All The Light We Cannot See Nail Art

Hey there!  After skipping the nail art for last month's The Polished Bookworms book of the month (Amy Poehler's Yes Please), I'm back this month with a mani inspired by Anthony Doerr's All The Light We Cannot See.  The book is set in France and Germany during WWII and is pretty neat as the point of view flips between two characters - a young German boy named Werner who has a gift for radio mechanics and a young blind girl in France named Marie-Laure with a gift for science.  The book won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year so I really wanted to love it but, while I did like it, it didn't hold my attention like some books do.  It took me quite awhile to finish it but I definitely don't regret the time I put into it.

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Halloween

Hey there!  So I did some stamping a few weeks ago for today's 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Halloween prompt of Halloween that I absolutely loved.  Then yesterday I second guessed myself and thought that it really isn't all that Halloween-like so I decided to do a new mani.  However I had plans last night to go for a drink with a friend who is in town this week so this turned into the quickest water marble I've ever done (since I had to do it in between eating dinner and going for beer).  Luckily I have the holy grail of marbling polishes from pipe dream polish so I managed to do these relatively fast.

My Attempt at Shattered Glass Nails

Hey there!  As with many of you, last week I saw a whole bunch of posts online about the latest nail art trend...shattered glass nails.  I thought they looked really cool so this past weekend I thought it'd be a good time to try it out.  I headed to the dollar store looking for iridescent film but all I could find were gift bows.  I grabbed a couple of them (to see which ones looked better) and went to town with a pair of scissors and a lot of time and top coat.

HPB Presents Textured Halloween Stamping

Hey there!  Every month the Hobby Polish Bloggers (an amazing group of folks who love nail polish enough to blog about it) come together to have a link up and, not surprisingly, this month we're doing Halloween.  Halloween is one of my favourite holidays when it comes to nail art because you can do so much with it.  For today's Halloween nail art I decided to stamp over some striped textured polish just because stamping over textures is always fun though I rarely have the patience to do it.  What can I say?  I'm addicted to quick dry top coat!  

Sunday Stamping - Holo-ween

Hey there!  This week's Sunday challenge theme is a fun one...holo-ween (as in using a holographic base or images).  I opted for a holo base for this vampire-themed stamped and I absolutely love how it turned out.  It has red, sparkle and vampires...three of my favourite things!

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Orange, Purple and Green

Hey there!  It's time for a new color prompt for Crumpet's Nail Tarts 40 Great Nail Art Ideas!  With Halloween coming up, this week's colors are orange, purple and green.  My designated look for this week is ikat.  I've done ikat nails once before but I still had to google what ikat means.  I tried to make these ones a bit more adventurous than my first try but I think I might have gone overboard.  What do you think?

More Fall Leaves

Hey there!  Last week was The Digit-al Dozen's Autumn week but I did sooooo many Fall-themed mani's that I have a bunch leftover.  I thought I'd post a couple more of them today before winter shows up and they become super non-seasonal.  I'm all for wearing any color at any time of year but I bet you guys would think I was crazy if I was posting fall leaf nails in January!  So here's a couple of my extras...

Werewolf Nail Stamping

Hey there!  One of the stamping groups I'm in was playing a little Halloween stamping Bingo game and I liked how these turned out so I thought I'd write up a post about them.  The first theme that was picked was werewolf.  I realized I had zero proper werewolf stamping images so I made do with what I assume is the Big Bad Wolf (from Little Red Riding Hood).  A scary wolf is a scary wolf, right?

Sunday Stamping - Snakeskin

Hey there!  This week's Sunday stamping challenge theme is Snakeskin & Other Reptiles.  I feel like we've had this prompt before so I challenged myself to try to do something reptilian and Halloween-like.  I found this image of toy snakes that had Halloween colors, and thought I could do snakeskin skittles like the toys.

Fun with Flags - A Blogger Collaboration

Hey there!  Today we have a fun link up thought up by Dina of Secretary's Nail Art.  Her idea was to do a Fun with Flags link up a la Sheldon from Big Bang Theory.  I love the show and thought it was a great idea, especially because, as Dina puts it "we are all in this hobby together, and borders mean nothing."

I'm born and raised in the province of Alberta, Canada.  I'm sure everyone knows Canada is big...like REALLY big.  We have 10 provinces and 3 northern territories which are still pretty big.  So although Alberta is just a small part Canada, it is still bigger than some countries (for example, it is slightly larger than France and significantly larger than the whole of Great Britain albeit with a much smaller population).  I've done nail art based on the Canadian flag before but never for Alberta's flag so that's what I'm bringing to you today.

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Geeks

Hey there!  It’s time for another 40 Great Nail Art Ideas theme week.  This week we’ve done Geeks.  I fully embrace geek culture but there’s so many things nowadays that are “cool geeky” that I was unsure of what type of geeky inspiration I wanted to use this week.  Science geek? Gamer geek?  Why not both?!  I recently heard about this video game called Kerbal Space Program.  I can’t say I know much about it except that it sounds really hard and really geeky…in the best way possible, of course!

The Digit-al Dozen does Autumn - Day 5 Cozy Sweaters

Hey there!  Alas, it’s the final day of Autumn week.  These might look like Christmas sweaters to a lot of you but, here, this type of neutral-colored sweater becomes very popular.  Personally I don’t have any but my sister does.  She looks nice and warm in them.

The Digit-al Dozen does Autumn – Day 4 Canadian Geese

Hey there!  For my fourth day of The Digit-al Dozen’s Autumn Week I used a couple of inspirations – first, a blanket that my mom and sister made for me and second, our Canadian wildlife that we get to see twice a year.  Seeing the Canadian geese flying south for the winter is one of the first true signs of fall.  It always makes me sad but I know we’ll see them again in the spring!

The Digit-al Dozen does Autumn – Day 3 Autumn Colors

Hey there!  For the third day of Autumn week, I was inspired by the colors of fall that I get to see as I drive over the North Saskatchewan River on my way to work every day.  Edmonton has a gorgeous river valley and seeing all the colors that come out at this time of year is one of the few things I like about autumn.  Since I see the hills from a distance, it looks like a crazy mess of color so that’s what I tried to portray on my nails today.

The Digit-al Dozen does Autumn – Day 2 Deer In The Woods

Hey there!  Before I get started, I have to apologize for neglecting to welcome Carmina from Cubbiful to our group.  I’ve been a fan of hers for awhile and I think she’s going to be great for this crazy group of ours!  

Today I have my second autumn mani.  I did these for my friend’s birthday last month (yes, I’m such a keener that I try to get my DD nails done a month ahead of time) because every fall we lose him to the bush as he hunts for food.  He really enjoys it, maybe almost as much as I enjoyed this mani.  I think this is my favorite of mine this week.

The Digit-al Dozen does Autumn - Day 1 Canadian Thanksgiving

Hey there!  It's time for this month's Digit-al Dozen week!  This month we've picked Autumn as our theme.  Since today is Thanksgiving Day up here in Canada I thought I'd do something that reminded me of Thanksgiving.  I kept googling "Thanksgiving" and coming up with warm photos of pumpkins and sunflowers so these are my Thanksgiving nails...without a turkey to be found!

Sunday Stamping - Disco Nails

Hey there!  This week's Sunday Stamping votes were soooooo close - it was a nail biter!  But the theme that won for today was Disco Nails.  I personally voted for it because I knew I had one disco plate that doesn't get much love from me so I wanted to use it.  And I did for these colorful throwback -to-the-70's nails.

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Teal

Hey there!  Today is the first color prompt day of the Crumpet's Nail Tarts latest challenge.  On the colors weeks, we'll all be doing the same color or color combination but we're all given different styles to do with those colors.  This week we're starting with teal.  I was given plaid/houndstooth/tweed as my pattern.  I've recently done both tweed and houndstooth so I decided to give plaid a go today.

 

UberChic Beauty Sugar Skulls -01 Stamping Plate Review

Press  Sample

Hey there!  Since Halloween season is upon us (just look at the stores if you don't believe me) I thought it'd be a good time to review UberChic Beauty's Sugar Skulls stamping plate.  I will admit that I know very little about what sugar skulls represent since they're not common up here in common but I do find they make for fabulous nail art!   

Stamping over ILNP Brilliance

Hey there!  As I mentioned on Sunday, I've fallen back in love with flakie polishes after neglecting them for awhile.  For these ones I wore a flakie on it's own (without undies) and stamped over it.  There was something about this stamping image with the multi-chrome nature of the flakie that reminded me of Halloween.  It's a bit creepy eh?

Holographic Gradient

Hey there!  I have a short post today to share a gradient I wore a few weeks ago.  I love gradients but don't usually do them with holo polishes so I thought it looked pretty neat...which is a good thing because I had to keep in on my nails for a few days when I had overseas company last month.

UberChic Beauty Halloween-01 Stamping Plate Review

Press  Sample

Hey there!  Since it's October I'm officially allowing myself to start posting Halloween nails and what better way to start than with a new-ish UberChic Beauty stamping plate made especially for Halloween.  At this time of year people start looking for plates that work for what is a lot of folks' favourite holiday and I personally feel this plate is up to the challenge.  It's got a whole gamut of Halloween images from bats to webs and everything in between.  Keep reading for all the details...

Sunday Stamping - Plate No. 27

Hey there!  This week's Sunday Stamping challenge should've been easy - it was just a plate number. BUT most my plate collections don't go past 25 so I was pretty limited in my selections.  But I do have high numbered Born Pretty Store plates (thank you BPS) so I picked BPL-027 for my stamping over a flakie base.  Hope you enjoy!

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Hobbies

Hey there!  Today is an exciting day...is the start of a brand new Crumpet's Nail Tarts nail art challenge!  Like the 52 Week Pick n Mix Challenge, this one is also going to run for an entire year alternating between themed (like today) or color prompts.  So every week you're going to be able to see 40 nail art ideas.  Pretty cool eh?  

This week's theme is Hobbies.  I'm sure a lot of you have nail polish as a major hobby in your life but we're not one trick ponies, right?  Personally, I play a couple of sports though I'm by no means an athlete.  Sports get me out of the house socializing with some awesome people instead of watching Netflix and painting my nails ALL the time.  Now that summer is over, my sport of choice for the winter is curling so that's the theme for my nail art this week.  Yes, curling...like with rocks and brooms and ice.  I'm so Canadian, haha!

A England To Emily Bronte Collection Swatches and Review

Nothing to Disclose

Hey there!  It's not secret that I love A England polishes.  Now anytime Adina releases a new collection, I don't even pretend to not need the entire thing.  As soon as Nail Polish Canada got them in I ordered them all up.  I received them yesterday and figured I'd swatch them all right away since I haven't seen too many posts about them yet and thought some of you might like to see them.

This collection is called "To Emily Bronte" - a love letter to a classic English author and poet.  I was never one for the classics when I was in English class back in the day so I can't comment on the names of these polishes and how they fit with the book.  I remember having a write an essay on Withering Heights and I did it with only reading the Cole Notes and paying attention in class...luckily I like the polishes more than the book!