Thursday, May 29, 2014

Messy Mansion Lace Nail Stamping

Hey there!  Lace stamping images seem to be all the rage lately and I, for one, am a-okay with that.  I love them.  So the second I received my Messy Mansion order with the new lace plate (MM44) in it, I used it right away.  Here's what I came up with.



Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Inspired by Shoes...

Hey there!  I've mentioned that I'm not the most creative person on earth so I have to look around for nail inspiration.  Well the other weekend I decided I wanted to try to replicate the pattern on a pair of my sister's shoes.  Strange but not too strange since I've already been inspired by her towel.  And yes, I touched a pair of my sister's dirty shoes just to take pictures.  See how much I love you guys...



Sunday, May 25, 2014

Sunday Stamping - Butterflies, Ladybugs & Fireflies

Hey there!  How's everyone's weekend going?  I hear it's Memorial Day down in the US so I hope you guys are having a great long weekend!  This week's Sunday stamping challenge theme is Butterflies, Ladybugs & Fireflies.  I chose butterflies and came up with this after seeing Enamel Girl's post about using the OPI sheer tints over white stamping.  Genius!


Thursday, May 22, 2014

Blingy Textured Beach Nails

Press  Sample

Hey there!  Today I have what is probably going to turn into a photo heavy post to show you some nail art I did using a few items I was sent for review from Born Pretty Store that I will link at the end. I saw this awesome tutorial for beach nails from Elleandish on youtube and wanted to try something similar with textured polishes and here's what I came up with.



Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Blue & White Porcelain Nail Stamping & Mentality Brute

Hey there!  Have you ever seen that blue and white porcelain/china?  I grew up thinking it was part of the Dutch culture since my grandparents on one side of my family are Dutch.  Well when I wore these, a coworker of mine from Latvia said that this type of pottery is from Russia.  And then my Iranian coworker said they have it in Iran.  And when I google it, it says it's Chinese.  I guess many parts of the world have their own version of blue and white wares so I'm generically going to refer to it as just "blue and white porcelain".  Check out after the jump to see what products I used for this.



Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Picture Polish Columbia and some water decals

Hey there!  Does anyone else feel super sluggish coming off a long weekend?  I should feel all refreshed and ready to go but all I want to do at the moment is have a long nap on the couch.  Unfortunately between work and ultimate, a nap is not in my future.  So to try to revive myself a bit I thought I could write up a quick post.  

This here is Picture Polish Columbia.  When I saw that Picture Polish was releasing some Rocky Horror-exlusive shades that the rest of weren't going to be able to get our hands on, my heart broke a little because I wanted the red glitter polish.  But luckily they were allowed to distribute these worldwide so I made sure I picked up Columbia as soon as I could.  When I wore it I added some wavy water decals just because.


Sunday, May 18, 2014

Sunday Stamping - Over a pink base

Hey there!  It's the Sunday of the Victoria Day long weekend here in Canada so I got to enjoy the first lake weekend of the year - but I came back early so I could drive back with my family who has to work tomorrow.  No swimming in our giant lake anytime soon though.  There was ice on it that had blown in so even dipping a toe in it was icy cold!  The good thing about coming home on Sunday was that I got the chance to do the Sunday stamping challenge!  This week's theme is "over a pink base"...sounds easy right?  Not so much.  This was my third and final attempt at doing some cool stamping over a pink base.




Friday, May 16, 2014

Some Serum No. 5 SS14 Glow In The Dark Polishes

Hey there!  Woohoo!  It's a long weekend here in Canada and the weather is almost halfway decent so in a few short hours I'll be headed to my family's cabin for the first time since last fall.  It's my happy place so, even with 4 dogs and a 3 year old, I'm planning on doing plenty of relaxing.

Today I wanted to show you some Serum No. 5 polishes that I purchased from the Spring/Summer 2014 (Part 1) collection.  After the jump you can see what polishes I bought.


Tuesday, May 13, 2014

My First "One Stroke" Flowers & Zoya Perrie

Hey there!  Today I wanted to show you my first attempt at "one stroke" flowers.  I had to put that in quotation marks because saying this only took me one stroke would be a bit of an underestimate.  They actually weren't that hard thanks to this tutorial from Lucy's Stash.




Sunday, May 11, 2014

Sunday Stamping - Spring Nails

Hey there!  Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there.  Last night I had about a 17 hour exposure to what it would be like to be a mom while my 3 year old niece had a sleepover and, let me say, kudos to you guys!  I'm generally a complete insomniac but after a few hours with her I was ready for bed by 11 pm (which NEVER happens)!

I wasn't going to post my Sunday Stamping "Spring Nails" mani this week for a couple of reasons.  Partially because I didn't really love how they turned out but mainly because I haven't mentally adjusted to having mini nails yet.  Even after I chopped them down last weekend, I STILL broke my middle nail on my picture hand this week at ultimate.  Damn that 175 gram piece of plastic flying at my hands (and nails) at high speeds!  But I think I'm going to have to get used to having nubbins so I'm going to suck it up and post them now.



Friday, May 9, 2014

Picture Polish Sunset

Hey there!  Happy Friday!  Today's manicure is honestly one of my all-time favourites.  I know I just said that with my Spider-Man nails I posted last week but I think I liked these ones even more.  I wore these for an entire weekend even though I usually do my nails a ton on the weekend because it's when I have free time to play.

This look features the first neon polish I ever bought, Picture Polish Sunset.  There's probably way too many photos here but, look, they almost look neon!  Turns out taking photos outside, in the shade helps pick up the brightness of neons.



Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Vivid Lacquer Koi Fish & Zoya Robyn

Hey there!  First ultimate game done and no broken nails (thanks to the chop job I did on them)...only about 35 games to go!  It probably helps that I had to wear gloves because it was a balmy 4 C (39 F) plus wind.  I wish we had nice warm springs like I hear other cities have.  Anyways, enough whining...today I have something to share that was inspired by this Chickettes manicure.  I loved the sparkly fish she created so I tried to emulate her with these cross-nail stamping decals using a fish image from Vivid Lacquer VL012.  .


Monday, May 5, 2014

Hawaiian Gradient & China Glaze Spring In My Step

Hey there!  How was everybody's weekend?  As silly as it sounds, I spent mine practically in mourning for my nails.  I chopped them down to nubbins because ultimate frisbee league starts this week and I didn't want to risk any badly broken nails.  I think I have a couple of weeks worth of pics to post before you'll see them though.  And to top it all off, it snowed...in May...ridiculous!

I did these awhile ago shortly after I received my order containing some of the China Glaze City Flourish collection.  Unfortunately my photos do not do the neons justice.  I think I've almost figured out how to take pictures of neons (the loves of my life) now but I didn't have any tricks up my sleeve when I took these.


Sunday, May 4, 2014

Sunday Stamping - Cinco de Mayo

Hey there!  Happy Sunday to you!  This week's Adventures in Stamping challenge theme is Cinco de Mayo which, admittedly, I know very little about since it's not widely celebrated here in Canada.  So, with the help of Google, here's what I came up with for this theme.  



Friday, May 2, 2014

Spider-Man Nail Stamping

Hey there!  So I hear The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is coming out today so I thought this would be a good day to post these.  I have to admit that I never keep track of movie release dates because I rarely go see a movie when it first comes out (crowds...yuck) but if there's a superhero I like, it's Spider-Man.  I think it might be because his superpower was linked with genetics in the last movie.  According to a male comic book fans in my life, girls tend to like Spider-Man (don't ask me where his stats came from though).

 Even if I didn't like Spider-Man I think I still would have loved these nails.  I wore them for days and sent pictures to anyone that would tolerate me.  I had recently received my first Dashica stamping plate order when I saw the new Revlon The Amazing Spider-man 2-inspired polishes in store and figured it was meant to be...