Studs and Glitter

Good morning everyone!  I have a mani for you today that I am pretty much in love with!  I have been trying to wrack my brain to come up with some nail art ideas, and when I painted my nails with Julep Blake on Saturday, this came to me!  Come check it out!

Swatch-It-Up-Saturday July 27

Hello lovely readers!!  How many of you are still up?!  This girl is soon heading to bed, just waiting on mom and dad to stop in to pick something up on their way home and I will be hitting the hay.

I have a quick, and very late, Swatch-It-Up-Saturday post for you.

#mintmanisfortaliajoy #taliaslegacy

Good evening readers!  Today I have something a little different.  As most of you probably know by now, this week the beauty world lost a very beloved member.  Now, I'm not going to lie, I don't really know a lot about this as I have not been following it until now, but just reading what other people and bloggers have been posting this last week about Talia Joy Castellano have really shown me what strength and beauty really are.  At only 13 and being battling two forms of cancer (neuroblastoma and preleukemia), she was made an honorary Cover Girl while on the Ellen DeGeneres show, which you can watch here.

She's just the cutest thing, and SO gorgeous!!  It really breaks my heart that the world lost her, even though I haven't been following the story until now.

On Wednesday, the lovely Nicole from Nail Polish Wars (also the brain behind Elixir Lacquers) came up with a beautiful and easy way for the beauty and nail communities to remember Talia Joy.  The last mani photo that Talia Joy posted on her Instagram was of a mint mani, so Nicole asked everyone in the beauty and nail communities to band together to create mint manis in her memory, and I couldn't help but jump on the wagon.

This is what I came up with:

This is 2 coats of Revlon Top Speed Jaded with a glitter gradient using Nicole by OPI Inner Sparkle.  I was at a bit of a loss after I got Jaded on my nails, and finally decided on a glitter gradient with Inner Sparkle solely for the name and how it would represent the inner sparkle that Talia Joy had.

I am proud to be part of the nail community in times like these, and I know Talia Joy is beaming down on all of us!  I hope you will join in with us and do a mint mani for Talia Joy today!

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

Swatch-It-Up-Saturday June 15

Happy Saturday!  Do you guys have any exciting plans for the weekend?  Tyler and I will be working on getting all the last minute things sorted out because in ONE WEEK we will be moving into our house!!!  PS - don't be surprised if I don't post that day ;)

It's Swatch-It-Up-Saturday again!

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: Revlon Top Speed Fire

Happy Monday!! :)  So seeing as no one sent me pictures of their nails on Saturday, how about we do a ManiMonday today?  Send me a picture on my Facebook page of the polish you're sporting today and I will add them to a ManiMonday folder :)

I have for you today Revlon Top Speed Fire from my WalMart Haul.  Believe it or not I did not have a "real red" in my polish collection, and when I was browsing the Revlon polishes in WalMart I remembered this and decided to get myself one :)  I also had a $1 off coupon, so it was a no-brainer :)

This is a great polish, these photos have 2 super easy coats.  For those of you who are like me and don't have a fire-engine red in their collection, I would recommend getting this one!  It's fast drying and is a perfect red.  It shows a little more pinkish in the photos than it actually is in real life, but I didn't get a chance to get daylight photos, these are taken inside with a flash.  That's the problem with doing your nails after work/at night and the sun going down so darn early now!

What is your favourite red that you have in your collection?

WalMart Nail Haul

Hey happy polishers :)  I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!  My "camping trip" was.. wet.  It rained from Friday when we got there until this morning :(  We didn't end up staying in the tent, we slept on an air mattress in the living room of the cottage we were at, only to find it deflated over night :(  There was a little hole in it that we found when we got home today.  It was good to spend time away with friends though, so in the end it was worth it :)

Anywho, I have for you today my haul from WalMart that I got last weekend.  I went shopping for shoes (I had a coupon that was going to expire and that would never do!) and ended up bringing home polish.. go figure! :P

Let's look at what I got :D

Left to Right:
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Snappy Sorbet, Mint Sprint, Brisk Blue
Revlon Top Speed Fire
PRO-FX Fiberized Ridge Filler

Let's start with the Sally Hansen Insta-Dris, shall we :)  This is the first time I have purchased these, but I have read that they are really good for stamping, so I thought I would give them a shot :)  Again, I tried to pick colours that I don't have something already close to in my collection.

This is a coral-y colour and I think this would look great with Zoya Irene :)

This is a really nice teal-y colour, I can't wait to try stamping this on white and black :)

I like that this colour is vibrant :)  Again, this is one that I want to try stamping over white!

So I didn't own a red in my collection... yes seriously, I didn't own a single real red!  I had a coupon for Revlon and I used it to buy this colour :D

Now, this is the best deal on polish I have found in a while (besides Julep's Intro Box for $0.01!).  75mL of base coats and top coats for less than $5.00 at WalMart!!!  Holy cow!  So I got the ridge filler.  I don't have a ridge filler, and I have never tried this brand before, so I thought I would give it a try.  They also didn't have any quick dry top coat left which is what I will be looking for every time I am in WalMart now :D

And just for a comparison, this is the Pro-FX ridge filler beside a full-sized OPI polish :)

Have you had any good WalMart/department store hauls lately?  It's amazing what you can find out there sometimes :D

NOTD: Double Polka Dots

Happy Monday gang!  I hope everyone made it through today unscathed :D  It's excessively hot here in Ontario and tomorrow's only going to be worse, so they say :(  I hate summer - maybe this will be a good time to do a winter manicure ;D

I thought I would use some colours today that I hadn't used in a little while for some simple nail art :)

I used Avon Loving Lavender (purple), Revlon Top Speed Jaded (green) and L'Oréal I Will (white) for this double polka dot manicure.  This was a really easy manicure to do and if you love polka dot manicures I would recommend trying it.

For the large white dots I used a "tailor's pin" stuck in the eraser of a pencil for a dotting tool, and then for the smaller dots on top of the white dots, I opened up a paperclip and used that.

Just place the large dots wherever you like, there is no rhyme or reason to the placement, and then dot the opposite colour on top of the white dots.  I chose to do accent nails on my ring finger and thumb, but you can do all your nails the same base colour with the same centre/small polka dot colour if you like!

If you try this kind of manicure, share it with me on my Facebook page, I would love to see it :D

OMG I'm Naked!

Haha, just kidding!  Well sorta ;)  My nails are naked at the moment because I'm planning an awesome nail art for tomorrow :D  Plus, I wanted to show you what's "under the polish".

So while you're waiting oh-so-patiently for tomorrow to come so you can see my awesome nail art, here are some pictures of my naked nails.  (I do have a basecoat on in these pictures.)  I hope this nail art design works with all this hype....

I don't do anything special besides hope and pray one of them doesn't break off while I'm doing stuff.  I do use Julep's Cuticle Oil, I try for a few times a day.  I am also very prone to hangnails.. BIG ones!  It's partially my own fault because once I get one I pick at it :(  They occur mostly on my thumbs and when I get one it also affects the skin around my nail, not just the hangnail part of it.  And then it bleeds :'(  I try to put bandaids on them with polysporin but it's so hard during the day because I wash my hands a lot, so they don't stay on anyways.  And I never think to put them on before bed.  *sigh*  Life with beautiful nails and fingers is hard to come by, lol!

(Sorry for the glare in the pictures with the flash - I wanted to show them in a little brighter light but it got dark on me faster than I expected :S)

I like to have my nais a little longer than they are in these pictures, but it always happens that once I get them to the length I want, one will break off :(

For being a life-long nail biter and having "quit" a little over 2 years ago, I think my nails are beautiful even if they are a little yellow from polishing them all the time.