My Birthday Konadicure...

or the Konadicure that made me want to throw all my polish out!

outside

base color: OPI Panda-monium Pink
Konad Plates: s10 (panda face) and m66 (bamboo)
Image Colors: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out and Misa Dirty, Sexy Money

Indoors

Note: I always stamp so that the image is facing me, which seems to be the opposite of what most everyone else does. :p

My birthday is tomorrow and I've had an idea in my mind for what I wanted to do with my nails for awhile now. I did them today so that I could enjoy them all day tomorrow. LOL. I'm sooooo glad I did them ahead of time now because it took me forever to get them done. I'm relatively new to doing my own nails and I am far from being an expert at even just painting my nails (as you can see in the pictures). Using the Konad plates is really hit or miss for me and today was a doozy!

As you can tell from my blog background and avatar, I love pandas! My absolute favorite panda is Tai Shan, the cub born at the National Zoo in Washington DC. For the past 4 years, I've spent my birthday (July 8) travelling down to DC so that I could celebrate Tai's birthday with him on July 9. However, earlier this year, Tai was sent to China to live as per the loan agreement the Zoo has with China, so I will not get to spend his birthday with him anymore. :(

When I saw that Konad had the little panda face and bamboo I knew I had to get those plates and use them for my birthday mani. Of course, I just had to use OPI Panda-monium Pink (the only color I've gotten based on the name) as the base and that's where the trouble began. Cremes and I do not get along and I had a bear of time getting the polish on my nails. It was streaky and uneven and I was getting majorly frustrated. I seriously contemplated just scrapping the idea but I wanted my birthday mani! LOL. So I kept going, and finally got ok coverage that I could live with. I put on my TC and waited for it all to dry. Then I got all my stuff for the Konad-ing and went to work. That's where the real troubles began. I did the bamboo first and I had major issues getting the image to transfer from the plate to the stamper; it seemed like every other time the image just wouldn't get on the darn stamper. I just kept at it and finally I got all 8 fingers done. That left the panda and the problems just kept on coming. I started with WnW Black Creme because I had read that it was a good black for stamping and the image would not tranfer completely onto the stamper no matter what I did, so I went to Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out which I had used successfully before and I got the image on but it wasn't as dark as I would have liked. Then a lightbulb went on in my head and I got the special Konad polish in black that I got in a set and never used thinking that it had to work, right? Wrong! Once again, the stupid image wouldn't transfer. At this point, I'd removed the image so many times from my right ring finger that I'd wiped off a spot of the base so I had to remove and reapply the base and wait for it to dry again. At this point I just wanted to be done, so I settled on the SH for the panda and still had to try a few times before I got the whole image, but I finally finished my manicure over an hour and a half after I started Konad-ing. I think I heard angels sing at that point. :p