Metallic Crackle Gradient

Hello!
I sometimes find it hard to leave trends in the past. I bought these crackle polishes when they were cool, and dangit Bobby, I will continue to use them, at least occasionally.

Attempting to come up with different ways to use them, I painted this stripe/gradient sort of look over silver :)

Super easy to create, and nice to look at!

The base is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in #220 Celeb City. Your standard silver foily polish. Over top of that, three OPI crackles--Red Shatter, Black Shatter, and Turquoise Shatter. I presume you won't need my usual parenthetical explanations of which is which. I just swiped these on side to side, trying to vary the heights of each line (most noticeably on the thumb). Easy-peasy! It's topped with two coats of Seche Vite for smoothness and shine.

I think one could make some pretty cool designs to represent their country, sports team, etc if you had the right crackle colours :D

Thanks for stopping by today! Enjoy the rest of your week xoxo

Alphabet Challenge: S is for... Swirly, Starry Spectrum

Good day my lovelies! I have been such a naughty blogger lately. I'm up to V on my fingertips and am only just now showing you S! Perhpas this week will be a flurry of updates. Maybe.

(I wish I could do daily updates, and get samples from nail polish companies, and be one of those cool nail bloggers in the cool nail blogger circle. But I just can't >.< )

ANYWAY! Letter S, and this happened to coincide nicely with the arrival of a new nail product I had never tried before--foils! I have watched the very talented Robin Moses demonstrate her methods for using nail foils in loads of her videos, and finally gave in to the temptation to order some. I have watched her so often that I was eager to put her techniques to the test, and I think it came out pretty nicely for my first try at it!

SO SPARKLY

Pretty!

I started with a base of Spectrum, from the Sally Hansen HD line. A yummy sparkly turquoise/teal blue-to-pinkish duochrome, this is sheer (great for layering!) or builds up nicely alone. This is three medium-ish coats. (Afterwards I tested on a nail wheel, and one coat of this over OPI Can't Find My Czechbook looks just the same. May do that next time to save polish!) Here is what it looks like alone:

I love how shiny and sparkly it is, and that strong pink flash is <3

Once that was dry, I poured out a wee bit of the nail foil glue from dollarnailart.com, added a few drops of water to thin it down (Robin recommends this so it's easier to work with, and doesn't get all gloppy or peel off), and used it to paint on some stars and swirls with my detail brush. I acquired a decent striping brush like... two days after I did this design. Wish I had waited, as the lines could have been thinner. Oh well.

The glue goes on sort of a milky-blue-white, but dries clear and very sticky. I then took the foil called Silver Dots, from the same retailer, and pressed it gently over the nail. It sticks to all the areas where the glue was applied. It looks so pretty over the blue! Waited about half an hour and then topcoated with a slow-drying clear coat from Nailene to protect it.

Fast-dry topcoats are what I use 99% of the time, but they can cause foils to crinkle up and look all meh. They do react a little bit to any topcoat, but slow-drying ones are easier on it. As long as you can sit still for ages and not smudge it. I am so spoiled on these quick-dry ones, I swear. That was by far the hardest part--the waiting!

After topcoat. Apologies for the kinda weird angle. This was so shiny it was hard to find an angle where you could actually see the design!

Verdict: nail foils are reeeeeeeeally cool! Especially if you're willing to practice a bit to get the feel of how they work and master it (I am) and are into super shiny bling (I so totally flippin' am). Can't wait to play more with these!

Thanks for stopping by :D see you next time! xoxo

Alphabet Challenge: Q is for... Quirky Turquoise Queen

Hello, QTs! :D  Before I jump into the post, I want to say thanks to everyone who enjoys my blog and visits regularly--I just hit 10,000 pageviews today!

I may or may not have actually done this dance.

This blog is really just my little hobby, and if I hadn't a single follower I'd still be quite content with it. However, I'm really happy that so many of you like to see what my fingertips are up to! I hope you continue to enjoy it... here's to 10,000 more :D

I also tweaked the layout of the place a little; hope it's more comfortable to read now and the sidebar looks better. ^_^

Right then! On to the next letter and next manicure. The letter is Q, and here's what I came up with:

Well, isn't this quaint?

The only two polishes I have with the letter Q are China Glaze Turned-Up Turquoise (Neon), and OPI Turquoise Shatter. I actually love the combination of the two. In some lights it really stands out, and then in direct light they kind of blend together and look more marbley (see the small finger in this pic, or all fingers in the next). Both have a shimmery finish, the shatter polish slightly more so.

With flash, the contrast is more subtle.

I first laid out the base with white acrylic paint and a small brush, so I could get that cutout-triangle look just right + so the neon base colour would be really bright and fabulous. Two coats of Turned-Up and then when that was extra super dry, I dabbed on the shatter in a sort of thick coat so it would produce the large cracks you see. (Thin coats make for finer, more delicate, weblike lines.)

The neon pink studs and light pink hexagon glitters are both from Born Pretty Store (surprise surprise, right?), and I adhered them along the edge of the cutout with some regular clear polish before sealing it all in with Seche Vite. Placing was a little tricky but well worth it. I haven't worn anything super-funky in a while, so this is great!

And, in the sun is where the sparkling glitters steal the show!

As a final bonus, after I'd had this on for a few days and was about to take it off, my friend said I should have incorporated Freddie from Queen! I think he was joking, but I was like OH DAMN THAT IS A SPECTACULAR IDEA MY FRIEND and busted out the black paint and went for it:

The most fabulous my nails ever have been and ever will be. Inspiration is his classic pose, reference pic is here. Thanks for the great idea, Craig!

Annnnnd then I couldn't bear to take them off for another two days, so I am rocking some serious tipwear, but I don't even care. (You could say I'm not Under Pressure to take them off >.>)

So thus concludes my Q-post and my yay-10,000-views-post :D Stay tuned til next time, sexy people! xoxo

Alphabet Challenge: C is for...

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the third installation of the Alphabet Challenge! For those of you who know your letters and can count, you'll have worked out that today is the letter C! I was going away for the week at the time, so I wanted something relatively simple and (hopefully) durable. Here is what I ended up with:

These were so blingy and disco-ball-ish :D

They didn't wear as well as I'd hoped they would, but they were quite pretty! I used Essence Colour & Go in Choose Me! for the base. Oh my goodness, these photos do not do it justice. It's an absolutely beautiful shimmery glassflecky turquoise polish that is not as visibly thin near the tips as it appears here in these close-up shots.

The glitters are the clear large loose hex glitters from Born Pretty Store (can be found here; it's part of a set of 12 colours). Yes, clear. Because 'clear' starts with C. *nods* They look silver in this photo, and in some lighting situations they were, but mostly they were that translucent pretty clear-ish type. I used an orange stick to pick them up and place them on the nail while the base polish was still wet. Finally, sealed in with two coats of Orly Sec 'N Dry topcoat.

With flash, you can see the clear-ness of the glitters better, as well as that beautiful shimmer of Choose Me! The primary colour is turquoise/teal, but there are kelly-green and gold flashes at times also! Just stunning.

Excuse the tipwear here :) this was after a few days, but I still loved the pic so I wanted to post it as well.

Hope you enjoyed this simple but blingy look. See you next time. You want the D? I'll give you the D ;)  xoxo

Yellow & Teal Spring Flowers

Hooray! It's *finally* starting to actually feel like spring around here. Been rainy and grey for too long, but today was sunshiney and lovely! I like to think that, similar to a rain dance, this bright manicure I did last night summoned the sun. Behold:

I love yellow and teal/turquoise together :D Indoors with flash.

Isn't it just... happy? :D

Base colour is by the brand Confetti, and is called Margarita Señorita. Three thin coats of that was opaque enough to be a nice sunshiney background! I then used a dotting tool dipped into China Glaze Turned-Up Turquoise (Neon), the bottle pictured in the above shot, to create the flowers and random dots. The centres were made with the same dotter and a random white polish--I think it was Petites #417 French White. Doesn't really matter; they're all the same. Layer of Orly Sec N' Dry topcoat and I was good to go!

I saw a cute swimsuit at the beach last week in yellow and teal and it made me want to do a manicure with those colours.

Outdoors in this lovely sunlight.

This really was such a simple design to execute--it's just a bunch of dots!--but the result can be so pretty. Give it a try sometime with your favourite shades! xoxo

Challenge Day #29: Inspired by the SUPERNATURAL

Good day, people! Today's manicure is a bit of a stretch, to be honest. But it's because today's prompt is friggin weird, man. Inspired by the supernatural? Wat? I was like "um... supernatural... hmm. Ghosts? Ghost nails would be kind of boring... oh, unless they were video game ghosts. Boos from Mario? Oh wait. PAC-MAN GHOSTS! Fingernails are shaped just like those little punks!"

Maybe not exactly supernatural, but, Pac-Man rocks.

Those guys were pretty scary, actually. Coming at you all methodically and unrelenting. I started by painting all nails a different colour: the thumb is Wet N' Wild Black Creme, the index finger is Soulstice Spa Buenos Aires, the index finger is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Sun-Kissed, the ring finger is China Glaze Turned-Up Turquoise (I was horrified to find I do not own a proper cyan-coloured polish. This situation shall be rectified ASAP), and the little finger is Color Club She's Sooo Glam. I then used Orly Pointe Blanche and a dotting tool to make two white circles for their eyes, and two energy dots for Pac-Man on the thumb. Next, some smaller dots for their blue irises with Revlon #170 Coastal Surf. After that, I took my trusty detail brush to paint little black triangles along the free edge to give the ghosties their signature jaggedy look (this looked way nicer in person, the imperfections are huge in these photos) and Pac himself on the thumb--started with white first, then painted over it with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow. (I used the white first so the yellow would show well over the black.) Finally, a coat of Orly Sec 'N Dry topcoat.

Blinky, Clyde, Inky, and Pinky. Yep, they have names, didn't you know?

Kinda blurry, but they were all 'omnomnom we finally got him'. Game Over :(

I guess these were only loosely inspired by "the supernatural", but since that was the origin of the meandering thought-trail that led to this idea, it counts. Yeah. :D

I will be leaving for a week on Wednesday, and things are going to be a little hectic between now and then! I'll try to get up one more post before I go, though. See you next time! xoxo