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 Oct 5

Afternoon everyone!  What a dreary weekend!  It's definitely fall, and most of the trees around here have lost 90% of their leaves.. does that mean winter will be extra early this year?  One can only hope, right?? ;)

It's Swatch-It-Up-Saturday, and I will call this one the "Avon Edition" because it's mostly Avon polishes.  I did a swatch-a-thon last week, and I worked on swatching all of my Avon polishes.  I hope to work through entire brands at a time, when I have a chance to sit down and swatch for a whole day.  Let's get started!

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

Essie Aruba Blue

Good morning happy readers!  I hope you are enjoying your Monday better than I am so far :)  I hate Mondays...

Anywho, today I have for you the swatch of Essie Aruba Blue that I promised you on... Friday.. *hangs head* I'm a bad, bad blogger :(  I was then planning to get this up yesterday, and we all know how that went, lol!

Alright, enough whining, onto the pictures!  Hold onto your hats, this is one stunning blue!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy Sunday lovely readers!  How are you celebrating St. Patrick's Day?  Me, I'm not a drinker, and while I am of Irish decent, I don't normally celebrate St. Patrick's Day.  I thought I would do my nails for today though :)

I know lots of other nail bloggers had their posts up a lot earlier today, but I'm lazy and have been procrastinating all day, lol!

NOTD: Julep Megan

Happy Sunday!  Who's ready for work tomorrow?  Yeah, me neither!  LOL!

 

I have for you Julep Megan today.  This is another colour I got in my August Mystery Box.  This colour was a lot more sheer than I was expecting, so I was a little worried when I put the first coat on, but it all worked out in the end.  These pictures are with 3 coats of Megan.  It is more green than it shows in these pictures, more like a mermaid's tail :)

 

I think that this would be a great base colour for nail art, or a great colour to use in nail art.  I will have to try it out soon :)

 

Do you have this colour?

NOTD: Julep Felicity

Happy Sunday everyone!  By show of hands, who is ready to go back to work tomorrow?!  ... Yeah, me neither :P

I thought I would try out Julep Felicity by herself today rather than using her to create an antuqied look over other polish.

Julep describes Felicity as a yellow-gold metallic chrome, and they are right on the money with that one!

Natural Light, without flash

Natural Light, with flash

This is a beautiful gold colour :D  With the flash it looks like Crayola's version of "golden rod" with a shimmer :D  I think this colour will be perfect for Christmas manicures (only 19 weeks and 2 days till the big day!!) and stamping :)

Did you get this colour in your August Julep Maven Box?  What do you think of it?

NOTD: Marble with Julep Felicity

Morning sunshines!  I hope you're enjoying this dreary day!

So I wanted to try out my other polish from my August Julep Maven Box, Felicity, but I couldn't bring myself to take off Alfre just yet.  So I decided I would attempt the marbling look that is achieved by using seran wrap to "sponge" polish onto the nail.

I am in love with this look.  I would love to try this with more than one "sponge" colour.  I think this would be great to try over white with light pastels for Easter, it would give an Easter Egg look so easily :D

I like how the gold of Felicity gives the purple of Alfre an antiqued look, and this is SO easy!  A lot of people do the "sponge off"method where you paint your top colour over your entire nail than use seran wrap to sponge some of it off to bring out the colour underneath, but I think the "sponge on" method is easier to control the amount of colour you cover your base colour with, and it uses less polish.  I did all 10 nails with 2 drops of polish on a styrofoam plate and a little piece of seran wrap.

What do you think of this marbled look?  Have you tried it before?  If so, post a picture to my Facebook page, I wold love to take a look :D

August Julep Maven Box

It's HERE!  My August Julep Maven Box is here!  I'm so excited to show you this, I'm excited for these colours :D

Julep released metallic and chrome colours this month, as you got a sneak peak of in my August Maven Box Add-Ons page.  Let's see what I opened :)

Julep was celebrating their 1 year anniversary/birthday for the August Maven Box, so we got to celebrate with them!

Everything was wrapped in this lovely reusable bag, Julep's gift to all the Mavens in celebration of their 1 year anniversary! :)

I went with the Classic With a Twist Maven Box for August, so I got Felicity and Alfre, again because I'm a sucker for purples :D  Felicity is described as a yellow-gold metallic chrome, and Alfre is described as a royal metropolitan purple with a hint of shimmer.

Julep also introduced their new nail polish remover that is moisturizing and acetone free.  I was excited to try this because it's in one of those fancy schmancy pump bottles (again I live a sheltered life, lol).  This remover works pretty well, and it smells wonderful.  I don't know that I would be willing to pay for it (even with the 20% Maven discount) when I can get twice as much Sally Hansen acetone remover at WalMart for about half the price.  But the bottle is refillable, so I can always buy other remover and still use the pump bottle :D

So of course I chose Alfre for my first colour to try from this box.  I love how this looks, even though it's an "older" colour in the Julep collection.  It's not a bright grape purple, it's a beautiful grey/silver-ish purple that is pretty neutral even though it's a darker colour.

What do you think of these colours?  What August Julep Maven Box did you get?  What was your favourite product and/or colour from the August Julep Maven Box?

August Julep Maven Box Add-Ons

Happy Civic Holiday everyone!  For those of you not in the areas of Canada that celebrate the Civic holiday, Happy Monday! :D

I made it through my camping weekend.  We had hot, almost unbearable heat on Saturday and torrential downpours and really close thunderstorms Saturday night, and nobody had a very good sleep :(  I wanted to stay longer because I don't want to go back to work, but also couldn't wait to get home to paint my nails ;P

So I am expecting a lot of nail mail over the next week or so, and of course some of it came on Friday before I left for camping :(  It was the only thing in the mail box, lol!  I received my add-ons for my Julep August Maven Box before my actual box, so I thought I would do my blog post on it tonight :)

Let's see what I got...

This month, there were SO many great colour choices that I had to add-on two colours.  I try so hard to resist, honest I do... It's just so hard!  I added Dakota which is described as rose gold metallic chrome, and Harley which is described as liquid silver metallic chrome.  I loved the look of Dakota so I had to get it, and I have wanted a "real" metallic chrome that didn't have glitter/sparkles in it like a lot of silver colours do.

I tried on Dakota tonight.  I like this colour, but I don't know if I love it.  I think that it blends in too much with my skin tone.  Maybe I will try some nail art or stamping on it, I feel that will make it look much better :D

My skin, cuticles and nails are SO dry from camping.  The lot that we were on was right on the water, we had our own beach, and the entire lot was sand.  So between the swimming, and the sun and heat on Saturday; and the sand and dirt that comes with tenting for a weekend, everything dried out so bad and I forgot to bring hand lotion with me :(  Guess I will be slathering on the lotion and Sunny's Miracle Balm tonight before bed :)

I also had to file my nails down over the weekend because they were starting to peel and chip.  I painted them Julep Jennifer Thursday night before bed (didn't have time to do a blog post with it before I left) just to have something on my nails, but not something that would be noticable to others if it chipped.  On Friday, a few hours after we had set up our campsite, the nail polish had already started to crack :(  I ended up picking most of it off by the time I got home today.

What Julep Maven box did you guys get for August?  Did you get any add-ons?