Picnic Blankets - Essie Private Weekend, Australis Mexican Madness, Mode Hook Me Up, Born Pretty's Y019 plate

Oh dear, what do we have here...

[Cheerful!]

So this is my attempt at combining stamping and dotticure. The base is Essie's Private Weekend, which is a white polish with the faintest of pale microglitter. I stamped over it with Australis' Mexican Madness, a mid-pink creme nail polish, and using a pattern from Born Pretty's Y019 plate.

[Born Pretty's Y019 stamping plate]

The pattern I used is the first one from the left on the first row.

Then I used a dotting tool to add blue dots with Mode's Hook Me Up, a blue creme. Tada!

[Base: Essie's Private Weekend
Stamping: Australis' Mexican Madness
Dotticure: Mode's Hook Me Up]

As you would have known by now, I've been using Australis' streak-free high shine nail polishes for stamping, even though they're not officially stamping nail polishes. I quite like them because there are also so many shades to choose from, and I can use them interchangeably as a base or as a stamping polish. It's also nice to support Made in Australia nail polishes (Mode is also Made in Australia)!

I've also said before that the only issue with using them as stamping nail polishes is that they often aren't as a opaque and thick as the usual stamping polishes. This usually isn't a problem when you're stamping with Australis' darker colours. Sometimes, it's also nice to have thinner stamping polishes, to produce a faded look.

In this case, I think Mexican Madness was too thinly stamped on and I overdid it with my quick dry nail polish. After I applied the quick dry, the stamped on Mexican Madness colour seemed to split. It kept the pattern, but as you can see, it resulted in this patchy look. It looks like old flaking paint, which isn't too bad to me. I was more annoyed by my own inability to dot regular dots, to be honest.

This mani actually got the most comments in awhile now. Everyone seemed convinced that I had purposefully created that faded flaking look and kept asking how I did everything, from the dots to the lines.