Just Batty

Another Halloween one! Pink and blue skies filled with bats!

Honesty I think bats are adorable with their little turned up noses, but I get how some people find them frightening.

I started the bats using some bundle monster plates but the polish I used refused to transfer well so I ended up just painting them over.

Colours:

"First Mate" by China Glaze
"Va Va Voom" by Orly

Holographic #8 Swatch

Here's Born Pretty Store's Holographic nail polish in #8:

With Flash.

 This is a really pretty shade of sky blue holographic.

In direct sunlight.

This shade applied well, with no streaking. This is 2 coats, it could use a third since its a bit sheer on some nails, but I'm sure 2 thick coats would sort that out too.

Cotton Candy

This manicure reminds me a lot of the cotton candy clouds you get at fairs and such.

May/26/2013 to May/31/2013

 So a did a simple ombre using "Tickled Pink" by Wet n' Wild and "Pastel Blue" from Kleancolor. I topped it off with Kleancolor's Aurora because it's just too pretty not to use on these pastel manicures.

Tokyo Nights: Swatch

Another of my Julie G. by Jesse's Girl polishes.

"Tokyo Nights" by Jesse's Girl

Indoors.

 "Tokyo Nigthts" is, in my opinion, the perfect shade of navy blue. It's dark, but not too dark, and it's a creme finish, no shimmer, metallic or glitter mixed into it.

Direct Sunlight.

This is 2 coats, it went on smooth and easily, no streaking to be found. It dried fairly quickly too, which was nice.

I'll update on the wear and tear once I've had a chance to break it in.

Cabana Boy: Swatch

Here's another shade from my swatching day.

"Cabana Boy" by Jesse's Girl

Indoors.

 This is a nice blue creme. Solid, with no shimmer. Although this tends to be less of a bright blue in person, it's still a really nice shade.

Direct Sunlight.

Now this is much closer to the actual colour, but it's still not exact.

I don't know how well this wears yet, I'll update on it once I've worn it for a while.

Solar Flare

I was craving some flames for most of last week, so here they are. The base colour I used is "Loundest Color" by Sation, its like a neon yellow that has a touch of green in it. Then I just painted flames in blue and green acrylic paint.

Little Mermaid

This one is really nice and clean, and simple.

I also wanted another excuse to draw scales. So these remind me of mermaid tails with the pastel shades sponged randomly onto the accent nails. I like the cute scalloped french tips on the other nails too. It's a very clean, and simple looking manicure.

I sponged "Pastel Teal", and  "Pastel Blue" (by Kleancolor) and "Lacey Lilac" (Sally Hansen) onto the ring finger, and went over top of it with "Age of Aquarius" (Color Club) for the scales. The base I used was "French White Creme" by Wet n' Wild. This one was really cute and easy to do.

Spring Flowers

It's officially spring!!! I'm so happy! Finally this snow shall melt and lead to beautiful flowers and double digits! To ring in the spring, here's a floral manicure!

March/31/2013

I apologize for the photo quality, I was in a rush and didn't manage to get a good photo of these with my proper camera before running out the door.

The base colour I used was "Don't Touch My Tutu" by OPI. With some purple and blue flowers done in acrylic paint. Very simple, and fast, although I plan to revisit this in the future, next time I will make the colours brighter looking.

House Stark (Photo Heavy)

This week its House Stark in continuation of my Game of Thrones month.

Whole Hand

 Let me start by saying, I had a ton of trouble getting the Stark dire-wolf  right, they either looked to fluffy or like they were grinning as opposed to snarling.

Main Four.

 I chose to do some geometric patterns on the ring and index fingers because mimicking the wolf's fur would have made it too busy, and I like the geometric/asymmetrical french going on. The snow on the pinky is because of all the snow in Winterfell and obviously the wolf is the Stark sigil.

Thumb close up.

This one is the best looking wolf, most likely due to the large size of my thumbnail.

The colours I used are: China Glaze "First Mate", with "Wet Cement" by Sally Hansen. I used my trusted Speedball ink and dip nib pen for the black outlines.

If you would like a set of these, as either false nails or nail wraps, send me an email.

Have a Happy Monday!

Kleancolor "Pastel Blue"; Swatch

The colour I have for you today is "Pastel Blue" by Kleancolor.

Indoors.

 So, for those of you familiar with Kleancolor, you already know they are not Big 3 Free, so they do contain Fromaldehyde, Toluene and  DBP. Personally, as much as I like to avoid toxins, for a wide variety of shades at roughly $1-$2 per bottle, I do quite like them.

Natural Sunlight.

On to the actual colour now. "Pastel Blue" is just that, a nice pastel blue, very much like baby blue. It's a very clean looking shade, and is great for Easter manicures, if you do those. This was with 2 coats, and you can see it's quite opaque, I did not have any trouble with streaking with this colour which was really nice. The wear on these are nice too, I find that they don't chip very often, unless the base coat I use sucks. It also dries with a nice gloss to it, you can see it better in the first photo, so you don't need top coat with this unless you want to. A thing to keep in mind though, I notice these tend to dry slower than other polishes, so try to use thin coats and give them plenty of drying time. So to end off, this is a nice fairly inexpensive polish if you don't mind it containing the Big 3. 

Color Club Blue-Ming: Swatch

I've got another swatch for you, this is one I've swatched previously, but I felt a better photo would be good too. Click here to see the previous swatch.

Color Club "Blue-Ming"

Jan/03/2013

A really nice cyan-blue type polish. This was really quite blinding when I had it on, and my camera seems to agree. I like it though, I have a future design to try with this as a base. The wear on this was pretty good, minimal wear on the tips after the third day. This is done with 3 coats, I had a bit of trouble with streaking, but I managed to sort it out after the 3rd coat went on.

Overall, I like this shade because its bright, blinding, unusual, and it wears well.

Have a good week!

Nyx: Robotic Swatch

A while back I purchased a few nail polish goodies via la internet. They finally arrived but I'm going to swatch them one by one and slowly so I don't expose my nails to too much acetone at any given time.

Here's one of them:

Dec/26/2012

I apologize for the chip in the middle finger nail. Onwards! So this is "Robotic" by Nyx Girl polish. I've never tried Nyx's nail polishes before, and I have to admit I'm not fond of them. It's chipped after one day (the thumb is completely gone), and this is done with 6 coats, it's incredibly sheer, which can be a plus in some instances but not when I was expecting a solid colour.

On the plus side, I do like this shade, its a blueish green that's nearly black with blue/green shimmer to it, it's a subtle shimmer, but it does remind me of China Glaze's "Smoke and Ashes".

I should buy a few more Nyx polishes to determine if they're all this sheer, but I'm hoping they aren't, all of that aside, this colour chips to soon for my liking.

Flashback Friday: Blue Snowflakes

Nov/29/2010

This is another acrylic set I did for myself from waaayy back when. I made my own blue glitter acrylic and then stamped over them some white snowflakes which you can barely see. Ahh well, lesson learned.

Nails Inc Baker Street

Saw this shade on a couple of different hands, and felt like picking it up.

This is Nails Inc's "Baker Street" a nice cobalt blue creme. It's really quite beautiful, it looks lighter in this photo than in reality. Overall it's a gorgeous shade of blue.

Flashback Friday: Nail Fail: Water Marble

Feb/22/2012

This is another water marble. That failed. The colour choices were odd, and I just half-assed it -_-'

The colours used for this were:

"Lacey Lilac" by Sally Hansen

"Lickety-Split Lime" by Sally Hansen

"Seduce Me" by China Glaze

"First Mate" by China Glaze

Needless to say, I found it so ugly I took it off withing the hour I put it on.

Flashback Friday - Blue Roses

Another Flashback Friday for you all!
This was an experiment with different nail tip shapes and one-stroke flower painting.

Square tips: Whole hand.

 So, to start you off, here are the more common square nail tips, that I personally prefer. They aren't squoval, much to them looking like it in the photo.

Square tips: main four.

 You can see the square-ness a touch better here, along with clearer nail art. This ring and thumb fingers have the one-stroke painted roses on them. They just look like blobs to me though.

Square tips: close up of thumb.

Almond Tips: Whole hand.

 Here are the almond tips. Remember its the exact same mani, the only thing that has changed is the shape of my nail tips. I like the almond shape, but on certain nails it doesn't look to flattering to me, for example my ring finger looks to oval (I tried to make it pointier but it's too short).

Almond tips: main four.

 A better shot of the tips alone. You can see what I meant about the ring finger being more oval than almond.

 Now for the colours I used: the white was done using Kleancolor's "White", with an overlay of Miss Pro Nail Sation in "Cotton Candy" a beautiful pink sheer opalescent shimmer.

One more photo for you guys:

Top: Almond Shape.
Bottom: Square Shape.

Here is where I'd like your input, which nail tip shape do you think looks better on my hand. The almond? or the Square?

Saturday Night Fever

Happy Monday!

September 10th 2012

A simple ombre with two metallics. Towards the cuticle we have Sally Hansen's "Saturday Night Fever" my favourite yellow-gold. And on the tips is "Ingenue" by Orly.

Bonus! A photo of Pickle with pink on his nose:

Not-So Flashback Friday: UV Gels 2

I'm very excited with these gels in case you haven't noticed. So much so I postponed the other Flash Back Friday I originally had scheduled for today, just to show you some more of my practise fingers.

I hope you enjoy these!

July/12/2012

 So here's my 3rd practise finger. I attempted mixing my own gel colours, which is simple, and proved successful. This means I can get some use out of those old eye shadows I have lying around. I topped it off with some white rose outlines in paint and a glitter top coat.

July/12/2012

If mermaids wore stiletto gel nails, these would probably come quite close, no? These are some deadly ones, but I love them, I sculpted a stiletto using clear UV gel, then used some blue eye shadows to put in the colour. I topped it off with a healthy dose of pearls and rhinestones.

I really hope you enjoyed these and if you have any questions, comments or concerns leave me a comment down below and I'll get back to you :) 

Have a Happy Friday!

Gay Pride Toronto 2012 and Canada Day

Fairly unusual of me to post a new mani on Friday, but this one is fairly important to me; since seeing that July 1st is Canada Day and this week is Pride Week in Toronto. As a full-blooded Canadian born and bred girl and being damn proud of my country, I naturally had to show my support.

Enjoy!

I'm a complete supporter of Gay and LGBTQ rights movement. I think it's only fair to allow people to love who they love freely and openly, no matter what. So I rainbowed up my nails accordingly to the LGBTQ flag. I had to add in the little Canada Flag since Canada Day is also super important.

Colours Used:

"Hey Sailor" by China Glaze

"Frostbite" China Glaze

"Flying Dragon" China Glaze

"Lickety-Split Lime" Sally Hansen

"Lightning" Sally Hansen

"French White Creme" Wet n' Wild

Robert Best Inspired - Take 2

First and foremost, I appologize for not having this ready yesterday, there was just too much for me to do.

As I said previously, I have another manicure inspired by one of Robert Best's artwork.

This time I was inspired by this photo:

Artwork (C) Robert Best.

On to the manicure for today:

Whole hand.

Close up on Thumb.

Close up of main fingers.

This was a little more fun, and very different from what I usually do, as I'm sure you've all noticed by now. My stuff is usually pretty simple. Although this isn't something I typically wear, this was a lot of fun to do, and I hope to wear this baby until she chips like a mofo. I'm in love with the little Barbie-girl face and her cute little pout. This is probably beside the point, but all of these are hand-painted aside from the pinky finger, and my index finger; the index is just dried black polish cut into strips.

Now on to the colours I used:

"Solar Power" China Glaze (Pinky finger)

"Naked" China Glaze (Middle finger)

"Marine Scene" Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear (Thumb)

"Lacey Lilac" Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear (Thumb)

"Black Creme" Wet n' Wild (Index finger)

"French White Creme" Wet n' Wild (Index Finger)