MILV Water Decals

Sample provided for review

Recently I received a package of water decals from MILV to try. I'd actually bought some polish and decals from this brand when I was in Minsk, so I was already a tiny bit familiar with them. The box of decals arrived in good shape considering it had to travel all the way from Russia; one side has English text and the other has Russian.



The box contained a lot of different designs; for this first post, I chose one of each type: individual motif, border/stripe, allover pattern, and full nail.



For the individual motif style, I picked S325, which has cute pandas.



Using these is straightforward; cut out the design, soak briefly in water, slide the decal off the backing, place on the nail, and seal with topcoat. I like to pick up the design with the flat end of an orangewood stick and place it on my nail rather than trying to slide it directly off the backing on to my nail. I applied these pandas on a base of Wet 'n' Wild Megalast Wild Wild Violet. I liked that some of the pandas were smaller, so I could put one of those on my pinky nail and not have it look out of scale compared to the other fingers. (What might look like a wrinkle in the decal is just a reflection; I wasn't in my usual space when I played with these.)





I was so looking forward to trying the intricate silver border/stripe of design S328 that I failed to take a photo of the sheet before I cut into it. Oops.



Here's the first nail in progress so you can see how thin and flexible the base material of the decals is. To remove that excess, I used the pointed end of an orangewood stick to cut it; a scissors would work, too, I bet.



The base color I used under this decal design is Wet 'n' Wild Cherry Blossom on Top. I put the stripes across the tip of two of my nails and along the length on the other two. Looking at the MILV website, I see that neither of these approaches is shown in their examples, but hey, I'm creative, what can I say? I also see that this design is available in black, gold, and white in addition to the silver in my sample pack.





Design N776 is an allover black lattice pattern.



Wet 'n' Wild Poppy Culture was my base for this one. I used the decal as an allover design on my index and pinky fingers, but on the other nails, got creative again and cut out single larger elements to use on their own (and yes, my centering/straightening skills need some work). As always, I sealed with a clear topcoat.



For the full nail design, I chose N783, which combines red and yellow blooms with ornate black scrollwork.



You'll notice the decal sheet says "white base only". I followed that instruction for three of my nails, but put Wet 'n' Wild Leaf Me Be on my pinky to see what would happen. Answer: a nice accent nail, as the smallest decal, perfect for my smallest nail, didn't have any flowers to be affected by a colored base.







I had fun with these, and did not swear at them once, which is more than I can say for my early attempts at stamping and let's not even talk about freehand art. Each decal sheet is priced at $2.99, which seems reasonable to me for the level of detail. They can be found on the MILV website, which does have an English version, and they do accept PayPal. I'll have more designs from them in future posts, so please stay tuned.

The decals shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the polishes for my own use.