Poutine number 5: Fritz

On Saturday before the Richmond Night Market (post coming soon) we went for poutine. The Flying Pig was full AGAIN, so we walked a block to Fritz which was open for once! =D

I got a large poutine ($8). It was delicious, the gravy was really, really good, but pretty average. There was nothing really special about it. It was pretty on par with La Belle Patate's poutine.

Noms

So because I couldn't really distinguish between La Belle Patate and Fritz, I'm going to have to put Fritz in last place for now. La Belle Patate was just more bang for my buck. Sorry I don't too have much to say!

1. Dunn's Famous
2. Preston's
3. La Poutinerie
4. La Belle Patate
5. Fritz

Check out the updated list here <3
Side Note: I want to thank you guys all sooo much. I just hit 10, 000 pageviews!! =D You're all awesome!

Retro Art 2

Here's number two of the old pictures! This one I don't mind so much. I had just signed up for Julep a couple months prior and had gotten Julep Melissa which I wanted to put over EVERYTHING.

Ulta Snow White + Joe Cement + Julep Melissa over it all

Attempted snowflake! The shine from Melissa was divine.

Retro Art 1

So I found a couple pictures from when I just got back into drawing on my nails. For this one, I had just gotten back from my first trip from the States for nail polish xD

I used Ulta Bam-blue-zled, Warpaint Glow Turq, Revlon Strawberry Electric and Warpaint Mattify over it all. Here come the crappy pictures!

Crap-tastic!

They were cute though

I remember these lasting quite a while, and they were my first attempt using a toothpick to create hearts. They also glowed in the dark.

Swatch: Julep Kate

Oh, my gawd, this has to be THE worst polish I own. Cecile 77 may have bubbled a lot, but nothing holds a candle to Julep Kate. I am SO annoyed right now.

Julep Kate is a white creme with a little pearly shimmer that looks SO pretty in the bottle. I wanted to pair this with Julep Melissa and have a simple but pretty and eye catching *cringe* manicure. However, Kate was having none of it. I had to try 4 times (That's applying and removing cycles, 4 of them) before I gave up and decided this was no longer my fault.

So there were bubbles. And unlike with Cecile 77, I couldn't see them on the brush, and I couldn't pop them with a dab of the q-tip soaked in remover. Fuck you Kate! On top of that it was SUUUPER THICK and I don't know if my brush is weird, or it's just that thick. Because I had to try so many times, and it's so bloody thick, I've used almost a third of the bottle in the last two hours. I ended up putting on 3 coats and giving up. This is worse than Ulta Bam-blue-zled; at least that one went on nice, even if it took some building!

So ugly.

I couldn't even be bothered to clean up properly, I was so annoyed

These are the best pictures I could get, on the fourth try. You can still see it's uneven from bald spots that I had to cover up and you can also see the enormous BUBBLES. On both hands too! The first couple times I did it and waited for it to dry, I also had this tiny pattern of tiny bubbles all over the nail. How could Julep fail so hard? I am not impressed.

I finally decided to cut my losses, and added Julep Melissa on anyway. I've used about the same amount of Melissa as Kate, except Melissa's done like 8 manicures and Kate couldn't get through one.

That dent is bothering me! Both of them! And the bubble. AUGH.

Trying to capture Melissa, failing.

Shadows covering bubbles and dents...

After I finished putting all that together up here, I glanced at my nails again. Guess what? Melissa bubbled. A lot. Everywhere. Fuck you too.

At least it's pretty from a distance....

ARGH.

I went home and took all off and used Ulta Snow White.

This is half taken off, and you can see all the holes from the bubbles.

Stupid Kate. It's thick so I'm going to retire it to stamping. Hopefully I can get some use out of the half bottle that's left. =/

Here's Melissa over Ulta Snow White.

The bubbles are purely Julep Melissa

I've come to terms with that one, it's just too pretty to care.

I decided I wanted a little bit more on it, so I added a Julep O Canada to my ring finger.

Hmm.

I think I'll like it better over non white.

All around fail but white nails make me feel so classy!

Me being classy at my bus stop.

I'm awful =P

Swatch: Essence Date with the Night

So I had no idea what I wanted to wear today. I looked through all my collection and just couldn't decide so I closed my eyes and picked one, resulting in Essence Date with the Night.

This is a frosty? metallic? silvery brown. I had to work a little bit to smooth out brush strokes but other than that no problems, as is standard for Essence polishes. It dried in about 3 minutes and I left it for another 2 to be sure and I used two coats.

Dries shiny and smooth!

Ignore that bubble on my index finger, a piece of dust got caught.

The lamps leave weird reflections (ring finger)

This should tell you how reflective it is

I think this is a great night look with some dark make up. It's pretty cloudy and gross out today so it kinda matches. I think I have a shirt this brown colour so at least it lends itself to an outfit! =D

And then I got bored of it and added glitter!

It was meh.

Fails happen. I took it off after that. What do you think?

Swatch: RAINBOW HONEY!!! (20% Cooler)

SPARKLY! RAINBOW! Omg I'm dying. I love 20% Cooler! Lookit it! Rainbow glitter of different sizes =) (over Ulta Bam-blue-zled). It was nice and not a hungry glitter.

The glitter is suspended in a clear base with this hidden blue shimmer.

It's incredibly gorgeous, but impossible to photograph.

So you'll just have to take my word for it.

This is my porn.

Unfortunately Bam-blue-zled decided to not dry, even after 14 hours (it had the consistency of sticky tac) so I pulled it all off and tried again, this time with Cecile 77.

Oh baby

You can even see the shimmer a little bit on the thumb

Bad pictures all around!

SO GOOD AUGH.

Okay so 20% cooler is also quick dry, which I couldn't tell over Ulta because that one didn't dry at all (screw you Ulta). AND dried flat. I had a couple places where the glitter was pokey but nothing a little prod wouldn't fix. I used a couple layers of Ulta X-dry (which bubbles sometimes) but you can probably use a non-quick dry topcoat to smooth it all out in one go.

So Rainbow Honey retails for $10 for 15ml and $5 for 7ml at their website. The Equestria Collection (inspired by My Little Pony!!) has 8 gorgeous polishes in it and just so you know, shipping to Canada is a ridiculous $9.95 so maybe pool with people and make a bigger order =) If you do that, it's definitely worth it.

Have you guys heard of Rainbow Honey? What do you think?

Swatch: Cecile 77

I'm a sucker for minty greens. I just keep buying them, regardless of whether I have something similar already or not. One such purchase (and one of the better ones), is Cecile 77, which I picked up in Istanbul. It was quite a steal. On top of being a fabulous colour, it was 0.99TL which translates to about 60 cents Canadian at the time. Hah! Love it! Here's the pics:

Bad lighting

Better lighting.

 This is more accurate. Hurrah lights in the bathroom!

Nice right?

This one is actually unique compared to the other ones like this I have. You can't see it in the bottle, but on the nail it has this lovely hidden shimmer. It's also SUPER quick dry and has yet to chip after 3 days. It's opaque in two coats but I had bald spots on a couple nails so I added another. I had a couple issues with bubbles because they're impossible to pop or brush off once they're on the nail. I checked the brush every time. I also don't know if ALL Cecile polishes are bubbly, or because mine traveled from Istanbul to Vancouver over the course of two weeks.

My verdict is that I LOVE this. Definitely worth it. Super quick dry, and I forgive it the bubbles because it traveled a long way with me. <3! It's also gonna be the base for something fantabulous ;)

TLDoS#5 Inspired by your favourite towel

Time for some TLDoS!

Well! This was going to be a challenge, wasn't it? I won my towel at my boyfriend-at-the-time's aftergrad in senior year of high school =D I won it, along with two passes to the Burnaby Village Museum, which has this fantastic carousel. The carousel is a very fond memory of mine, since the first year it opened was when I was nine, and my mom took us, and I was sitting on horse #23, a black with his head tossed high. I learned later his name is Captain Jack, and they don't sell postcards of him anymore and I have yet to get a picture. DISAPPOINTING.

In preamble, here's the poster I won, which made #23 forever my lucky number.

As you can see, it hangs on my wall to this day.

=) Anyhoo, here's the towel too!

Oooh, toughie.

NEVAR FEAR. This is nothing that a good colour choice won't easily set up.

Essence Wake Up of course!

After that there was some sponging...

China Glaze Harvest Moon and then Essence Wanna Be your Sunshine

And then some more sponging....

Wanna be my sunshine? =)

I added a glorp of Julep Daisy for the setting sun.

Too much glorp! aah!

(But that's what sponges are for.)
And then some striping...

LA Colors Art Deco black striper =)

I was looking at it, and at my fuzzy towel...

Mattify!!

Now I match my towel xD

And there you go! Easy-peasy =D Hopefully the sun comes out soon so I can be back on the beach with it =)

What do you think?

Check everyone else out!

Hannah from Polished Prisms
Victoria from The Manicurator
Alyson from Beads, Nails, Food
Amanda Murphy Mandy's Polish
Sue O'Connor  Creative Nails by Sue 
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish
Charlotte-Louise Charlotte's Nails
Jessica from Nearly Natural Nails
Karine from Karinea0a 
Jen from The Polished Zombie
Jessica from Jessica's Nail Tales
Ashley from One Nail to Another
Pryanka from Nail Sparks
Anna from Polished Cousins
Maribeth from Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite
Kayono (aka Johanna) from Neues vom Kellerkind
Amanda Schott  from Counting Down to Bliss
Nichole Mowery from Adventures of the Nail Friends
Stephanie Oblas from A Little Polish
Becky Barnett from Glam Fiend
Elysse Patty from Elyssian Beauty

Swatch: Essence Wake Up!

Hello! Today I have another Essence. We all know this is my favourite brand right now, but Wake Up gave me some problems =( It's this gorgeous BRIGHT orange creme, opaque in one coat but I kept getting bubbles and bad spots! I think it's just me because I've never had this problem before. Anyway, pics!

BRIGHT ORANGE

Somehow even brighter in person.

As is usual of essence polishes, it dried fabulously shiny and incredibly quickly. It took me a bit, but I managed to get it smooth and bubble free. Excellent summer neon =)

Vancouver Escapades... and eventually poutine!

Sunday was the day for poutine. That was the plan anyway. We left at 11AM with the intent to go to the Flying Pig in Yaletown for a pulled pork poutine. Little did we know they only serve brunch on Sunday, and it would have been a 45 minute wait... But we passed a couple cute things on the way there!

This little dress maker's shop, Victorian style!

A boxcar on Hamilton St when you enter Yaletown (by the park)

 Like I said, we made it to the Flying Pig (that has THE most adorable logo) and they were a 45 minute wait and brunch only, so since we were right by Davie St, we decided to try to Fritz which was a block away. For some reason it was closed, even though the hours SAID it was supposed to open. Really disappointing. We walked down Granville (right by Fritz) and found Millenium by complete accident! Hurrah! 1109 Granville in case you're interested. The girl there told us to go to Monster Poutine, and THAT was closed (just around the corner at Granville and Nelson). We continued down Granville hoping to find the Kaboom Box (no such luck) and then just decided to hike it five blocks over to Preston's on West Pender (1177). We FINALLY made it and it looked closed! LAME. We tried anyway and it turns out it was just empty and dark, but not closed.

FINALLY POUTINE.

Preston's Poutine with Rickard's Red Gravy

Ooooh fancy. And huge.

It was so good guys.

The boys got a sandwich and added poutine to that for $3 (for a $16 total) and they got the same size poutine as me, and it was very filling I was told. I highly recommend Preston's for poutine. The poutine by itself was $8 and a sandwich (comes with fries or salad blahblah) was $13.

On our way back we saw Toads! Made my life

Sometimes I love Vancouver! Of course we wandered around that corner of West Cordova with all the cool stores and guess what? They opened a new one! You all know New World, Venus and Mars and Deadly Couture. Right beside the latter is Why Knot? and it's full of steampunk/furry/latex too! I love it! I'm definitely going back and buying one of their leather pocket belts (way cooler than it sounds).

Anywho, here's the breakdown of poutine so far. I think I still prefer Dunn's Famous, but Preston's was a VERY CLOSE second! This bumps the other two down a slot unfortunately <3

1. Dunn's Famous
2. Preston's
3. La Poutinerie
4. La Belle Patate

Check out the updated list here <3

Starbucks dates xD

"I just want to go to a drugstore one time and buy tampons, a morning after pill and a box of condoms and watch the cashier try to figure out which order I'll be using them in."

Omnomnomnom cupcakes

So these were sorta for my birthday but really just because... (We baked twice)

Here's how we started.

Key Lime Cream Cheese Icing with food colouring (3 drops green, 1 drop blue)

 Without the food colouring it just looked like glue, and even in the pic above, didn't really show up well.

Here you can see the green better.

One week later...

Vanilla Buttercream icing with chocolate sprinkly things and blueberries and raspberries

 These ones were amazing.

I'm not sure which I liked better...

The second ones look more birthday-ish, but the key lime icing is very summery and refreshing.

Mmmm cupcakes! =D