Easter Nails

Happy Friday everyone!  I can't believe it, but I think that Spring has finally sprung!  If you have been here for a while, you know I'm a winter person but this winter has been super long even for me.  Today, Owen, Lexi and I spent some time getting our bronze on on the side deck where the sun was beating down and making it nice and toasty warm!  Lexi was finding it a little hot and opted to go lie on the snow in the backyard instead, lol!

Last week, Celine from Nail Polish Canada emailed me and asked if I wanted to participate in their Easter Nail Art Challenge.  It's been a while since I've done nail art, so I thought I would give 'er a go!  Here's what I came up with:

I used a bunch of polishes, I'll just list them for you guys:

Julep Bess (blue)

Julep Blake (yellow)

OPI Rumple's Wiggin' (purple)

Julep Hayden (orange)

Julep Martha (pink)

Jordana Black

LA Colors Art Deco striping polish in White

China Glaze Fairy Dust (glitter)

Julep Matte Top Coat

The picture doesn't show the polishes in 100% colour accuracy, but it was late at night when I took the picture and by the time I got up in the morning, my sugar spun thumb was all smushed.

I love pastel polishes, and they look even better when they are topped with a matte top coat.  I love the chalky look of them :)

Make sure to check out all the other entries of the Nail Polish Canada Easter Nail Art Challenge and vote for your favourite!

Have you done any Easter nails yet?  Post them to my Facebook page, I would love to see them!

Holiday Nail Art Challenge Week 1

Happy Sunday everyone, and Happy December 1st!!  Only 24 more sleeps :D

I have a late mani submission for the Nail Polish Canada Holiday Nail Art Challenge.  Yes, I have had all week to do it, but I have been super lazy and only did it last night, very last minute.  Let's take a look - I am very excited for the way this turned out!  The theme for this week's challenge was snow, my FAVOURITE part of winter and Christmas :D

Swatch-It-Up-Saturday Nov 30

Evening!  I almost forgot to post this today!  Well, here we are on the last day of November, the Christmas season will start in full swing tomorrow, and I will be able to plug my Christmas lights in :D  YAY!  Tyler and I put the outside lights up a few weekends ago, taking advantage of a warm day, but I haven't been "allowed" to turn them on until December 1st.

It's Swatch-It-Up-Saturday and I have a LOT of catching up to do.  This is going to be a picture-heavy post, so let's get right to it.

Swatch-It-Up-Saturday Sep 14

Good morning lovely readers!  I hope everyone is staying snuggled up this morning!  It's a whopping 4°C here this morning and there was a heavy layer of frost out in the country - I'm working this morning and my mom was telling me on the way in to work :)  And you know what that means!!  Winter is coming!!! :D  YAY!!!

It's yet another Swatch-It-Up-Saturday!  Come check out all the swatches I have been hoarding!  There are LOTS, so let's get right to it, shall we?

Swatch-It-Up-Saturday Aug 31

Happy Saturday!  I have lots of swatches to show you today, I have been stashing the pictures for a couple weeks :)  So let's get right to it :D

S is for Scallops

Hey everybody!  I am SOOOOO sorry for being absent over the last week.  I seem to be in a bit of a funk :\  I'm going to work on getting my act together and get to posting frequently again.

Today I have for you my late "S" mani for the ABC Nail Art Challenge!

S is for Scallops

Swatch-It-Up-Saturday June 8

Good morning!  TWO more weeks till moving day!!!  I can't believe it's almost here! :D

I thought I would start something a little different on here.  I'm going to try to do more nail art on here, but when I do, I will also take pictures of the base colours I use and do a collective swatch post at the end of the week.  Let me know how you guys like this idea :)  I'm hoping this will help me with my ever-growing pile of untrieds :)

OPI What's With the Cattitude?

All polishes are purchased with my own money unless stated otherwise.

Morning girls and boys!  Hopefully everyone is surviving the week.  Tyler and I went for our home inspection and it didn't go well, so we backed out of it.  That's all I want to say about it because I'm pretty upset over it, but that's where we are on it.  But, obviously it wasn't meant for us, so onto the next :)

Today I have for you OPI What's With the Cattitude? from the Shrek collection.  I realize that this is an older polish and has been swatched by a lot of bloggers, but it's new for me and is an untried - I have had it since the fall *blush*

F is for Flowers

Evening folks!  It was such a beautiful day today and I felt so retarded being cooped up inside at work, and then being cooped up working out in the gym.  My sister wasn't home when I was done work so I didn't have a walking buddy, and I thought that Tyler might give me the "look" if I didn't go and do weight training tonight :)

Today I have for you my F mani for the ABC Challenge!  Again, this isn't what I had planned to do, but my plan sounded like too much work when I went to do my nails last night, lol!

F is for Flowers

C is for Colour Blocking

Happy Sunday!!!  Who is looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow?  Yeah, me neither, lol!

Today I've got for you my "C" mani for the ABC Challenge!  I'm pretty excited about this and the way that it turned out!

C is for Colour Blocking

OPI Rumple's Wiggin'

Good afternoon my dears!  I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up with blog posts in the last few weeks.  I will try to start posting more often again :)

I have for you today one of the first "main stream" polishes I ever had put on my fingernails.  I went to get my nails done with my sisters at my cousin's nail salon and I chose OPI Rumple's Wiggin', without even knowing that it was in a Shrek collection.  This was before I was really really into polish, and I picked it for the colour rather than the name/collection.  The next time I went is when she told me that it was part of a Shrek collection because I was saying "who would put those poo-green colours on their nails??", hahahaha!

I have since acquired so many polishes that when I do go to get my nails done, I have a hard time choosing something because I have so many colours at home, haha, oops ;)

February Nail Art Challenge Day 4

Happy Sunday ladies!!  Did everyone on the eastern US seaboard survive the snow?  What about all of you in Ontario, Québec and the rest of the eastern provinces?  We got about 20-30cm over Thursday and Friday :D  The snowbanks are piled high, and it's making it hard to see around corners while driving.

Today I have for you my Day 4 design for the Challenge - inspired by a pattern.  There are SO many patterns out there, but there was really only one that I knew I had to do.

OPI Ate Berries in the Canaries

Good afternoon my dears!

Today I have a polish for you that I am VERY reluctant to show you because I could not photograph it with colour accuracy if my life depended on it.  Cameras hate the colour purple.. why oh why?!?! :(  I put this on Sunday evening and I'm just now showing it to you, that is how reluctant I am :)

Anywho, I'm going to try to explain this colour as best I can, but take a look at the pictures I did get.  This is OPI Ate Berries in the Canaries from the "Coleccion de Espana".  I don't know what year it was released though.  I got this polish from the Canadian Traveling Polish Box - my sister picked it out :)

Light Box

Nail Polish Canada Nail Art Challenge Week 3

Hello lovely ladies!  I apologize that I haven't been posting regularly the last few days :(  December is proving to be a busy month :)

I went and got some Christmas shopping done yesterday, I'm pretty well done, just need to do a little more thinking to come up with something for one more person and go get a couple more things and I'm done :)  Then I get to wrap them!!!  That's my favourite part!  I just have to think about how I'm going to bling out my gifts this year :D

Today is the last day of the Nail Polish Canada Holiday Nail Art Challenge.  This has been lots of fun doing these designs :)  This week's theme is "Trim the Tree".  I knew I had to do a full mani with the water marble Christmas trees I did from last week.  I also received Ninja Polish No Peeking this week, so I wanted to incorporate that too!

This didn't turn out quite like I pictured in my mind, I definitely like the trees I did in my "Presents" mani for last week, but I have run out of time and can't re-do it, so I just rolled with it :)

For my marble I used Sinful Colors Exotic Green, Avon Electric Green and OPI Who the Shrek Are You?. I think that Exotic Green and Electric Green are too close in colour to marble together for a Christmas tree.  For the trimmings I used Avon Ruby Slippers and rhinestones.  I also fished for some star glitters from Ninja Polish No Peeking :)

My accent nails are Zoya Logan with Ninja Polish No Peeking.  This is an awesome Christmas glitter, and I love it!  I would love to wear this every day of December!

Don't forget head over to the collaboration of all the bloggers participating in the Nail Polish Canada Nail Art Challenge to vote for your favourite :)

Thank you to Nail Polish Canada for hosting this Nail Art Challenge, it's been a lot of fun!  And congratulations to all the girls who participated in this Challenge, everyone did a great job!

Nail Mail: Ingredients for a Jelly Sandwich

Mail call!  Hey everyone, I have some really exciting news!  Thanks to Stephanie over at Sincerely Stephanie, I have just acquired all the ingredients to re-create her jelly sandwiches she has been featuring for the last few weeks.  I'm fairly new to this nail art business, so when I saw Stephanie's jelly sandwiches I knew I needed to try them out for myself :D  The only ingredient I had in my polish stash was the black polish so I had some shopping to do :)

She e-mailed me a very detailed list (thank you oh so much Stephanie!) of what polishes I should try and quite a variety of colours from a variety of different brands.  I was able to search through Nail Polish Canada to look at all of the colours and decided on 3 colours as well as a Flakie polish.

I placed this order on Saturday July 28 and it came in the mail Tuesday August 7 (with a Canadian long weekend in there ;)) so I'm really impressed with the speed of shipping :)

Here's what I got!

Everything was wrapped so well - each polish was in bubble wrap (OMG BUBBLE WRAP!) with little styrofoam peanuts to keep everything from shifting around during shipping.

First up - my very first OPI polish!  This is Do You Think I'm Tex-y?, a pink jelly.  I can't wait to try this one :)

Then we have my very first Nfu Oh polish!  (Yep, I'm a polish-virgin!)  This is JS31, a bright blue jelly!  Now, with being new to the big-name polishes, I was distracted for a few minutes when I realized that the bottle was in the shape of a woman's dress.  At first, I noticed that the top of the lid looks like a heart, but then as I was studying the bottle some more I realized "oh, those are boobs!"  HAHA!  So I had to take some extra pictures of the bottle because I live a sheltered life and have never seen a nail polish like this before :P

Then we have China Glaze Under the Boardwalk.  I love this colour, it's a fuchsia-purple jelly polish.  I love purples, so this is right up my alley :D

Finally, we have the ingredient that makes this a jelly sandwich -- the Flakie polish!  I chose Essie Shine of the Times because I liked how it looked in the swatches I looked at :)

I love the rainbow in this Flakie :D  It looks like it's going to be a well-used addition to my polish collection!

And, Nail Polish Canada included a little treat in with my shipment -- A LOLLIPOP! :D  I LOVE sugar/sweets, so this is a nice surprise to find in with my nail polish :D

Ok, so here's what you've all been waiting for -- the jelly sandwich manicure!  I started with Jordana Black as my base colour and then topped it with Essie Shine of the Times.  I LOVE this Flakie!  I can't wait to try it over white, and other colours as well :D

Ooooh eeeee!  Look at that fire! :D 

Then I topped that off with OPI Do You Think I'm Tex-y?.  It takes the green colour out of Shine of the Times and makes it more of a gold to purple holographic.  I tried doing a gradient top with OPI Do You Think I'm Tex-y?, Nfu Oh JS31 and China Glaze Under the Boardwalk (all the colours I ordered for this jelly sandwich) but it didn't look right, it's going to take some practice to get it right :)  I will definitely do another post later on when I master the gradient jelly sandwich :)

If you are interested in trying this manicure for yourself, here is Stephanie's tutorial -- take a look!  If you give it a try, share it on my Facebook page and Stephanie's Facebook page and tell her I sent you ;)