Nail Challenge Collaborative - A New Beginning #2

Hey there!  Just last week I posted my first mani for this month's Nail Challenge Collaborative theme of "A New Beginning".  I already explained that I'm so boring that I haven't had any sort of life change in ages so I thought it'd be nice to do an early spring design to go along with this theme.  Spring is a kind of new beginning that we all get every year.  It feels like it's ages away still here since it got chilly again (-15 C when I got up this morning).  But I wanted to try out Lina Nail Art Supplies Spring plate that I had bought so I'm more than willing to wear spring nails in the snow.  I now have all of Lina's 4 Seasons plates...though I expect more will be added as the seasons keep rotating.

For the base, I used a new brand to me so that's one new thing I've gotten to experience lately, haha!  Tonic Polish seems to be all the rage so I grabbed Luminescent from Girly Bits (hooray for Canadian stockists) to see what all the fuss was about.  Well I loved it so I've ordered two more already.  This is two coats of it.  I wrote down that in one type of lighting it looked like a dusty blue/purple duochrome with subtle holo sparkle and in other lighting it was a glowing aqua metallic.  However I didn't write down the difference between the lighting so I have no idea what I meant.  I think I was just stunned at how complex a polish it is.  

For the stamping I used some foils to make some decals with the help of this tutorial.  I used my Uber Mat with some Wet n Wild clear coat and when that was fully dry, I stamped the flowers and butterflies with Mundo de Unas Black.  Then I painted the insides of the images with foil glue and pressed the foils to it when it was tacky (that's why the clear coat has to be 100% dry, so the foil doesn't stick to that part accidentally).  Then, with a clear stamper, I stamped the original image with black again and applied the decal.  Trust me, the video makes it make sense.  My words sound like gibberish.  

I already mentioned that the plate I used is Lina Nail Art Supplies 4 Seasons - Spring 01 but here is the link in case anyone else wants to see what other spring-themed images the plate has on it.  Lots of flowers and butterflies - my favourites!  

To finish it I used a top coat that came with Born Pretty's Metallic Silver polish.  So far it's the best top coat I've found for not cracking foils.  This listing says it comes with a base coat but my bottle was labelled top coat.  Who knows what it actually is but it works.  It's worth the $10 sale price just to have a top coat that doesn't kill foils.  

Phew, I'm happy I managed to get my second New Beginning design in with a whole day left to spare in February.  Next month's theme should be a cool one.  Hopefully I'll be a bit more on-the-ball for March!

'Til next time...

An InLinkz Link-up