Pretty Serious Haddonfield & Crystal Lake

Hey there!  Happy Halloween!!!  As promised, today I have a cool Halloween polish to show you.  Actually I have two.  Both Crystal Lake and Haddonfield are from Pretty Serious' Halloween collection, Killer Fangirls.  There's also a third polish in the collection called Elm Street but I didn't purchase that one.   I'll let the pictures do the talking.  They explain things better than I do.

Pretty Serious Haddonfield

Pretty Serious Crystal Lake

Spiders and Spatters

Hey there!  I have two (you heard me..two!) halloween designs I've worn in the last week.  I'll keep the talking to a minimum since I have too many pictures.

Halloween(ish) Nimbus Nail Art

Hey there!  Yikes, I've been AWOL for days!  I had a terrible report to do for work but it's all submitted now so I'm feeling very free.  Of course, work can't get in the way of nail polish, haha!

On Friday Sammy from The Nailasaurus posted a tutorial on how to do some beautiful and easy nail art that she has coined "Nimbus" (a synonym for halo).  I knew I wanted to try it with some halloween colors to keep with the season but it ended up looking a little more spring-like.

Picture Polish Inspire Shades: Believe, Dream and Love

Hey there!  Today I want to show you three relatively new Picture Polish shades, the "Inspire Shades": Believe, Dream and Love.  These beauties haven't gotten as much attention as, say, the collaboration shades but they definitely deserve some love too.

A England She Walks In Beauty Glitter Gradient and Love Chemistry Comparison

Hey there!  The title says it all eh?  I have two things to show you tonight: a glitter gradient and a comparison.

For this gradient I started with two coats of A England Iseult, a soft pink subtle silver-y shimmer from The Mythicals collection.  While this isn't as opaque as some of A England's polishes, it covers amazingly well for this shade of pink and I didn't find it to be streaky at all.  For the glitter gradient I used A England She Walks In Beauty from the Heavenly Quotes collection.  She Walks in Beauty is made up of a fine gold glitter, almost a foil, with larger pink hexes.  I love it's complicated, delicate texture.  And it helps that She Walks In Beauty is one of the only poems I remember from my days of English class, maybe because my name is almost in it :-)

Halloween Water Marble

Hey there!  Quick post today on a water marble I did with some Halloween-y colors this past weekend.

Lichtenstein-inspired Comic Nail Decals

Hey there!  Today I want to show you some water decals I bought from I Heart Nail Art on Etsy, inspired by Roy Lichtenstein's style.  I won't pretend to be into art (other than nail art, of course) but I really like this type of pop art.  And it seems to be all the rage lately.  I've even seen a few nail stamping images in this style.

Inspired by a ....towel?

Hey there!  As my blog name suggests, I'm not the most creative soul you'll ever meet so coming up with new manicure ideas is definitely not my forte.  Because of this I can look in pretty random places for inspiration.  I was doing my sister's laundry yesterday (don't you wish you had a sister like me?) and decided I wanted to do a manicure based on the new towel set she just bought.

Picture Polish Fairy Floss, Tiffany and Wisteria Gradient

Hey there!  Well the title of my post says it all, doesn't it?  Here is a girly gradient for you with Picture Polish's Fairy Floss (pink), Tiffany (blue) and Wisteria (purple).

Essie The Lace is On

Hey there!  Tonight I have a simple, pretty manicure to show.  This is Essie's The Lace Is On, a pretty pinky purple polish from Essie's Fall 2013 collection.  I added the dainty lace-style roses using Essie's Nothing Else Metal, a metallic lilac shade and  MoYou London's Tourist 07 XL plate.  This is one of the plates I won from MoYou's Facebook contest!

Messy Mansion MM22 Halloween Stamping

Hey there!  Today I'm showing you my first Halloween manicure of the year.  I have to say my first because I'm sure I'll be doing many more before the big day.

Thanksgiving Nails (Stamper Decals)

Hey there!  Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians!  My family had their dinner on Saturday and here is the manicure I wore for it.

If you want to read how I did them, read on.  But be warned, it's not a short description...

Walking Dead Nails

Hey there!  A couple weeks ago I did some Breaking Bad nail art and today I'm showing you another try at a TV-inspired manicure.  Tonight is the season premiere of The Walking Dead, another AMC show and I'm pretty much doing the same as I did for the series finale of Breaking Bad...chilling on the couch watching a marathon (my life is thrilling, eh?).

A England Autumn Trees

Hey there!  Today my obsession with A England polishes continues.  In Edmonton last week our skies were all grey which is very unusual (Edmonton generally has ridiculously blue skies) and I wanted to do a fall manicure with a grey background.

To do this I used all A England polishes.  I started with a base of Fated Prince, a charcoal grey.  Then I painted on some tree trunks using Briarwood (brown) and a nail art brush.  For the tree tops I sponged on a bit of Rose Bower (red) and Holy Grail, the original version (gold).  Lastly I sponged on a bit of Princess Sabra to try to emulate the dying grass here.

Picture Polish Imperial

Hey there!  Tonight I'm showing you a GORGEOUS new collaboration shade from Picture Polish that I bought the second that it was available.  This is Imperial.  Created with The Swatchaholic, Imperial is a rich, neon-ish purple with tiny gold hex glitter and subtle holo particles.

Before the pictures I must start with an apology.  I apologize for the fact that my hands look like crazy neon jaundice oranges in this post.  Usually I don't have to do any color correction for my photos but The Swatchaholic is correct in her post saying this beautiful polish is a pain to photograph.  In all the pictures I took (and there were a lot) Imperial photographed more blue than it was.  It really is just purple.  So I color-corrected the polish and just accepted that it made my hands look like this.  So hopefully you can ignore the skin color because I think I did a pretty good job at getting the color of the polish accurate here.

Cirque Kaleidoscope & Magic Hour

Hey there!  Tonight I have two amazing glitter toppers to show.  Both of these are from Cirque's Arcus collection.  Altogether this collection had six glitter toppers but tonight I'm only showing you my faves.

Kaleidoscope is a mix of all shapes, sizes and colors of matte glitter in a clear base.  This was the first glitter I saw of this kind and I love it.  I was going to list the colors you can see in here but it really is every color.  It's so neat.  It's pretty much a party in a bottle.  It's an attention-grabber, for sure.  Here I'm showing it over one (yes, one!) coat of A England's Camelot, a buttery black creme polish.

Cirque Kaleidoscope 

Fall Leaves Jelly Stampwich

Hey there!  Since tonight was my last night of ultimate frisbee fall league, I thought I would show you the manicure I'm wearing right now which I've oh-so-creatively called "Fall Leaves".  Behold, my first jelly stampwich!

Ozotic 602 Swatch & Review

Hey there!  Tonight I have just a quick post to show you another beautiful Ozotic polish.  This is Ozotic 602.  Isn't she lovely?

Ozotic 602 - direct light

A England Sleeping Palace & Princess Tears gradient

Hey there!  Last night I told you I was going to show you how great A England's Sleeping Palace and Princess Tears look together so here you go!  With some stamping for a bonus!

A England Sleeping Palace & Princess Tears

Hey there!  Tonight I'm going to show you another two shades from one of my favourite brands - A England.  I'm sure I've said it before but wow Adina has created the perfect nail polish formula.  I want to show both of these lovely purple shades in direct light and in the light box so you can see how they look indoors and outdoors.

A England Sleeping Palace - light box

A England Princess Tears - light box

Picture Polish Freya's Cats, Cosmos & Hope Stripes

Hey there!  Tonight's manicure was done using three of Picture Polish's awesome blue shades:  Freya's Cats, Cosmos and Hope.  All three of these are collaboration shades made with bloggers and all three are blue jellies with scattered holographic particles.  You would think that would mean they might be similar, right?  Wrong!  All three of these absolutely have a right to exist separately.

Hurry Hard! Curling (The Sport) Nails

Hey there!  I'm so proud of myself for getting this post done early tonight.  I have my first curling game of the season 15 minutes from now.  Well it was supposed to be a game but the other team cancelled so we're having a practice.  For anyone reading this that doesn't know what curling is, it's essentially a giant game of shuffleboard but on ice.  We take really heavy granite "rocks" and throw them down the ice ideally onto "the button" which is the small circle that, to a beginner like me, seems like it's about the size of a pinhead.  I'm new and I'm terrible at it but it's a lot of fun.  And it makes me feel very, very Canadian.  Especially since we usually precede the game or follow it up by having a beer and watching the hockey game.

To try to make something special for the start of curling, I tried to imitate the "house" (the circles you throw to).  I started with 2 coats of white polish followed with a coat of A England Morgan Le Fay to give it that icy shimmer.  I think added concentric circles with China Glaze Man Hunt and China Glaze With Love and white.