Nail Crazies Unite - Inspired By Fall Fashion

Hey there!  Today's Nail Crazies Unite theme is pretty appropriate for the weather we've been having in Edmonton.  The prompt is Inspired By Fall Fashion and it's certainly turned to fall here.  Practically overnight it got chilly and the leaves started turning.  I'm not ready to say goodbye to summer yet but it seems like I might not have a choice.  So I guess it's time to embrace autumnal nails starting with these (which are actually my current mani since I just did them last night).  I'm not much into fashion but when I think of fall I think of jeans and sweaters so that's what I did.

26 Great Nail Art Ideas - Stars

Hey there!  Today's 26 Great Nail Art Ideas theme is one I love...Stars!  However, the star mani I planned to post for this ended up looking like crap...booooo!!  Luckily I had a mani that I did over a year ago that I never posted for some reason that fits the theme perfectly.  So here we have some almost-ancient star stamping over a KBShimmer gradient.  You all know how much I love my KBShimmer cremes, partially because they make such good gradients!

26 Great Nail Art Ideas - Animal Print In Wrong Colours

Hey there!  I'm SO sorry I've disappeared all week.  I swear I had blogging on my To Do list every day and then something always came up.  Next week is a new Digit-al Dozen week so I promise I'll have posts everyday (and maybe even one this weekend).  Even though I accidentally took a mini blogging break, I couldn't skip out on this week's 26 Great Nail Art Challenge theme.  The theme is a fun one: animal print in wrong colors.  I asked my sister what to do and she said pink zebras so that's what I have today.  It also happens to be a month of animal patterns for the Nail Challenge Collaborative so it's a 2 for 1!

The Digit-al Dozen does Get To Know Me - Bath Bombs

Hey there!  Today we've reached the halfway point in the Digit-al Dozen Get To Know Me week.  I've already covered the two places that mean the most to me.  In this point I'm going to share how I spend my weekends - having wonderfully colorful scented baths.  Lately I've been really splurging on awesome bath products (mostly from an awesome Canadian indie company called SoGa).  One of my favourite things is an old favourite, Lush bath bombs.  I've had good bath bombs from indies as well but so far none have been as colourful as Lush.

26 Great Nail Art Ideas - Winter Warmth

Hey there!  Hope everyone is having fun (while still being financially responsible) this Black Friday.  I stayed up late to hit the midnight sales last night and then got up at 5 am this morning to buy way more than I had planned.  What can I say - some of these brands don't restock or go on sale very often!  But I don't feel too bad since I haven't bought nearly as much polish lately as I used to.  I guess that's what happens when your collection gets to a certain size.  It seems like I have the basics and then some.  But I did buy enough UberSwatchers to finish swatching my Mundo collection which sounds like a decent winter holiday project to me.  Enough about Black Friday...today we have the last 26 Great Nail Art Ideas post of November.  This week our prompt was Winter Warmth and I knew right away that I wanted to use the mittens from the UberChic Christmas 02 plate.  Keep reading for the details of my logic behind this design.

26 Great Nail Art Ideas - Halloween In The Wrong Colors

Hey there!  It's time for the second instalment of 26 Great Nail Art Ideas.  I'm still getting used to this every second week thing but I think I like it.  It's much less demanding than the weekly prompt.  For this theme, we're doing Halloween in the wrong colors.  It's really hard to think of a color that isn't Halloween-related - it pretty much eliminated black, orange, green, purple and red to me.  So I went with pink and paired it with a plate I've been wanting to use for a long time.  I love the idea of having the different phases of the moon as a mani.  I hope pairing it with a bat makes it Halloween-y enough.

The Digit-al Dozen does Rainbows - Holo Rainbow Stamping Decals

Hey there!  Happy hump day!  Now normally I wouldn't use the term hump day but when I asked my sis which mani I should post today, she picked these "because it's hump day and these are humps".  I personally see them as rainbows, not humps, but I see where she's coming from.  These holographic rainbows were inspired by the first example I ever saw of someone making stamping decals.  I don't have an exact link but I know they came from Fab Ur Nails and they blew my mind!  They were also holographic rainbows and I'm forever in debt to them for showing me this awesome technique.  Since they were made with all holographic polishes I took all my pics in direct light so they look a bit different than usual.

The Digit-al Dozen does Rainbows - Rainbows for Orlando

Hey there!  Following the horrific news out of Orlando yesterday, it seems very fitting that this month's Digit-al Dozen theme is Rainbows.  I honestly don't have the words to express how heartbroken I am over the tragedy.  I generally try to keep most of my political or social views off my blog but I will state wholeheartedly that every person is equal.  This attack has really shaken me, maybe because it made me think of my friends in the LGBTQ community.  I already had all my manis for this week done and ready to go but when I got home from the cabin last night and heard the news, I wanted to do a new design to honour all those affected by this senseless act of violence.  My heart goes out to them.  I know that what I'm wearing on my nails doesn't make one iota of difference but it's my way to be reminded when I look down at my hands today.

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Films

Hey there!  This week's our 40 Great Nail Art Ideas theme is Films.  Oh geez, once again I have done this theme in the most general of way, just like I did for Comics, TV and Books.  I will fully admit that I have a TV addict.  I'll binge watch entire series in record time BUT I rarely watch movies.  I like TV because I can get more involved with the characters.  2 hours just isn't enough for me to bond, I guess.  So my Film mani is more about the film industry imagery than one movie in particular, though if I had to label this as a single movie I think it would have to be Gone With The Wind.

Wolf Nail Stamping

Hey there!  Okay these were supposed to be my post for the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas Halloween week a month ago but at last second I decided that they really weren't Halloween-y enough and did something new.  BUT I did really love these but I didn't know when would be a half decent time to post them.  Well, guess what...tonight's a full moon which seems like a good enough time to post a wolf mani.

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Your Job

Hey there!  This week Crumpet's Nail Tarts are doing their jobs!  On their nails, that is!  I usually think my job is pretty cool and, lucky for me, stamping plate makers seem to agree with me so it wasn't a problem for me to put my job on my nails.  By day, I work in a university research lab as a molecular biologist which means I treat DNA like a really fun puzzle.  I've done DNA-related nails a ton but it's never too much for me.  This time I included a first layer of stamping that I thought represented something I've been doing lately in my job...cell culture...scary to a DNA person like me!

TV Off Air Nail Art

Hey there!  This week's 52 Week Pick n Mix Challenge prompt is TV.  I admit that I'm a full blown TV junkie but I couldn't think of any individual TV shows to use as inspiration for today's post.  So, because it's summer and TV programming isn't so great at this time of year, I thought I'd do a TV mani that will definitely date me....an off air screen and a static-y TV.  I grew up on an acreage where we couldn't get cable so I only had 3 channels (yikes!) so if you flipped to any channel that we didn't have, you were accosted by static.  And back then, late at night, you'd frequently get the off air screen.  Good thing I was little and wasn't trying to watch TV in the middle of the night like I do now.

Along Came A Spider Nail Art

Hey there!  So who doesn't sit around on their Friday night writing a blog post in between loads of laundry?  I'm such a party animal!  But since it's the last day of the month, and my day was hella busy, that's what I'm doing in order to share what I came up with for this month's The Polished Bookworms book of the month-inspired mani.  Along Came a Spider by James Patterson was what we picked for the crime genre.  I'm not usually into crime books but I have to say I really enjoyed reading this book.  It was a quick pace thanks to the short chapters which I liked and I ate it up.  I must not be alone since it spawned a series of 22 books centered around the detective protagonist, Alex Cross (22 is a lot!).  There was one thing that drove me crazy in this book but it's not worth ranting about.  I'm hoping it was an ancient relic though the book was published in 1993 which seems fairly recent to me.  Keep reading to see the details and an explanation for this seemingly random mani.

Neon Leadlighting Daisies

Hey there!  This week's Crumpet's Nail Tart's 52 Week Pick n Mix challenge prompts are neon and indie.  A lot of my neons come from mainstream brands (though I'm slowly collecting more indies) but I did recently get the Esmaltes da Kelly Neon Soap Bubbles so I tried them out for some leadlighting for this week's theme.

The Digit-al Dozen Does Patterns on Patterns: Day 1 Flowers on Lattice

Hey there!  In case you hadn't heard, this week's Digit-al Dozen theme is "Patterns on Patterns"...sounds daunting eh?  Needless to say, I have a lot of stamping mixed with other patterns/techniques this week so hopefully I can keep you interested.  For my first time I'm posting something that reminds me of the stencilling techniques that were all the rage in the late 80's/early 90's.  I even remember stencilling the lean-to at the lake lot when I was pretty young.

Big Little Lies-inspired Nail Art

Hey there!  When Lindsey of Wondrously Polished started a Facebook book club called The Polished Bookworms for those of us who love nail polish AND reading I jumped at the chance to take part.  Every month we'll be reading a book voted on by the members and then, at the end of the month, posting our mani's inspired by the book.  This month's book is Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, a suspenseful fiction book.  I don't want to give anything away but, in order to explain this mani, I will say it starts with some champagne-induced bonding and has some "fizzy pink drinks" that play into the most revealing scene.

Meteor Shower Nail Art

Hey there!  As I've mentioned approximately 1000 times, I love going to the lake.  One of the reasons I love the lake so much is the sky there.  It's huge!  Alberta (where I live) is known for having a big sky but at the lake, away from hills and all the city lights, it's particularly amazing, especially at night.  Once it gets dark you'll frequently find me down by the water just staring at the stars.  I try to plan my summer vacation around the Perseids meteor shower.  So when a stamping group I'm in had a galaxy nails prompt, I decided to do this mani as my tribute to the meteor shower.  Unfortunately this year that darn super moon was so bright that it bleached the sky and I only got to see a couple meteors.  I didn't think it was so "super"...

Sunday Stamping - Over A Holographic Polish

Hey there!  If all goes well, I'll be enjoying myself at the lake on vacation while you're reading this.  I have the next week-ish off from work.  I'm hoping to have the internet there but there's a possibility I might disappear for a bit.  But I am scheduling this Sunday stamping post because I was so excited about this theme.  This week's theme is stamping over a holographic polish.  Sounds easy, right?  But it was really hard to choose between all my lovely holographics.  In the end I went with my old standbys, the 2013 Color Club Halo Hues.

Vivid Lacquer Brain Nail Stamping

Hey there!  Since it's Monday and my brain is notoriously slow on Mondays I thought I would finally share some stamping I did with one of the newer Vivid Lacquer plates, VL026.  You might not know that I'm a molecular biologist and I work in a neurobiology lab so when I first saw the preview for this plate, I knew right away that I had to order it.  So while this might look gross to some of you, I think it's pretty cool.

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.