NailPolishCanada.com Summer Nail Art Challenge!

Woohoo! If you've been following my facebook you know that this is one of the most ambitious nail designs I have undertaken for a long time. I was contacted by NailPolishCanada (as I have been a couple times before :D) to enter their nail art contest and the theme was SUMMER.

>>>VOTING LINK HERE<<< 

(sorry I want it to be easy to find)

After pondering for a bit, I decided the most quintessential summer experience I had was when I went to Cuba. In Cuba, though I didn't do this myself, my friends did go snorkeling and make friends with some tropical fish.

To Google!

I used a LOT of colours for this one so I'm going to list them at the bottom of the post I think. In the pic above (which I got from googling "tropical fish" and taking the ones that I had colours for) it goes thumbs to pinkies from left to right. Check it out!

This is before topcoat. I was super paranoid it was going to ruin something so here you go.

Luckily it didn't ruin anything AND the sun came up in the morning for a bit so I could get some quality pics.

So it's obviously a skittles mani and I'll leave it for you to decide whether it's that coherent but at least it's tied by the theme of tropical fish, right?

The pic below is a feat because I took it myself by holding my phone between my knees. #bloggerlyfe

Also just lemme gush about those bornprettystore.com brushes and how thin the freaking lines are on the clownfish nail. Like wow. Dang.

Okay! As for colours... I'm going to go in the same order as the fish in the first pic, I'm sure you can figure it out though.

Left

Thumb: Nyx Thunder + Essence You Belong To Me

Index: Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine + Acrylic Paint

Middle: China Glaze Riveting + Julep Nessa + Acrylic Paint

Ring: ILNP My Little Glacier + Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine

Pinkie: WetnWild 454D + Rainbow Honey Cymbidium

Right

Thumb: Orly Old School Orange + Acrylic Paint

Index: Julep Claire + Julep Melissa + China Glaze Riveting

Middle: Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine + WetnWild 454D + Essence Passion for Fashion

Ring: Essence Walk On Air + Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine + Acrylic Paint

Pinkie: Rainbow Honey Annual Emotion + Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine + Acrylic Paint

Yay! That was kinda complicated, haha! I hope you like it. Check out the other entries, but you're all gonna vote for me, obvs. right? ;D

Just for good measure, here it is one more time <3

>>>VOTING LINK HERE<<<

Jellyfish nails!

Hi everyone! I hope you all took yesterday as an excuse to demand cuddles and sweets with your sweetie, or drink some really fancy potent things with some cuddly snuggly blankets and your favourite movie <3

Vancouver Aquarium opened their doors on Wednesday the 12th after hours for some kid-free awesome time and I didn't quite realize how much the children interfere with my enjoyment of the place until the night was over and I realized I learned and talked a lot and actually felt rewarded for my interest... ANYWAY, I was so excited and we all know what I do when I'm excited by now right?

I started with one of my favourite polishes, Nyx Thunder.

I started with it because it is not the easiest polish to work with and does take upwards of 3 coats to be completely opaque, despite the fact that I knew I wanted the darker colour to be near my cuticles. It worked out though! I swiped some Vaseline onto my cuticles to keep them clean and used my make up sponge to make a gradient using Sephora Formula X Cosmic (the one that was a lovely gift!). It's purple after multiple coats but the first coat is blue and I knew it would look like that over another blue.

I love gradients! For some reason it never sticks in my head how good they look and how easy they are. I covered this in a coat of Rainbow Honey Bubblebeam.

Of course it's not over, this isn't art yet! Recently VanAqua advertised their fluorescent jellyfish display and they did not disappoint. My nails needed some jellies! I used acrylic paint and a striper brush I got as part of a set from bornprettystore.com.

I may need a little practice for realism but I really like how they turned out. Hello jellies!

The whole event was absolutely awesome <3 My boyf and I needed a nice date night and we don't really do Valentine's day so this was perfect and fun! Even during the day with little brats running around the actual aquarium is pretty cool. One of the nicest things about the lack of children (even though the lack of children was a gift itself) was that the staff talked about the research that goes on behind the scenes as well as the cool facts about the creatures. I hadn't realized how much Vancouver Aquarium had contributed to science before that night.

Bonus photo!

Awake sloth!!

Pokemon #12: Ice

AAAHHHH A POKEMON POST. Now that the pressure's off, it seems some of the creative juices are flowing. I left the NCC before the new year since I couldn't really keep up, and hopefully this gets it all going again this year.

Anyway, ICE. I started with Essence You Belong To Me (which still looks sky blue to me!) and layered Essie Shine of the Times. When this dried up to look acceptably icy, I broke out the acrylic paint and swept a beautiful sea creature across my fingers...

I like it! It looks fine EXCEPT FOR THE HORRIBLE BLEEDING SHARPIE FACE D: Don't use Sharpie for small details, okay guys. I must be out of the loop because I tried it anyway. SIGH! I still like them though, they're cuties, even if they do look unbearably sad.

Anyway, I think the inlinkz is so old I'm really only advertising for everyone else but they deserve the attention, they did amazingly <3

NCC December #1: Inspired by Art (Monet)

Oh god, I was really tempted to not post this. I didn't bother watermarking this mess anyway. I googled "art" and went through what came up which included the usual (Mona Lisa, Van Gogh...) and also Monet.

That looked easy enough, right? Some gradient sponging...?

Sure.

I started with Julep Marisa, then sponged on Julep Nessa but that wasn't working, so I picked up Zoya Solange (Pixie Dust) because it needed to be opaque if nothing else! Definitely opaque. I continued on that stream with Destiny and Beatrix.

I used black acrylic paint to try to get the uh... cathedral or whatever on there...

Bah. I tried though.

The Pokemon Nail Challenge #11: Psychic

You must have guessed by my personality that my absolute favourite psychic Pokemon is going to be the adorable little Mew. I mean, seriously.

I did a simple design this time, over China Glaze Glitter All The Way with white acrylic paint. CG GAtW honestly reminded me of static, and the purple glitter makes it perfect for Pokemon psychic type.

What do you think? How did I do? I WILL CATCH UP I SWEAR.

NailPolishCanada.com Winter Nail Art Contest #1: Snow!

WELP, I THOUGHT THIS WAS DUE DECEMBER SIXTH, and it was actually for the first. Fail, Sharra.

Here it is anyway, and I'm out of the running for the big prize at the end... I guess there wasn't much of a chance anyway, but the hope is nice, right?

Okay so I started with ILNP Cygnus Loop, and the shift reminded me of the sky the night before it begins to snow.

To start, have a horribly coloured picture so you know what I deal with when trying to take photos with my little blackberry. It wouldn't colour correct at first...

Ah, there it is. You can see the shift quite nicely. I did evenly spaced dots using white acrylic paint. A nice simple design.

What do you think?

Check everyone else out, and leave your vote for the best one. You have until Wednesday.Vote for me next week, hopefully that will come soon and on deadline. SIGH.