Swatch: Rainbow Honey Papillon

Those ladies at RH HQ are the sweetest bunch! I came home a couple months ago to a nice surprise from them!

The package included their best selling glitters from 2013 (Kraken and Magic Cake), their two Valentine's polishes (Sweet Talk and XOXO) and the sneak preview of their spring butterfly glitter, Papillon! There are so many possibilities for Magic Cake that I am frozen with indecision....

BUT PAPILLON.
Papillon makes the perfect spring combination over Julep Robin! Those butterflies are adorable but I think my favourite part was the tiny micro holographic glitter that spread so nicely over the whole nail.

So sparkly! I love shaped glitters too! Without topcoat, the butterfly wings do stick up a little bit, especially on my very curved nails. The mix of glitter is beautiful though, and it's not just pink but there's a dash of blue and silver too, and of course those tiny, tiny little rainbows. Some of the butterflies flew away after some wear (again, without topcoat, with topcoat I don't think any of this would happen) but the majority stayed stuck and flat and I had flashy fingers for the first week of spring.

Have you ordered from your favourite brand lately?

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Swatch: Julep Robin

Spring is here! Eid mobarak (happy norooz, Persian new year). You wouldn't really know it from what the weather's like here but I guess April is the rainy month and we can't expect much until after that's over...

I haven't had time or desire to paint my nails much lately, and there's some things happening later this week that means I should probably keep them nude but these photos have been sitting around for a bit, and the next post is a gorgeous glitter topper that was released recently... (I've given up on my watermarker for the time being, it doesn't seem to like other computers.)

Two coats to opacity but it bubbled a little bit D: These photos make my skin look REALLY red but the polish is colour accurate.

What's your favourite spring polish?

Swatch: Golden Rose 151 (Teal)

Well I missed the boat on a holiday again, sorry, but I do have this cool teal jelly that was totally fun to play with.

It took only three coats to be opaque, and you could totally get away with two.

It's gorgeous, but I couldn't just leave a jelly alone. I knew that FingerPaints Santa's Magic worked for a jelly sandwich before so I tried it again.

Oh dang, it's fantastic. I really love jelly sandwiches. They're so easy to do, and they look awesome.

Happy Shamrock Day everyone!

Neon Drips

A good neon calls for some good nail art! You be the judge though... I started with the matted (WarPaint) base of Jindie Don't Get It Citrus Twisted and used a neon pink from a set I received for Christmas. It was pretty opaque, but I am not good at drips...

The edges looked absolutely uneven, so I tried my sharpie to smooth it out and make it look neat. I also skipped the topcoat so the sharpie wouldn't run, and so that I could have the contrast of shiny/matte.

It looks really cartoon-y! That's not a bad thing. These were kind of fun, but I don't think I'll be doing this design again. I don't know how those pros do it.

Swatch: Jindie Don't Get It Citrus Twisted

Another polish to usher in warmer weather, I got Jindie Don't Get It Citrus Twisted in a grab bag from Harlow&Co with a gift card I won from A Polished Nail (whoo links!)

Like a lot of glitter polishes in a milky base, this one was a little bumpy when it dried, and took 3 - 4 coats to get opaque, but nothing a bit of topcoat couldn't smooth out.

Topcoat is entirely necessary, and I chose to mattify it with WarPaint.

I love this colour combination and I am very glad that it was included in my grab bag <3

Swatch: Julep Rose

I have this awesome, amazing, beautiful friend (hi Ronak ;D) who does a mass purge of her stuff every once in a while and this time it included some of her nail polish stash, this gem included. Julep Rose is a GORGEOUS bright pink leaning to red colour, and opaque in two coats. It is really perfect to welcome those spring flowers that should be popping up soon.

It may have been from the resort collection? Anyway, I love it. Does anyone know a cheaper dupe?

Mardi Gras!

Sooo, if you're following me on Facebook, you heard that my laptop died and I didn't have access to my watermarker... I just got it back and it turns out if won't mark these photos. SIGH. Anyway, I'm going to get back into it now (I have a netbook to work with). I have a couple posts all lined up =) The first of which is some nail art since I want it up for Tuesday!

Anyway, when you google for photos you get masquerade masks and those bright colourful metallic beads! Because I've done masks before, I chose to do a dotty design to represent the beads.

The base colour is Julep Rose, and (from the edge to cuticle) I dotted using OPI DS Classic, Essence Gleam in Blue, Gosh Holographic Hero, Julep Nessa and Essence Out of My Mind.

I am not the neatest dotter, but they looked fine from a distance. I needed an accent and the obvious answer is feathers of course. I messed around with my brushes and a couple colours to get a peacock feather on my accent nail with Rainbow Honey Bitty Love Bot, China Glaze Running in Circles, China Glaze Harvest Moon and ILNP Cygnus Loop.

Wow for some reason my camera didn't like CG Running in Circles in the bottle... Oh well. The feather actually turned out fine despite the process being messy. I had to put down colour, brush in to remove polish to get the feathery edges and put down more polish... it was a mess. Thank gawd for topcoat to smooth it all down!

Mardi Gras is actually kind of disappointing in Vancouver. Is there a big party where you're from?