Swatch: ILNP Luna Nail Art

Hi guys! So I'm still going through my selections from the ILNP ultrachrome flakies and I thought I'd do something more fun than just a standard swatch! So I did a little chevron nail art for you using tape.

For the base I used two coats of Essie Lapis of Luxury, its a sheer periwinkle creme that looks really pretty on my pinkish pale skintone (at least I think so) I have it swatched here with Rainbow Honey Papillion if you want to see it. I used two coats of OPI Alpine Snow for the accent nail base as well.

I used pre-cut chevron tapes that I found at a dollar store to make the chevron pattern and then I sponged Luna on top. It took about 3 sponged coats to get it opaque, but as you can kinda tell in the pictures, some of them got more coats than others. Next time I'd probably use 4 coats. I sponged it on because I wanted to get the flakes without the thickness of the clear base.

So Luna's shift is turquoise - blue - purple - fuchsia - orangey - yellow at the extremes. I found that it stays as a pinky purple in all lighting conditions and shifts either in the yellowy direction or in the turquoise direction depending on the light. Both are equally gorgeous, this polish just loves any and all lighting conditions.

Luna is probably the most "me" of all the flakies I bought. I love purples and this one is so unique to me. And the name reminds me of Sailor Moon!! :) I love how versatile these are. I think I've said that 3 times now, but its true!! They can be glitter toppers, solid colors or sponged on for nail art!

 

Tiff's Guest Post Series: Poppy Nail Art for Remembrance Day

Hi guys, so here in Canada we are celebrating Remembrance Day tomorrow and I wanted to do some nail art featuring poppies.

In case you don't know, we wear poppies because of the famous poem "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae. John McCrae was an artist, poet, surgeon and soldier in the First World War. And he was Canadian. According to popular folk lore,  McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields" while sitting on the back of a medical field ambulance after presiding over his friend Lieutenant Alex Helmer's funeral. Poppies were abundant in the fields of Ypres. McCrae died of pneumonia in 1918 ten months before the end of the war.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow


Between the crosses, row on row,


That mark our place; and in the sky


The larks, still bravely singing, fly


Scarce heard amid the guns below.



We are the Dead. Short days ago


We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,


Loved and were loved, and now we lie


In Flanders fields.



Take up our quarrel with the foe:


To you from failing hands we throw


The torch; be yours to hold it high.


If ye break faith with us who die


We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

So I grew up hearing this poem read every year and I know the words almost by heart. I always get a little emotional reading it. If you're curious about John McCrae and his poem, all the information I wrote about was from Wikipedia and there is more there if you're interested.

Ok on to the nail art. I've seen a lot of poppy nail art before, but there was two really looked at as inspiration: Will Paint Nails for Food Freehand Poppies (here) and Set in Lacquer Popping Up With Poppies (here).

So I started with 3 coats of OPI My Vampire is Buff. This one has been a lemming of mine for a while now and I am really excited to finally get my hands on it. I will have it swatched alone sometime this week. I did the poppies using polish mixed with acetone to give it a water-coloured look. The poppies are primarily Sephora Cherry Popsicle (swatched here), with Sephora Dangerous (swatched here) as a shader. The stems and greenery was China Glaze Exotic Encounters. I used Essie's Matte About You as the matte top coat. There's a step by step at the end!!

Check out my new friend!!

Its actually a fly! Not a bee! You can tell because it has 2 wings, not 4
and the antenna are aristate (wrong shape for a bee) 

This is a poppy husk! Find one and shake it all over your garden
 and you'll have poppies galore the next spring!

1. Draw general poppy-ish shapes in red, water-colour with acetone for easy shading
2. Add stems to each poppy and then fill in gaps with grass and leaves
3. Add shading to each poppy using a darker red (try to make each unique!) and add oval black dots for centres
4. Add tiny white dots to black centres (1-2 each) to add shine and pop!

I hope you guys have a good Remembrance Day if you celebrate it, and take a minute to remember the people who have sacrificed for our countries.

Halloween came and went!

I love Halloween. You may not believe me after all of Tiff's takeover but I have been waiting for ten months this year for Halloween so I am definitely sharing my costume (which included nails) with you guys.

Last Christmas, my wonderful boyfriend got me the greatest present ever: necomimi brainwave cat ears. I wore them for three weeks straight until the motor messed up, and then we sent them back for warranty coverage and got a new pair which have worked perfectly since then.

So obviously, cat.

To start my nails, I put down Essie Licorice and went to bed. I wore that by itself a whole day because my next step was taping and I hate taping. My polish is never dry enough. I figured after an entire day I couldn't go wrong! (I was right, it was at least dry enough :D).

I gathered my supplies the next night: striping tape, tweezers, nail clippers (to cut up striping tape) and set to work.

Last time I tried making pointy claws (years ago, pre-blog), I did black around the sharpened points. This time I wanted the outer parts of my nail to blend in with my fingers more, and give the illusion of sharp talons without any filing involved. I used China Glaze Dress Me Up and carefully applied it around the edges.

Next, I took Gosh Holographic Hero and painted the middle. Because I wanted a black outline around the claw, I left a bit of black near the cuticle and hoped it would be the right thickness.

After that, I used tweezers to pick off the tape and VOILA!

For anyone who wants to try this, a tip: try to pull off one piece of tape at a time, otherwise at the thinnest point the polish will lift with the tape.

I am so happy with the way this came out, and from afar it gave exactly the effect I wanted.

(If anyone wants more pictures of my costume, I flooded my instagram...)

I love Halloween! Tell me about yours and show me your costumes!

Tiff's Guest Blog Series: Magnetic Polish Throwback

Helllllooo everyone! So do you guys remember the magnetic polish trend that went wild in the Fall of 2012?? Did anyone else jump on that trend train? Well I was going through my polishes the other day, looking for a pretty berry color and remembered my Sally Hansen Magnetics "Red-y Response". As much as I LOVED the colour, I didn't really like the "wave" magnetic that came with it. I thought the wave was kind of meh... Anyways I remembered I had the Essie Repstyle "Lil Boa Peep" polish as well, which was a light metallic taupe that came with a snakeskin magnetic. So I thought it would be kind of fun to swap the magnetics and revisit this pretty awesome trend!

Is this cool or what?!? Man I really like how it turned out!! As far as application went, this isn't the easiest thing ever, but its not too difficult to do with a little practice. I found that putting on a thick second coat, getting the magnet over the nail right away and quickly rocking the magnetic back and forth to get the pattern all the way from side to side, were all really really important. Also if you totally botch a nail, you can always let it dry and then paint and magnet a third coat. You can kind of see a bit of tip wear on my middle finger in the first picture. I took these pictures 24 hours after painting (with topcoat), so ya... the wear time on this polish (as well as the Essie magnetic one) is not great. That's probably the biggest downside with this polish, unfortunately. Anyways, I'm not very good at doing nail art with my left hand, so I really like that this was easy to do and actually turned out better using my left hand than my right!! Hahah. Hope you guys pull out your magnetic polishes and rock it this fall!

Nail Polish Canada Halloween 2014 Nail Art Contest :D

FINALLY some nail art! I have been so unmotivated lately and BUSY too. Currently working three jobs actually (all part time) but luckily none of them really has rules against outrageous nail colours...

On that note, this is actually one of the least outrageous designs I've tried.

First things first, my friend gave me Julep's Oxygen basecoat which I've been using a little bit. My nails do feel smoother and look better btw... Maybe I'll do a bit of a review later.

Anyway, I have to get this post up hence why it's being posted ASAP.

Okay, I started with the basecoat and then my plan was to matte the nails and use shiny topcoat to draw some spiderwebs and well... that didn't work. So anyway, here's my almost nude nails in case anyone was curious. (WarPaint Mattify)

I have been totally enamoured of "negative space" manicures and I really wanted to do something like that. After trying the shiny topcoat thing and failing, I wished I had something shiny but nearly invisible to mimic spider silk in the light and then I remembered I have rainbows in a bottle. I used the Gosh Holographic Hero.

I used one of my bornprettystore.com brushes. The lines aren't very thin but this design is subtle.

Except of course the little buddy one my thumbs, using Essie Licorice.

Teehee. I don't mind it. Won't win me anything but you can check out the entries here and vote for your favourite <3

At the suggestion of Kate from Fishing 4 Beauty I added this to a Halloween link up! Check it out for some ideas on spooky manicures!

Tiff's Guest Blog Series: Fifth Post

Hi everyone! I’m back with my guest post series! The last polish I have to show you that Sharra gave me is Rainbow Honey’s “Papillion”. This one is from the Midnight Garden Collection. It is a glitter topcoat with a mix of pink and purple holographic glitters and big pink holographic butterflies. There is also a micro-glitter that looks maybe holographic in the bottle?? I’ll confirm that further down.

For the base color I chose a light periwinkle blue from Essie called “Lapis of Luxury”. This one is fairly sheer actually (I forgot it’s sheer before I put it on). I ended up using two coats (the second very thick) to get it opaque enough to be a good base color. I believe this color is always available from Essie so I think you can get it at most drug stores. I really like it, its kind of airy, light and feminine because it’s sheer. 

So I’m kind of in love with this combination. I didn’t want to take it off! I’m still unsure if the micro-glitter was holographic or not because the sun disappeared. Sorry. The last picture shows the colour the most accurately (my camera struggles in low lighting).  Application was a breeze, the glitter spread evenly and it was not difficult to fish out the butterflies. "Papillion" is still available on Rainbow Honey’s website if you like it as much as I do! 

Swatch: Essie Licorice + Nfu Oh 51

OH SHARRA'S BACK. For a couple posts anyway, I couldn't put off posting when I have pics of my own forever but Tiff is having a blast and I don't think she's going to stop soon =3 I am going to tell you here it is pretty great to have a nail friend so close. There has already been a swap where I offloaded my doubles and got some awesome polish in return, one of which is featured today.

For the last seven years (you read that right) I have relied on a single black to sustain me, Revlon Blackest Black and recently (as of two years ago?) Essence Black is Back. Tiff generously provided me a replacement in the form of Essie Licorice and oh my the formula is divine. I used two coats and it went on like butter! (Haha, speaking of butters, Tiff nabbed mine to try at home, hopefully we'll see that pop up soon!)

Not much to these photos of course, just your basic black.

I can't leave you with just that after leaving the Blahg alone for so long though, so I'm going to show you one of the polishes Tiff let me borrow. Check this out!

This is Nfu Oh 51, a multichrome flakie in a purple jelly base. Over black, it looks a lot like Essie Shine of the Times (though admittedly weaker).

I think part of the appeal of this polish is the gorgeously elaborate bottle. Not gonna lie, I definitely want it. If anyone empties one of these and wants to send me the bottle I would be totally happy to find another use for it.

Beautiful.

In obvious news, it's Halloween pretty soon and that means some contests! Send me ideas! Show me your nails! The Facebook Page is always yearning for pretty photos!

Tell me how your life is!