BORNPRETTYSTORE GIVEAWAY

YOU CAN ENTER THIS GIVEAWAY AT www.bornprettystore.com

DIY - Lip Balm Tutorial

Hey guys!
Did you know that you can make homemade lip balm in 5 minutes?! Plus you can customize your color and scent, I will never buy from a store again! Don’t forget to subscribe for new vids ...

Tips:
If you don’t want to use the microwave a double boiler works as well. Just place your (heat safe) measuring glass in a pan filled with almost boiling water and stir until ingredients are all melted. Add Vitamin E oil and essential oils at the end so that they don’t evaporate.
If you are re-using your old EOS container add any leftover EOS balm in the mixture and it will have an even silkier texture.

* If you are a business/company who would like to contact me about reviewing a product...please email me at : uppalcheshta@gmail.com

Review – Born Pretty Store Plate Holder, Clear Jelly Stamper, and Plates

Hi guys! Today I have a review of a few of a few pretty awesome products from www.bornprettystore.com. They are all related to each other so it made sense to include them all into one post.  Let’s get started shall we?

20-slot Large Rectangular Nail Art Stamping Plate Holder (Item ID 20045)
First up is this 20-slot Large Rectangular Nail Art Stamping Plate Holder (Item ID 20045). The outer dimensions of this holder are 5 ¾ inches in height by 3 ¾ inches in width and it’s made of a nice leather-type material. It’s very soft and flexible.

The inner sleeves are well-made and held into the holder with rivets:

My www.bornprettystore.com plates fit in it perfectly!!! They don’t slide around or fall out when you’re turning the pages to see the plates (which is a common problem with some plate holders). The plate is also nicely visible through the sleeve.

This holder also works with non www.bornprettystore.com plates.

It holds a total of 20 rectangular plates, but you could probably do two plates per sleeve for a total of 40. I really really liked this holder as a solution for plate storage. I much prefer to flip through it looking for inspiration as opposed to removing each plate from their sleeve. As well, this holder protects plates that may not have sleeves and could get scratched up if stored in piles or stacks.

2-piece Clear Marshmallow Jelly Nail Art Stamper (Item ID 24130)
Next up is this Clear Marshmallow Silicone Stamper. Clear stampers are all the rage right now and I have finally seen why!!!!

The head of this stamper is removable and made of a clear jelly silicone. It comes in this pink holder and comes with its own scraper. The image picked up perfectly on the first go. The point of these stampers is that the back-end of the stamper is open and it allows you to see down through the holder and through the stamper/image. You can easily position the stamp onto your nail in the EXACT position you want! This is VERY handy for geometric or linear-type images that need to be aligned straight. And for people like me who seem to be incapable of lining stamps up the way I want!!!

Here are some manicures I did using the clear jelly stamper and some www.bornprettystore.com plates:



I love how the chevrons are perfectly aligned on my nail, and I was able to place the second stamp on top exactly where I wanted!
And just a quick mention about the plates used – I love www.bornprettystore.com plates!

They seem to be foolproof for me.  I always get beautiful sharp images from them no matter what stamper or polish I seem to use. And as always very affordable! You can buy plate BPL-028 (Item ID 21814) here and plate BP-L008 (Item ID 17926) here.
So there you have it! I hope this review was helpful for you. I can’t stress enough how much of a game-changer the clear stamper was for me, so if you are into stamping and nail art I would urge you to try it!!!

Born Pretty Store Holo Glitter Dust and Chrome Mirror Powder Review

I’ve been playing around with some powders and glitters from Born Pretty Store, some successes and some not so great times with them. Plus, I’m still working on my video tutorial game and have been spending time in that area of my nail art adventures. Read on for pictures, review and video!

Both the Born Pretty Store silver mirror chrome powder and gold holo glitter “dust” come in a pack with an applicator tip. The nice thing is that the gold holo glitter has a double ended foam applicator and brush – which really comes in handy. Born Pretty Store also offers about 100 other glitter, dust and powder options in all the colors of the rainbow.  Plus, if you don’t have any gel polish or don’t want to contaminate your good gel polish with glitters, many of the BPS sets come with a mini bottle of clear gel polish.

 

 

 

 

So, why gel polish? For two reasons. First, the powders and glitters don’t “burnish” onto regular polish well at all, and second, regular polish top coats will ruin the shiny finish. You’ll have to use a gel polish layer under and over all of these new-found powders. The included BPS gel polish in my pack is 100% adequate.  I was glad to only get that $1 bottle of gel polish stuffed with little tiny glitters instead of my $15 Gelish top coat bottle.

The silver mirror chrome powder is fantastic for how inexpensive it is. It works amazing and I highly recommend it. I hope to get more powders like it in other colors.

The gold holo “dust” does not burnish or rub onto nails AT ALL. It’s just a fine ground loose glitter. I tried several different options to get any sort of layer attached to my nails and nothing was working. This is the best I could do to stamp it down on the nail and get a clear gel polish layer over it.

After all that messing around with the gold glitter dust I decided to add it to a clear bottle of Wet N Wild. Instant glitter topper! In addition, this is my VERY first try with Munduo de Unas stamping polish (tan colored below). A good friend let me borrow one of her bottles just to see about the smell and use. The smell isn’t that horrible, but it sticks around for ages indoors and is very much an industrial scent.  I could smell it hours later even with the windows open and fans blowing. It works quite well but I have a bit of learning curve to go with it.

 

 

My videos show all of the steps to get the final product but here it is in short form:

1. Use your favorite base coat (I chose to use peel-off because it’s gel polish and I didn’t want to bother with the removal)
2. Use your favorite regular nail polish color. It can be any color, but typically black helps all of the holos and chrome colors pop a bit more.
3. Apply a clear gel polish and cure.
4. Use the applicator tip to apply the chrome powder. Rub rub rub, pat, pat, pat.
5. Brush away as much of the extra powder as possible.
6. Apply a clear gel polish and cure.
7. Wash your hands and scrub with soap and water. Some ladies have found that adding a peel away nail barrier to the areas of stubborn powder will leave your skin clean.
8. Add any other designs, stamping, etc and top with regular clear polish if desired.

Review + Tutorial // Using the Born Pretty Store Clear Squishy Stamper

* Press Sample

I looooove clear stampers. When they became a "thing" a while ago I was over the moon because I was terrible at lining up my images with a regular stamper. I now own not one but two clear stampers from Born Pretty Store, and I'm here to share one with you today along with a quick stamping tutorial!

Clear stamping heads are nice because they let you see the image before you decide to position it on the nail. This makes doing detailed nail art a breeze because it means if you want an identical image on each nail you can do that very easily. It used to be in my day that you had to line up or mark spots up along your nail edge or cuticle to make sure images were aligned, or take numerous attempts to make it look perfect. Now we have clear stampers! Nail bloggers sure do have it easy these days.... ;) 

Anyway! BPS has this listed as a marshmallow stamper but while I would say it's definitely squishy I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a marshmallow stamper. To me marshmallow stampers are a lot softer and squishier than this. That being said this is still a fabulous stamper and is definitely nicer to use than my old BPS clear stamper (which was just hollow with an open end to let you see through).

This stamper comes with three parts: The actual stamper, a cover that clips on over the stamping head to keep it clean, and a clear scraper. Now let's take a look at a quick tutorial about how to use it!

Tutorial: How to Use a Clear Stamper

Preparation: First off you want to make sure you have all your products gathered, as stamping is a time-sensitive process. As well paint your base coat and let it dry completely before you start so you don't have any issues. I have my clear stamper and scraper (available here), my stamping polish (Born Pretty Stamping Polish in Black), my plate (BP-28) and a cleanable backdrop (I am using a non-stick cutting board but I use paper towel sometimes under my stamping plate instead).

If you're using a new stamper make sure you prep the head first. Do not use a file on a clear stamper or you will ruin it. Instead gently wash it with dish soap. This one did need to be prepped so I cleaned it with a bit of soap before I started.

As you can see the clear stamper lets you see your design through the back perfectly! Awesome! 

Step 1: Apply your polish to the plate. You don't need to cover the whole image as you'll scrape the polish along the rest in the next step.

Step 2: Scrape your polish off the plate moving firmly with your scraper tilted at an angle.If you have to scrape over a few times go for it, just make sure you don't scrape all the polish out of your etching.

Step 3: Firmly press your stamper over the image you want to pick up. I found for this stamper I could press straight down to pick up the image - firmer stampers you need to roll your stamper to pick up the image. 

Step 4: Take a look to make sure your entire image picked up cleanly. Don't look too long though or the polish will dry!

Step 5: Look at where you want to place the image on your nail and press firmly so the stamper covers the entire nail. 

And that's it! Clean up (or use some liquid latex from the start to make clean up even easier) and you're good to go! Also you'll want to make sure you are cleaning your stamping head between nails... I use a piece of tape on the stamper head (or you can use rubbing alcohol - never use acetone on a clear stamping head or you will ruin it) and I use pure acetone to clean my plate and scraper.

And here's a look at the final nail art, with some gems added for visual interest. My base is Ceramic Glaze Heavenly. :)

Gorgeous! I also got the gems from BPS though I can't find the link so you'll have to search yourself. :)

BornPrettyStore Water Decals Review

                                                                                                                     **PRESS SAMPLES**

The product that I’ll be reviewing for Born Pretty Store are these absolutely gorgeous pink floral water decals.
They are just -so- pretty! They come nicely protected in their outer case, then cardboard sleeve followed by a plastic protective film over the actual decals. The images are bright, vivid colours and are well printed.

PROCEDURE :
1) Fill a small bowl with warm water. Remove the plastic film and cut out the desired images. Try to keep them a little distance from the bowl so that they don’t get wet prematurely.
2)  Place the decal in the warm water for 10-20 seconds.

3) Carefully slide the decal away from the paper. If the image doesn’t slip off easily put it back in the water.

4) Position the decal on the nail. The side that was once on the paper needs to be the side that’s affixed to the nail. If cold water is used the decal will still come away from the paper but it will tend to be harder to position and slip around on the nail for a while. Warm water seems to ‘melt’ the mild adhesive, which makes things a lot easier! 

5) Dab off excess water using some kitchen roll. I say kitchen roll mainly because there aren’t really loose fibres so there’s less risk of getting bits stuck on the nail before the top coat.

6) Protect the decals with a thick top coat. I’ve used Seche Vite. Sadly I didn’t wait long enough for the top coat to dry because I was fiddling with filming stuff so there was a little bit of damage to the decals :(. 

Not only are these super pretty but they are so easy to apply. I’m really impressed and I can’t wait to use them again!

YOU CAN GET YOUR WATER DECALS FROM
BornPrettyStore ...
YOU CAN GET 10% OFF BY USING THE CODE : ASHUQ10