2mm Square Nail Studs - REVIEW

Good morning and Happy Hump Day!  My first nail post of 2014 comes half way into January.. shame on me :(  I'm such a bad blogger!  I have lost my drive to blog, but I have made the commitment to Born Pretty Store to do a review on a product they sent me, which I was really excited about receiving, so I figured it was high-time I pull myself together and get back in the saddle!  This post contains affiliate links, and this product was sent to me free of charge for an honest product review.

Catching Fire Nails

Good morning everyone!  I hope your first week of December is treating you well!  Only 20 more sleeps till the big guy is here!  I have started my Christmas shopping, but hope that Tyler and I can get a good chunk of it done this coming weekend :)

Today I have a quick post with a mani that I did a couple weeks ago for the opening weekend of Catching Fire, the second installment of the Hunger Games trilogy.  This is one of my favourite trilogies, and of course I had to go and watch it with my bestest friend, and movie-buddy, and have a girls' weekend :D

For this I started with 2 coats of Julep Nadia, a light yellow shimmer.  This is a really interesting colour, and I kind of like it.  Then, I followed cutepolish's tutorial for Catching Fire nails using a random orange shimmer polish, and Julep Karmen to create the flame tips, and my Jordana Pop Art Black Mark striper polish.

Overall, I love the look of this mani, and loved the movie!!  It was just as exciting as Hunger Games, and can't wait for the final movie to come out, but I don't know when that is yet.

Did you go watch Catching Fire?  Did you do your nails to match the occasion?

Hallowe'en Mani #5

Afternoon my loves!  What's shakin'?  Almost another day of work behind me, and the weekend almost within my grasp!  Tyler and I are going to be heading to my friend's house Saturday to go and see another friend and his band play in their hometown (they normally play in the Toronto area) and I'm kind of excited even though it's at a bar (I don't drink) and they don't play my kind of music.  I don't get out much though :P

I have another Hallowe'en mani for you today!  I found the inspiration for this one on Pinterest, here's the link to the original picture.  Here is my "rendition"!

Hallowe'en Mani #4

Day 2 of Thanksgiving weekend is here, dinner #2 is in a few hours, yahoo!!  I have another Hallowe'en mani for you today :)  I'm pretty proud of this one!  I had this idea in my head before October rolled around and I knew that I had the perfect polish for it!

Here is my slime drip mani!

Happy Thanksgiving

Good afternoon lovely readers!  I am doing up this post quickly before I have to get ready for going to Tyler's mom's for dinner... mmmmmturkey!!

I thought I would do my nails to celebrate Thanksgiving!  And was high-time for a water marble because I haven't done a water marble for a while, and I came up with something perfect!!  Come check it out!!!

Fall Waterfall Mani

Evening ladies and gents!  I hope everyone enjoyed their week.  I had to work today, so I didn't have any time to work on blog posts, so hopefully I will have time tomorrow to do up the Swatch-It-Saturday post tomorrow morning.

I put on Julep Alma on Wednesday night and at first I was kind of grossed out by the colour (I will go into that more in my swatch post tomorrow), but then I got thinking about what kind of nail art I could do over it and this is what I came up with!

X is for X-plosion

Happy Friday everyone!  I can't believe the change in temperature between today (barely 10°C) and this past Tuesday/Wednesday (30-35°C, felt more like 40°C)!  Fall is definitely in the air!

Today I have for you my X mani for the ABC Challenge!  It's the 3rd last week this week ... wow!  Time is going by way too fast!

X is for X-plosion

City of Bones

Morning everyone!  It's the weekend!!  Later this afternoon, Tyler and I are going to watch City of Bones with some friends, and spend the night to have a BBQ with the same friends tomorrow night :)  So, of course, in celebration of watching the movie tonight, I did my nails to match :)  I asked on the Facebook page what you guys thought I should do, and Amber-Marie suggested doing some runes on my nails, and linked me this photo.  Here is what I came up with ...

Q is for Quilt Patch

Evening lovely readers!!  I hope you have all had a wonderful week!  I have so many pictures of manis built up, but not enough time to work on posting them :(  So sorry!!!  I hope to get some stuff done blog-wise this weekend, but I don't know if that will happen :\  I just ask that you bare with me another couple of weeks, and I will try to be back on some sort of posting schedule :)

Tonight I have for you my (better late than never) Q mani for the ABC Nail Art Challenge!

Q is for Quilt Patch

L is for Ladybugs

Howdy guys!  I hope everyone had a good weekend!  I meant to get this up yesterday, but ran out of time!  It's the last week before moving day, and things are getting a lot hectic around here, so this is going to be a short and sweet kind of post!  This will likely be one of my last posts before I move, and for maybe a few days after too.  We won't have internet right away, so if I seem to be MIA, that's why :)  I thought I would try to get ahead in my Challenge nails, but it hasn't happened yet :(

Today I have my "L" mani for the ABC Challenge!

L is for Ladybugs

Cartoon Nails

Happy Monday!  We got our last blast of winter yesterday and ended up with a little less than an inch of the white stuff.  Don't worry, I'm not complaining :D  I personally took it as Mother Nature's way of telling me "it won't be long till it's back!" :D  Now, before you guys start throwing rotten tomatoes at me, let's move on to the nails ;)

I have been wanting to do this mani from cutepolish since watching the video a few weeks ago when she posted it, but other designs and swatching have taken precedence, for some reason..  That, and I've been kinda lazy, lol!

"A" is for Argyle

Good morning and welcome to day/week 1 of the ABC Nail Art Challenge!  If you are a new follower, welcome!  All information for the Challenge can be found here.

This week (Mar 31 - Apr 6) is brought to you by the letter "A" - yes that was meant to sound like Sesame Street ;)

A is for Argyle

Hoppy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!  I thought it would be super appropriate to do some Easter themed nails for this weekend :)  I am loving all the pastel coloured polishes everyone is coming out with for the spring!  I'm also surprised by how many I actually have in my collection :)  And what's a pastel polish without adding a matte top coat, right?

Here are my base colours for my designs:

February Nail Art Challenge Day 7

Afternoon ladies and gents!  I hope all my readers in provinces that observe Family Day are having a good day off work (I know I am), and those of you in the US are having a good Presidents' Day.

I have for you Day 7 of the February Nail Art Challenge - can you believe that it is almost over?? :(  Today's theme is Inspired by a Tutorial, and I mosy'd on over to cutepolish's YouTube channel and watched her Black Spotted video again to make sure I remembered how to do it.

Reindeer Nails

(Feel free to sing along...)
You know Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen.
Comet and Cupid, and Donner and Blitzen.
But do you recall...
The most famous reindeer of all....

How cute are these guys?!?!?!?!  I am absolutely IN LOVE with these nails and wish I could carry these guys with me forever!  I was inspired by Top Coat It's reindeer nail design from last year.

For this I used Julep Mystery Colour #1 (dark brown) as my base colour - which I'm really digging and it's so perfect for reindeer! - Julep Alyson for the antlers, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On for the eyes and Santa's jacket detail, Jordana Black for the pupils, Santa's belt and reindeer noses, and for Santa's coat and Rudolph's nose I used Jessica Red Delight.  For the gold detail on Santa's belt and buttons I used Jordana Pop Art Golden Artist.

2 more sleeps till Santa's reindeer drop Santa off at the houses of all the good girls and boys, and I know he's stopping at my house this year ;)

What is your favourite Christmas carol?  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is stuck in your head now, isn't it?!

Snowflake French Tip

Thank goodness it's Friday!  There are only 11 days left before Christmas, and it doesn't feel like it because we are missing lots of snow, and this year has gone way too fast!  I also just realized that I have been blogging for almost 6 months!  Sure doesn't feel like it!

I have another Christmas mani for you guys today!  I found this while browsing Google for stamped Christmas manis and found this design by Meliney, but altered it slightly to make it more Christmasy and I don't have the stamping plate she was using :)

Source (screenshot from the tutorial video)

Here is what I came up with:

For this design, I used Avon Ruby Slippers for my red tips, Bundle Monster stamping plate BM-319 for the snowflakes and Konad Special Polish in White.  I topped it with Jordana Crystal Glitter.

This is so Christmasy and I love it so much!  You could do this with any colour on the tips and it will look great!  I was debating on whether to do red or green and decided on red :)

Do you like it?  Have you ever watched any of Meliney's tutorial videos for nail designs?  Which one is your favourite?

NOTD: Stamping and Rhinestones

Hello ladies.  Sorry this post is a little later in the afternoon than you are used to.  Tyler and I went shopping earlier today and I am just getting around to blogging now :)  I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend so far!

So yesterday I showed you Julep Sienna, a beautiful "white gold" shimmer that I think will be great for the Christmas holiday season.  When I wore it a few weeks ago, I decided that it needed something a little extra.  And I also wanted to do some stamping so I did :)

For this I used Julep Sienna as my base colour.  Then, with Konad Special Polish Black, I stamped on the crisscross design from plate #M79.  Then with Jordana Black I freehanded some French tips :)  Then, because I wanted to try out some rhinestones, and because I only had round ones in green, I applied them to the big dots of the stamp design on my ring and thumb nails.  With a fairly thick layer of top coat, these puppies were NOT coming off!  :)

I found myself petting my nails while wearing the rhinestones :)  It was kinda weird and I'm sure if anyone saw me doing it they thought I was nuts!  I love using the rhinestones and love what they add to nail art :)  Maybe the colour combination isn't the greatest, but I have some clear/silver ones now so I can use those for something like this rather than green ;)

Do you guys use rhinestones?  Do you like the look of them or are they too much for you?

NOTD: Minnie Mouse Nails

I love Disney, who's with me?  All of my favourite movies are Disney movies (well except the Twilight Saga and Hunger Games!).  I prefer the older/original ones to the newer ones they are releasing today.

After I used Revlon Top Speed Fire I knew I had to do Minnie Mouse nails.  I have seen them around Facebook in the last little while and wanted to try them.  This was my first attempt, I want to redo these, but I wanted to share them with you before the Challenge begins!

So the reason I want to redo them is because I don't like my bows, and the dots look too busy, to me anyways, but that's my OCD talking.  That's the great thing about nail polish is that even if you don't like your first attempt at something, it's easily removable and you can always try again :D

I used L'Oréal I Will! and Jordana Black for the dots and bows.

Do you guys have a favourite Disney character or movie?

Fun facts about my love for Disney:

• My favourite other Disney character is Eeyore.
• My favourite Disney movie is The Lion King, it was the first movie I ever saw in theatres.
• I love Disney because of all the music in the movies, they are all songs that I remember from being a kid and still sing them to myself sometimes :)
• I have the Lion King soundtrack, which was my very first CD.
• Since I have become "older" and have my own income I have started collecting the Disney DVDs :D
• I have been to Disney World probably 5 times.  My grandparents have a house an hour from Orlando and we used to visit every other year when I was a kid.  My favourite part of the park is watching the parade at the end of the day!

NOTD: Back to School Nail Art

Hey everyone!  Today I have for you my Back to School nail art for Spicey'z Nails' "Back to School" nail art contest that she is having until September 10.  Here is the link to the contest information.

For those of you who follow my page on Facebook, I have been advertising that is is Muffin Nails that is having the contest, but I was wrong.  I am so sorry for the confusion!  I hope both of these ladies can forgive me for my mistake :(

Ok, now that I have that off my chest and cleared up, onto the nails! :)

I used so many colours for this design I will try to remember them all and list them at the bottom :)

• Thumb nail - apple manicure inspired by cutepolish's tutorial.  For this I used Jessica Red Delight, Cherimoya Dark Brown and Julep Courteney.
• Index nail - note paper manicure, I have seen this around the nail community.  For this I used L'Oréal I Will! (white), Avon Lagoon (blue) and Jessica Red Delight.
• Middle nail - pencil manicure inspired by Muffin Nails (who said she was going to do pencils, so I came up with this design from her mentioning it).  For this I used the tape method to get the point (cut a triangle into a piece of tape and put it on my nail) then painted with Julep Alyson (nude).  Then I painted over that with Julep Daisy (yellow) and did the lines with Julep Parker.  The lead I did with Jordana Pop Art Black Mark striper polish.
• Ring nail - chalkboard manicure, again I have seen this around the nail community, but with math equations so I thought I would do letters instead :)  For this I used Julep Emilie for my chalkboard and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow.  I topped it with Essie Matte About You topcoat to give it a matte finish.
• Pinky nail - converse shoe nails, because every good student needs a new pair of shoes to start off a new year :D  For this I used Avon Blue Shock, L'Oréal I Will!, Jordana Pop Art Star Designer (silver) and Jordana Black with a toothpick.

I hope everyone participates in Spicey'z Nails' Back to School nail art contest.  I love doing nail art contests :)  And again, I apologize for the mix-up in who is hosting it.  I feel so bad about it :(

NOTD: Converse Shoe Nails

I hope everyone's enjoyed their weekend so far :)

I have for you today a request sent to me by my cousin on Facebook.  I altered it a little bit though.  Let's go take a look :)

The inspiration:

This picture is from this blog, though I don't know how to go about finding the actual picture as I can't read the language the blog is in.

So I took this idea and went over to YouTube to cutepolish's channel and found she had a tutorial of a similar design in black and white.  I prefered her design to the one shown in the picture so I combined them :D  The colour scheme from the picture and the design from cutepolish's tutorial.  This is my end result:

The colours I used are:

Thumb -- Julep Eva

Pointer -- Julep Natasha (red-orange)

Middle -- Julep Daisy

Ring -- Julep Emilie

Pinky -- Julep Taylor

White -- L'Oréal I Will!

Black -- Jordana Pop Art Black Mark

Silver -- Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Celeb City

Have you tried converse shoe nails?  Send me a picture by e-mail or share on my Facebook page.