Leadlighting: The First Attempt

Hi there, all!  As I mentioned recently, I'm all about the stamping lately.  I love the looks that you can create with it and once you get the hang of it, it's so easy!  I know if you're just starting out stamping that you won't believe me, but I swear it's true.  Continuing with my stamping obsession, I decided it was high time I tried leadlighting.  Leadlighting is a technique which gives a finished look reminiscent of stained glass, which is were the name comes from.

I started with 3 coats of OPI My Vampire Is Buff and then stamped on top with Sinful Colors Black on Black and Pueen's Encore plate SE04B.  I topped everything with a coat of Seche Vite before I started the leadlighting part.

Basically, the premise of leadlighting is pretty simple.  It's like a coloring book, using sheer jelly polishes to fill in the stamped outlines.  I used Sally Hansen's Triple Shine in Grape Jelly mixed with a bit of Wet 'n' Wild's Trippin' on the Boardwalk to up the opacity a bit.  The SH is a great polish for leadlighting but it's very, very sheer.  I wanted a touch more opacity for this look.  After filling in a few random flowers, I decided I wanted another punch of color so I used SH's Triple Shine in Play Koi mixed with a homemade jelly polish (which you can learn how to do here). I just dabbed it onto the center of the non-purple flowers with a dotting tool.

I'm happy with this for my first attempt at a new technique.  My main issue is that I loved the mani so much before I added the color that I'm a bit disappointed that I tried it at all.  But it does have a lot of possibilities, which I'm pretty excited about.

Have you tried leadlighting?  I'd love to see your manicures!  Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed this post :)