Faux Prada Nails

Good morning everyone! Last week my dad was reading the paper in the morning as usual and he pulled out a section for me talking about nail art! The Calgary Herald featured a manicure from Prada's Fall/Winter 2012 look that I tried to recreate. I'm thinking of sending an email to the author of the article and offering to do a tutorial for the website or something - I wonder if there's any interest in that.

 I know I don't have the same almond nails as the model so mine looks a little different, personally I like it better but that's probably because I'm accustomed to square nails.

 I used quite a few colours to recreate this look: OPI Did You 'Ear About Van Gogh, OPI Funky Dunkey, OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, OPI Red Lights Ahead...Where?, OPI Ski Teal We Drop, OPI Call Me Gwen-ever mixed with China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, and Quo by ORLY Filthy Rich.

 

I surprised myself with quite liking how this turned out, and it honestly wasn't that hard to do.

 

Where do you often get inspiration for your manicures?

Braided Nails

Hello everyone! This is a scheduled post because I am off to the Okanagan this weekend with one of my very best friends. The weather looks great so I hope to enjoy a couple days at the beach before the upcoming thing starting August 1st, do you know what I'm alluding to yet? I've been seeing this trend around and I keep seeing it named incorrectly - why would it be called a Fishtail Manicure when a fishtail braid uses two strands of hair, so it would make sense to use only two colours - maybe I'm just pedantic.

 

What do you think of the watermark? I'm getting the hang of it!

 

The colours I used for this manicure were OPI Do You Lilac It?, OPI Fly, and China Glaze Happy Go Lucky.

 

I really like this look - it was fun to do and I think there are a tonne of colour combinations begging to be experimented with.

Have you done a braided/fishtail mani? What do you think of the double accent nail trend?

Fancy Tape Manicure

Hey everyone! Sorry once again for my absence, I'm prepping for something pretty big coming up here on the blog starting on August 1st, and I figured that before I undertake this challenge of sorts I should figure out a watermark, so here I am experimenting in these photos!

I recently came across an entire bucket of craft scissors that I thought my mom had long thrown out, and I knew that I wanted to do a tape mani with them.

 This is Zoya Megan, Zoya Tracie, and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.

 I didn't really plan for them to match up like what ended up happening on my pinky, it gives a more put together look but I like both of them.

These are the scissors I used, the pattern is called Victorian.

What do you think of my fun and fancy tape mani? Do you have any guesses as to what kind of project I'm going to be undertaking this August on the blog? :)

Essie Mojito Madness

Good morning! The other day I found a giftcard to a drugstore that my Great Uncle had given me a few years ago, and having never used it, I ran up and browsed around. They had a pretty good selection of Essies, but Mojito Madness was the only one I picked up. I had terrible application problems, but as I have mentioned the weather here has been off and I'm usually never one to experience bad bubbling.

 

Eugh, bubbling in green polish just reminds me of those bumps on pickles. :(

 

The colour is gorgeous, so I will try it again when the weather here is back to normal.

Did you pick up any of the shades from Essie's latest collections?

Back to Nubs

Hi everyone! In yesterday's post you probably saw a drastic change in my nail shape. Unfortunately a chip of my nail broke off and I have no idea how, so today I have a couple of pictures to show you, to mourn my long nails.

Here are my nails before, you can see the strange diagonal chip on my middle finger. I'm lucky it wasn't a worse break, but it sure was a shame that this happened on my swatching hand. My hands and nails are all greasy because I've been using Lush Lemony Flutter Cuticle Butter recently, and I really like it. I must have just applied it in this photo.

Here are my new nubs! I know for some people these are still considered pretty long, but they're shorter than what I'm used to!

What's your go to solution when you break a nail? Do you file the rest down to match? Get a fake tip or a fill?

Colombian Independence Nails

Hello everyone! Happy July 20th, today is the 202nd anniversary of Colombia's independence and I have some tricolor nails to celebrate. I myself am not Colombian, but as you may be aware my major (and extracurricular obsession) is Spanish Literature and Culture, and my boyfriend Daniel was born in Bogotá.

 

The flag of Colombia has a stripe of yellow on the top which takes up half of the flag, so I used China Glaze Happy Go Lucky to paint two of my nails. The yellow of the flag is said to represent the riches of Colombia. The next colour is blue, OPI Dating a Royal, which takes up one quarter of the flag in another stripe, the blue represents the seas on the coasts. Colombia borders both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The bottom stripe is red and it represents " the blood spilled on the battlegrounds by the heroes who gained Colombia's freedom" (source), to complete the flag on my nails I used China Glaze Hey Sailor!

Here is today's Google Doodle on Google Colombia.

For my nails to look like the flag, this photo should be rotated 180 degrees, but I wanted to show off my boyfriend's key chain that he placed on my car keys.

Speaking of the polish, I seem to have had some bubbling problems with China Glaze Happy Go Lucky. Calgary has been somewhat humid lately (humid as far as the prairies go) and I've been noticing bubbling in a few of my lacquers, so I would take that with a grain of salt.

Stampede Nails

Howdy everyone! Today I have some hometown nails to show you in honour of the Calgary Stampede - a ten day long rodeo, festival, and excuse to dress up like cowboys and drink all day. I couldn't decide what to do so I did the Stampede logo on an accent nail, and tried to do a plaid pattern on the rest of my nails.

The colours I used for this mani were OPI The Thrill of Brazil, China Glaze Secret Peri-wink-le, Quo by ORLY Filthy Rich, and Art Deco stripers in black and white.

Here I am posting with a belt buckle from 30 years ago - the 1982 Calgary Stampede.

Here's a photo of the midway that I took at the Stampede this year!

Thanks for reading!

Ruffle Nails

Good evening everyone! Today I have a look to show you that I've seen on a number of blogs recently - a ruffle manicure! If you're interested in trying this yourself you should check out Sarah from Chalkboard Nails' tutorial, it's a simple process with really cool results.

The colours I used were OPI Skull & Glossbones, OPI Alpine Snow, China Glaze Liquid Leather, and China Glaze Secret Peri-wink-le.

I wish I had been a little more patient to perfect this look - but from a distance the small mistakes aren't very noticeable.

This is definitely a manicure I want to try again, you could do endless colour combinations.

Something else I wanted to mention - you may have noticed how dry my cuticles have been since moving back home. Unfortunately for my nails, the prairies are dry and ruthless compared to the sweet St Laurence air of Montreal, but I recently picked up some Lush Lemony Flutter and hope to be back on track! 

Do you have any experience with this product?

OPI A Grape Fit

Hey everyone! Today I have a polish that I hear talked about quite often - I know it's a favourite for nail art and it's one I've never really seen as necessary to my stash, but I picked it up the other day just for kicks!

I used two coats of this polish for opacity. The first coat was a little watery but everything was perfect after a second one.

Maybe it's because I've never been a huge purple fan, but this polish is a little boring to me!

Here it is in the shade, sorry about the minor tipwear!

Have you ever heard a lot about a polish, only to buy it and be less than thrilled?

Pink Skittles

Good evening everyone! I hope you've had a fun weekend, I sure have! Today I have some pink skittles to show you. I recently bought OPI Mod About You after hearing about it for so long, and the buzz was right, it is the perfect baby pink! After wearing it as a plain mani for a few days I opted to spice things up, take a look!

I used one coat of Ozotic 509 on my index finger to make a holo pink, unfortunately it wasn't sunny enough to show this off. I used OPI Alpine Snow for the polka dots and for the zebra stripes using Konad plate m57. Finally I sponged OPI Teenage Dream onto my ring finger to complete the look.

Honestly I kind of wish I had left this mani alone, the colour is pretty enough to stand by itself. 

Lace Nails

Good morning everyone! Today I have some delicate lace nails that I did to match an outfit I wore out to dinner with my boyfriend last week. I took inspiration from this photo and executed my design using Konad plate m57. I used OPI Did You 'Ear About Van Gogh for the base and Konad Special Polish in white to stamp.

My stamping was far from precise with this manicure, honestly I was in a little bit of a rush.

The OPI polish matched my shoes almost perfectly!

Here's a bonus picture of Daniel and I. You can't see my dress really well here but it's off white and lacey, and my shoes are nude pumps.

Thanks for reading!

Framed Nail Fail

So yesterday I showed you guys China Glaze's Flip Flop Fantasy, a super bright neon pink. I wanted to spice up the mani a bit and decided to try doing a framed mani. Although it's not a look I'm particularly fond of I thought it'd be a good experience. 

I used Zoya Arizona because it's a super bright and creamy orange, but it just looked murkey on top of the neon China Glaze, which was kind of upsetting. 

Not really too fond of this manicure.

Eh, I'm not thrilled. Have you tried framed nails? Do you like this look?

Flip Flop Fantasy

Hi everyone! I have an exciting post for you all today - my first experience with a neon polish! I picked up two colours from the China Glaze Summer Neons and this one came as a recommendation from my friend Meghan who had a pedicure with it. Flip Flop Fantasy is the brightest light pink with a big of a coral feeling that I've ever laid eyes on, it is beautiful, it is unreal.

As with most neons this dries to a matte finish so you should use topcoat for extra shine. I didnt.

Can you see how bright this is? I could not stop staring at my hands.

My first experience with neon polish was so much fun, and the best part was that I didn't even need to layer this over white. Three coats of Flip Flop Fantasy gave me perfect coverage!

Do you like neons for the summertime? What are some of your favourites?

Chevron Nail Art

Good morning everyone! I have a mani that I did last week, I don't think I left it on for more than a couple hours because I didn't like the way the colours worked together on the nail, the way I imagined it after seeing the bottles together was much better.

In the shade!

It's too bad that Zoya Ashley isn't opaque enough and I got those funny lines.

The colours I used are Quo by ORLY Filthy Rich, Zoya Ashley, China Glaze Papaya Punch, China Glaze Four Leaf Clover, and China Glaze Secret Peri-wink-le.