Baroque Nails

Hi everyone! Today I have a nail design that I've been meaning to try out for a while, baroque nails! I love love love the way these turned out, they look so elegant. With a different colour scheme, baroque patterned nails can look gothic and gorgeous, but mine ended up a little dainty.

For a base I used two coats of Zoya Caitlin, a dusty purple colour that I love using in nail art. I did the pattern with a teeny tiny nail art brush and Quo by ORLY Filthy Rich.

Are you loving this as much as I am? I just looked at some inspiration photos on google and freehanded the design. It wasn't as complicated as it looks!

Simply gorgeous! I think these are something I will definitely try again in another colour. What colour scheme would you suggest?

CrowsToes Cheshire Jelly Sandwich

Good morning, everyone! I showed you CrowsToes Cheshire a little while ago and I knew that I wanted to turn it into a jelly sandwich immediately. I love the look of laying a jelly polish over a glitter because it makes the glitter look like it's trapped under a layer of ice or something and it really softens that look.

For this look, I first put down two coats of my favourite white polish, OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. Next, I layered on one coat of CrowsToes Cheshire. To finish off the jelly sandwich effect, I used two coats of OPI Don't Touch My Tutu!

Here's a close up shot of this manicure for you. My only wish is that I had more of the gold glitter on my finger nails. What are your favourite polishes to do jelly sandwiches with?

Neutral and Teal Glequins

Happy Monday, everyone! If you've been reading my blog for a while, you probably know that I am in love with glequins. You will also probably know that I'm not the best at applying them. There are some bloggers who manage to get a perfect honeycomb design with theirs, but I am still not one of them. That said, I hope you enjoy today's neutral nails with teal glequins!

I used two coats of OPI Berlin There Done That from the lovely Germany collection. This colour is a definite favourite of mine. I then used a dotting tool to apply teal glequins from Born Pretty Store.

Well, these definitely aren't some of my best nails due to the somewhat awkward glequin placement. Fortunately, the colour combination is lovely!

Thanks for reading!

Valentine's Day Manicure

Hi everyone! Happy Valentine's Day to all of you. Do you have any big plans? Dan has a midterm quite early tomorrow so we don't even have a Skype date planned, but that's fine by me because he flies out to Montreal in less than 24 hours!
As I was doing my nails last night, the tip of one on my middle finger on my swatching hand broke off completely on one side, and I was forced to file my nails down into nubbins. This is the shortest I've had my nails in probably a couple of years. I'm still not used to the length, but I would like to hear what you all think of them!

I wasn't feeling any nail art so I opted for a (not so subtle) ombre manicure topped with OPI's The Man With the Golden Gun topcoat. The colours I used from left to right are OPI My Very First Knockwurst, OPI Pink Friday, OPI If You Moust You Moust, OPI The Thrill of Brazil, and OPI Skyfall.

Look at those tiny nails, you can see my finger tips peeking out! This is so new to me!

I actually have a couple posts queued up for the next week since I don't want to be spending time focusing on my nails and blog while Daniel's here visiting, so you'll see my (longer) nails again, while I get used to these puppies.

Valentine's Skittles

Hi everyone! Today I have some pretty skittles nail art that I put together for a nail art contest over at Sincerely Stephanie! Skittles nails means that each nail is a different colour or pattern or design, and they usually have a theme that ties them all together. When I designed these I was thinking of Valentine's Day since it's on Thursday!

So, the nail with the bumble bee on it is because I want you all to BEE MINE, VALENTINES! 

You guys should definitely pay a visit to the awesome blog that's holding this contest, wish me luck!

Black, White, and Pink

Hi guys! Today I have some bold black and white nail art with pink accent nails. I really love combining a bright colour with black and white, it's the simplest type of colour-blocking and it all goes well together.

Unfortunately, upon application of topcoat I had some minor smearing. The colours I used were OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress, and OPI If You Moust You Moust.

What do you think of this look? What's the next colour I should combine with black and white? I was thinking a sage green maybe..or a baby blue.

Bright Little Flowers

Hey guys! I hope you're all doing well! Today I have a pattern that I adapted from The Illustrated Nail. I can't find the original post, but here's a picture. Can you see which nail I chose to recreate? It would be fun to do a Nail Art Challenge just recreating some of her designs!

I used a base of OPI Did It On 'Em, then my go-to black and white polishes for the flowers - Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. I like these, they weren't difficult or time consuming at all.

Not much time left until Daniel makes his first trip out to Montreal to visit me! I should start working on some posts to queue up during that time. Any ideas?

Thanks so much for reading!

Pastel Stripes

Hola a todos! Today I have a pretty simple design to show you all, it's just some simple colourblock-esque stripes on a pretty neutral base. Mixing nude colours with neons has been in style lately, but I'm predicting that neutrals and pastels will be big soon because they make a lovely combination.

I suppose if I had used tape this manicure would have sharper lines, but that takes forever and I was lazy when I set out to do this. I think this is probably a look that I'll try again with different colours, maybe add some jazzing up to the stripes too.

The base was OPI Did You 'Ear About Van Gogh, and the stripes were OPI Thanks a Windmillion, OPI Pink Friday, OPI A Grape Fit!, China Glaze Secret Periwinkle, and Illamasqua Load.

What do you think about this colour scheme?

Leopard Print Gradient

Hi everyone! Today I have a leopard print gradient on the blog for you to enjoy. I wish I had practiced my freehand leopard spots a little more before embarking on this manicure! A couple of them turned out looking like hearts, which I guess is pretty cute.

I did a gradient with China Glaze Happy Go Lucky and Zoya Arizona, then finished off the look with Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress.

I can't get enough of gradients lately, I'm just having trouble thinking of what to put over top of them.

One day, with any luck, I will master freehand leopard prints.

Super Bowl XLVII Manicure

Hi everyone! I bet many of you are really excited about the Super Bowl tonight! As a Canadian, I follow the CFL and am a pretty big fan of the Calgary Stampeders, so I can't say I'm too concerned about tonight's event. Llarowe decided to host a Super Bowl themed manicure contest to celebrate the big game, and while I can't say I know anything about the two teams facing off tonight, I worked my butt off to create two manicures to submit to her contest! I think she'll judge them either tonight or tomorrow - fingers crossed!

So here is my first of two manicures for the Ravens! Part of Llarowe's rules were that we could ONLY use team colours, making this extra hard. My original idea was to draw a football field and have a bunch of ravens (the birds) in Ravens jerseys, but that didn't work out.

The colours I used were OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, OPI Funky Dunkey, Quo by ORLY Filthy Rich, and Quo by ORLY Little Black Dress.

The ring finger here is supposed to be the eyes in the old logo, as seen in this picture. This manicure was my favourite of the two I did and for that reason I'm saying Go Ravens tonight!

Leah Ann was sweet enough to let us each have two entries, one for each team! I knew I had to take advantage of that offer so I called in the help of my boyfriend Dan for a 49ers manicure. This one was SO HARD TO DO because Leah Ann listed only Red, Gold, and White as the team's colours. It is so difficult to not use black! The colours I ended up using were OPI Thrill of Brazil, Quo by ORLY Filthy Rich, and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.

So my index finger is a candlestick, get it? Candlestick Park? My boyfriend came up with that one, I never would have known that. My favourite nail is the one with the helmet - so cute! Not sure how I feel about my attempts at the logo, I'm surprised at how much harder a text based logo is to translate to nail art than a picture logo.

A close up of my sweet little football helmet! I'll definitely take note of this for the CFL season so I can rep my Stamps!

Is anyone doing something fun for the Super Bowl tonight? Do any of you have NFL-themed manicures to celebrate?

Wish me luck in this contest! ;)

EDIT: No prizes for me :( Dang, I already had plans for my new Girly Bits & CrowsToes polishes! :P

OPI Get Your Number

Hi everyone! Included in my package of Euro Centrales that I received to review was a straggler from the Mariah Carey collection. I thought about going and editing my original post and adding it in there, but I figured that it wouldn't get seen much that way and maybe someone out there is still on the fence about purchasing.

I used three coats of Get Your Number and allowed it to dry for about 30 minutes. The Liquid Sand polishes are interesting in that they take quite a bit of time for the full effect to be present. They dry to the touch fairly quickly but if you photograph them early you can tell that they're not completely dry.

Out of the three Liquid Sand polishes that I tried, this one was the smoothest feeling on the nail. I really love the holographic circle glitters throughout the bottle.

Here's a bit of a blurry picture to help show the holographic effect in Get Your Number!

After two coats of OPI Top Coat, this is what Get Your Number had become. Please excuse the odd reflections coming from my window, my swatching situation is less than ideal currently. I much prefer this polish without topcoat, but then again, I'm a sucker for the Liquid Sand effect.

Did you pick up any Liquid Sands? What about some of the other colours from the Mariah Carey collection?

OPI Anti-Bleak vs. OPI No Spain No Gain

Hi everyone! Today I have a little comparison post that has just been sitting around in my "to post" folder and I'm not sure why it never made its way onto my blog! I know how much you guys appreciate comparison posts and I think you'll love this one because these polishes are quite close.

See what I mean when I say they're similar? On the left is OPI Anti-Bleak from the Mariah Carey collaboration that hit stores in January. On the left is an old favourite of mine, OPI No Spain No Gain. 

On my index and ring fingers I am wearing OPI Anti-Bleak and my middle and pinky fingers have OPI No Spain No Gain. As you can see, OPI Anti-Bleak seems to be just a tad darker with maybe a touch of plum, while No Spain No Gain leans a little more toward the fuchsia end of the spectrum.

As you can see, these two polishes are not dupes, but do you really need both in your collection? Both of them have awesome formulas so if you're not a big berry person I would pick up one or the other.

I hope this has helped you in deciding whether or not you'll pick up Anti-Bleak from the Mariah Carey collection!