Garden Of Love

My konad arrived yesterday! I was so excited to try it out that my last mani only lasted 24 hours. I gotta say, this konad thing is harder than it looks. I mean, it's very straight forward, but there must be a few tricks to really mastering it that I've yet to discover. If you have any konad related secrets, please share! Here's my first attempt at konad:

Realistically, not too bad, but you haven't seen the nails done by my non-dominant hand and I'm in no way inclined to show you! My top coat also streaked the konad polish a bit which didn't help :(

So this is what I ordered, and this is the basics that you will need if you want to give konad a try:

I got 5ml of the black konad polish, 11ml of the white, a scraper and stamp (the pink things) and a plate. I got plate m83:

I ordered all of my supplies from an Australian based seller, Meliney Wholesale Nail Art Supplies. They post internationally, and their shipping is free worldwide if you're only buying the plates (and spending over $15). If you're buying other supplies as well such as the polishes they charge $10, but if you live in Aus and don't qualify for the free shipping they throw in a free gift so make sure you check that out. If you're thinking of setting yourself up for konad I suggest buying a couple of polishes at once so that you only end up paying the shipping fee once. I recommend getting the 11ml bottles. I got the black in the 5ml bottle because I thought I'd use the white more than the black, but the bottle is TINY. Coz it's only 5ml. Duhhhhh.

So anyway, here I am doing all this promotion for someone else!  Moving on. Here's how I achieved my design:

Step 1:  Apply your protective base coat, then paint your nails in a pink colour. I used OPI's 'Come To Poppy'.

Step 2: It's konad time! I suggest putting some paper towel under your plate as it can get a bit messy. Have your scraper and stamp at the ready. Take your white konad polish and cover the design you want to use.

Step 3: Use your scraper and firmly and quickly scrape off the excess paint. Quickly take your stamp and roll it over the paint remaining on the design. Sorry I don't have photos of the scraping and stamping, I found that you need to work quickly once you've scraped off the excess paint otherwise the paint left in the design won't stick to the stamp. Here's what your stamp should look like once you've rolled it over the paint left in the design:

Step 4: Roll the stamp over your nail from one side to the other rather than top to bottom/bottom to top. I really struggled with knowing where the design would end up on my nail, sometimes I missed half my nail. Is there some trick to this? Or is it just practice?

Step 5: To cover the mess at the bottom of my nails, I pulled out my sponges that I use for doing gradients and dabbed a combination of pink and white polish onto the base of my nails. I used OPI's 'You're a Pisa Work' and 'Peace, Baby!'. I used a method similar to the one I used in this post.

Step 6: I can't resist a bit of glitter, so I added a silver glitter polish over the sponged area. I used Ulta3's 'Silver Glitter'. Apply your clear top coat and you're done!

So there you have it. My first bumbling attempt at konad. I think it's going to take a bit of practice to become good at it, so please bear with me in my future attempts. The polish is so expensive for the amount you get that I don't want to practice on anything other than my nails >.<  Unfortunately I don't think konad comes with instructions unless you buy one of the overpriced kits (which come with unexciting plates), so if you do want to try konad I suggest watching a few youtube videos first. I have a few ideas for things I want to try with this plate, so I dare say I'll have another post up in the next couple of days. In the meantime, I've revised my nail polish review page, so you can now search polishes by brand or colour. Check it out here!