well look nice too. I'm looking forward to Autumn (Fall) so use the leaves and maybe the tree trunk. I wonder how I could use that cheeky little dwarf?


I am really happy with these plates, they're all so cute! I have all these plates and all these ideas and no XL stamper to use with them :( It should be coming in the mail any day now. I would have got it from the MoYou London website when I bought these, but they were out of stock so I just got a cheap one off eBay.

When the XL stamper gets here, I'll be sure to use these plates for next week's manicure. The hard part will be deciding which to use first. If I didn't have OCD I would probably have a different design on every finger! :D

Nails for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

First up, this was not of my own invention; I saw it on a blog called Flight of Whimsy and thought it was perfect to wear for when I go to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. 

So today before I went to see the movie, I recreated it as best I could and here's how it turned out: 

For the writing, I painted some clear nail polish on to a plastic pouch and wrote over it with black acrylic paint. This created my own little sticker. I have seen this technique used on YouTube, so it's not my idea. The original photo I saw, I think the writing was done by hand directly on to the nail, but I knew I wouldn't be able to do that, so I used my home made stickers.
I was a little disappointed with how they turned out because when I peeled them off the plastic, they curled, which made it difficult to apply them as neatly as I had intended. And the sticker is a bit thick, so I can tell it's there :( But I still like them.

As soon as I saw the original picture on Flight of Whimsy, I knew that I had to use my A-England Holy Grail Revamped polish for this one. It's pretty much my perfect gold, kind of an antique gold. 

I loved the movie and I wish we didn't have to wait a whole year for the last installment :(

Nautical Nails

My manicure for this week is nautical themed. Since it's Summer here in Australia, I thought that nautical nails would be cool.
For this design, I went with the red, navy blue, and white stripes that everyone seems to associate with nautical and sailing.

After applying a white base, I used striping tape and Scotch tape create the stripes with navy blue and red.
Then I painted the anchor with gold and the boat with a lighter blue, brown and the same red.

Colours Used:
White - Sinful Colors: Snow Me White
Navy Blue - China Glaze: First Mate
Red - Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure: Right Said Red
Gold - OPI: Glitzerland

I couldn't wait for my XL stamper to arrive to use my MoYou stamping plates, so I went with a small design that would fit on my current stamper. I used a sandy colour and the same blue and brown as before and added a little mermaid sitting on a rock in black. She is holding a little gold micro bead. 

Colours Used:

Sandy Colour - OPI: Did You 'Ear About Van Gogh?

Black - OPI: Black Onyx

Navy Blue - China Glaze: First Mate

My favourite part of this manicure is the mermaid :D

MoYou London Stamping Plates

I recently came across some very unique and amazing stamping plates on some popular nail blogs. They were so amazing that I just had to find where I could get some. I went to the website which is www.moyou.co.uk and it was way more amazing than I thought it would be. They have lots of different collections with different themes, with stamping plates ranging from full nail designs to small designs. And my personal favourite that really sold it to me, the plates that are a whole scene made up of lots of different patterns and designs.
I guess this is kind of a review, although I won't be showing how well they stamp and what not, that will be another day when I get my XL stamper. My nails have outgrown my current stamper and I feel like it won't show the true potential of the plates if I use it. So this post just shows the ordering, the receiving and the opening of the package with some close ups. Also, I bought these plates with my own money and I will give my honest opinion of these plates.

The ordering process was really easy and PayPal is accepted. Each plate costs £4.99 which, according to Google, is around $9.14 Australian Dollars and $8.22 American Dollars. The shipping cost is quite reasonable but depends on how much you buy and you can choose to have the package tracked or not (tracking is extra).

I received a confirmation email after placing my order and then another the next day or the day after that to tell me it had been shipped. The estimated delivery to Australia was within 10 working days. I ordered mine on Tuesday 31st of December, so I was expecting it around the 15th - 17th given the New Year Holiday. But I got home on Wednesday 8th of January to be very pleasantly surprised to find that they had arrived already. That was a good day :D

So now for the pictures :D

It was packaged quite neatly and the inside had bubble wrap to protect it. I only ordered three plates this first time and have already ordered some more :) Packaging is good and I highly doubt that the plates would get damaged. Mine were perfect.

So I took them out of the package and they were in their own little bag, I guess to stop them scratching against each other? 

If you're familiar with stamping plates, you will already know that they come with a protective sticker (which is usually blue) on top of the images. You must take this off before you use it. I have heard that some people have cut themselves while trying to remove this from some traditional round plates. This is not the case with these MoYou plates. Here's why....

They have a plastic backing on them. It's thicker than any of the round plates I've tried and it also is slightly larger than the plate itself. I actually quite like this feature and it eliminates the need for a plate holder (not that I ever used one). And I think that it would prevent it from scratching any surfaces.

Here's the first one; Fairytale Collection Plate 1. It has fairies on it!! Eeek! :D I love it. As you can see, there are diamonds, stars, butterflies, flower-like stars and some square spirals that can be used as a full nail design. I also think that the dandelions/pinwheels would look cool in the center of the nail. I have no complaints.

This one is Fairytale Collection Plate 2. It has more patterns that can be used as full nail designs than the previous one. I really love the swirls, they're so intricate and if they transfer to the nail properly, it will be perfect, so we shall see when my XL stamper comes. The sea serpent looks really cool, you could put it across your nails. I especially love the mermaids, unicorn, Pegasus and the castle. The only thing I am questioning, is whether or not the two patterns under the rainbow and next to the rain drops can be used as a full nail design. But again, we shall see.

The last one is Fairytale Collection Plate 3. Again, this one features more patterns for full nail designs than the others. Most of them look like they would fit a full nail. The knight's shield looks cute and could be used by itself. I think using the dragon's and the horse's head in something would be interesting. I don't think I have any complaints for this one either.

I should mention that each of these plates measures 6.5cm x 12.5cm, but it says that in the product description on the website. 
So overall, I really love the company and their plates, there is so much you can do with these, the possibilities are endless. There are 18 different collections on their website as of January 2014 including a new one that was added only last week. To go with these amazing plates, they also sell stamping polish, rhinestones, glitters, some random nail tools (like cuticle pushers) and a few different types of stampers and scrapers.

I was very impressed with the shipping time because things usually take quite a long time to get to Australia, especially when you're really excited and can't wait. And imagine how fast you could receive yours if you live in the UK!

I can't wait for my next order to arrive and I will be testing these out as soon as my XL stamper gets here.

First Post! :)

After a few days of getting used to my blog, I now have the hang of it (I think, haha.) So now it's time for the first post on Magical Polish :) 

And what better way to start off this blog than with a sparkly manicure?
This is my manicure for this week. A gold base with blue falling glitter/glitter gradient. I used a polish from my favourite brand of nail polish - A-England's Excalibur (Revamped). The blue glitter is Kleancolor's Puppy Love with some bigger glitter from Kleancolor's Starry Blue.

I kind of wish I hadn't have added the bigger hex glitters because the photo makes them look more like spots...But anywho, it still has glitter right? :D

My camera seemed to have trouble picking up the actual colour of Excalibur (Revamped) and shows it as more of a solid, foily gold or champagne colour. It is actually a foily finish with gold and silvery particles. To see this polish in it's full beauty, you should probably Google swatches of it, Lucy from Lucy's Stash has some great ones :) I need to work on the lighting or something for these pictures, so I'll see how I go next time.