Robin Eggs: A Spring Manicure

By looking through my newsfeed over the last month or so, it seems that the people around me are craving spring more than usual. I don't know if it's because we were spoiled last March with 20+ degree weather, or that we've been getting a seemingly endless supply of snow, or maybe I'm just paying closer attention because I've been ready for spring since January. Regardless, I've been succumbing to spring-like choices for my nail colour in hopes that maybe the weather will start to warm up.

This week I bring to you my rendition of robin eggs.

Lately, just like many of you out there, I've been spending a lot of my time on Pinterest. I really love finding beautiful manicures that other people have done, but even more so I love getting inspiration for my nails from non-nail related posts. Since Easter is right around the corner too there's been a lot of egg posts flying around, and I found this photo especially striking.

For this look I used an unnamed Urban Outfitters Smush (I think? It came in a collection with no names on it!) and I sponged China Glaze For Audrey on top. Then to achieve the brown specks, I dipped a straw into a tiny bit of American Apparel Raccoon and blew through it toward the nail surface. I had to make sure to keep my distance from my nails while blowing the polish through the straw, otherwise the splatters would have been too saturated.
I topped it off with some Joe Fresh Matte top coat because it's not as mattifying as Essie's Matte About You and I didn't want too flat of a finish, since the eggs in the photo above have a bit of a sheen to them.

I'm more than halfway done my bottle of For Audrey, which is practically unheard of for me. It's one of my favourite colours and I love finding different ways I can use it.

Anyway, here's hoping spring comes soon!

Autumn Acid Wash

Hello ladies (and the occasional gent), I'm bringing you another fall/autumn manicure inspired by (obviously) the changing leaves at this glorious time of year. I used a technique that I saw on Pinterest that was called "acid washing." It's a very fun, grungy approach to fall manicures.

Basically you layer multiple colours, using whatever your heart desires - but the more contrast the better, and it's recommended to use a dark colour either on the bottom, on the top or both. You then dip a paint brush in acetone and drag it down your nail, exposing some of the colours beneath the surface. 

This is the tutorial I used. I had a hard time the first few attempts, I ended up taking off way too much polish and exposing the bare nail underneath. It definitely took some time to get a handle on this one.

Polish used: Joe Fresh Pumpkin, China Glaze Hey Sailor, Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow, American Apparel MacArthur Park  and American Apparel Raccoon.

Hm! Almost the same colours as my Autumn Water Marble!

I'm kind of on a posting roll here, excellent! A shout out to Dominique, my co-worker's sister - thanks for sharing my blog on your facebook page. She's an excellent photographer, you should check out her website - www.3stems.com.

Autumn Manicures

Hello lovelies! I have a batch of manicures to show you. I've been a little sidetracked since I started my new job (which is going fabulously, by the way), but it means that I don't have a ton of daylight to photograph my nails with, nor do I have the time to do anything exciting very often. I don't want to bore you with regular ol' nail polish so I've gathered three of my more creative numbers as of late.

Voici my "Retro Stripe" mani, inspired by striped gym shorts from the 1970s. This was after two days of camping, forgive the tip wear.

Like these.

I used American Apparel Raccoon as the base because it dries really fast so it was easy to put the tape over it. From there I used Konad White, an orange from Aldo (I'm having a brainfart on the name, I'll get it ASAP ** EDIT - It's called Juicy Gossip) and Double Decker Red from OPI.

I wanted to use OPI Heeere's Tawny but it wasn't drying fast enough and I was pulling it off with the tape! Ugh.

This is what I like to call "Harvest," lame. It's a gradient of OPI The "It" Colour, China Glaze Lemon Fizz and Sally Hansen White On. I was inspired by a photo of wheat - so sue me, I love this season!

Finally - my current manicure. The colours were chosen by my boyfriend, believe it or not. He got all excited about it so I figured I would give him the credit.

Natural light

With flash

Right hand, with flash

Water marble! This is a fabulous blend of - Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow as the base, Joe Fresh Pumpkin, China Glaze Hey Sailor, OPI Heeere's Tawny, and the elusive Aldo orange previously mentioned (** EDIT - It's called Juicy Gossip). I'm in love with this one, it reminds me of the changing leaves.

So - who's still with me? Sorry for the hiatus guys! I'll try to keep things up, I swear. Take care everyone.

China Glaze Below Deck Gradient Tutorial

Hello again my fine feathered friends! This week I've had a string of job interviews and I happen to have an "interview polish" that brings me luck, class and an air of professionalism whenever I wear it. No joke. I had mentioned in my first interview on Monday that I occasionally blog about my nails, so for the second interview (which I had this afternoon) I wanted to spice things up a little bit.

Initially I was wearing China Glaze Below Deck, a muted sort of brownish greyish purple, and I wanted to turn it into a gradient mani. This is sometimes also called fading.

To achieve this look you need:

• Any colour of your choice for the base, obviously in my case it was Below Deck
• White polish
• A shallow dish of some sort
• A toothpick/bobby pin
• A make up sponge
• Top coat
• A brush and acetone for clean up

Step 1.
Paint your nails with the base colour and allow to dry completely. I like doing this on a mani that's already a couple of days old.

Step 2.
Drop some of the coloured polish into the dish along with about 2-3 drops of white. You don't want the shade to be too far off just yet. Mix it up thoroughly. 

Step 3.
Use your make up sponge to dab some of the mixture onto your nail, starting at the tip (just in case the sponge is too saturated) and work your way to about 3/4 down. Do this to the nails on both hands so you don't have to re-mix your polish and risk not getting the same colour results.

Step 4.
Add 2-3 more drops of white to your dish and stir it up until it's well blended. Once again you're going to use your sponge  to go over every nail but you'll only be going 2/3 of the way down your nail this time around since you want to leave some of the new layer exposed.
Repeat this step two or three more times, adding more white to the mixture at the end of each round and covering less of your nail as you go along.

Step 5:
Apply your clear top coat. This is important because this sponge makes the polish look rough and bumpy, not a good look! 

Step 6:
Use your brush and acetone to clean up the edges and voila! Beautiful gradient mani.

If these instructions are in any way unclear or if you want photos of the step-by-step (or even want to see it in a different colour) please let me know. 

Later in the week I'll be trying a new formula to achieve the gradient look, I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

Past NOTD: OPI My Private (Original Holo Version)

This was the result of a swap through Makeup Alley with a lovely lady named Ashley. My Private Jet is an infamous polish known for having two released versions: a FABULOUS holographic one which is really hard to find, and a really boring dud version that doesn't have the rainbow-y goodness of the first. Luckily for me, Ashley sent me pictures of the polish beforehand to ensure that I was indeed getting the real deal.

So MPJ is a brownish greyish polish absolutely riddled with linear holographic sparkles.

Look at all the rainbows! YAY! Best swap ever. Sorry for all the pics I just got so so excited :)

Apologies and past NOTD - Hard Candy Beetle

First off, allow me to state that I should be renaming this blog to "Lisa's Blog of Neglect" because, if you hadn't noticed, I haven't actually posted since September. To all my followers: Thank you for sticking around, I promise I will keep up to date as much as I can from here on end.

That being said, it's not as though I haven't been photographing my nails to show you (eventually), so tonight is the night where I'm going to flood the internet with past NOTDs. Expect about five posts (including this one) to trickle through as the hours pass. I would put them all in one post but I feel that separating them will not only make cataloging them a lot easier, but also finding them again will be too.

This polish comes to me with a wonderful story. I frequent a nail polish board and a lovely lady named Tyra had posted a photo of her nails sporting Beetle by Hard Candy. I love, love, love that polish and was unable to get it in Canada (ridiculous) and it was driving me batty. She messaged me saying that she was willing to go to Walmart and buy it for me, free of charge and  no expectations of me sending her something in return! Of course I absolutely had to send her something for her generosity and kindness, but if that's not good karma I don't know what is.

What a sweet lady! I didn't get the chance to photograph it at the start of wearing it, but I managed to take some pictures a few days in. Very noticeable tipwear, but I hope you'll at least get an idea of why I wanted it so badly.

This is such a spectacular multi-chrome! You've got purple, you've got gold, you've got copper, sometimes you've got some green, sometimes you've got some pink, and sometimes you've got brown. Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant. 

The world never ceases to amaze me, and on occasion it's in a good way. Thank you Tyra! 

NOTD: Rusty Pumpkin

Last night I got a little layer happy, and I'm now currently wearing probably the most coats of polish I've probably every worn. Ever.

So it started with the Joe Fresh Pumpkin that I had on in my last post, then I applied 3 coats of Sally Hansen's Pumpkin Spice (still going with the fall theme, if you didn't notice) and then I topped it off with a layer of Love & Beauty Rust. Love & Beauty is Forever 21's make up and nail polish line, and since the store opened in Ottawa these past few weeks I was really excited to get out there. Rust is acting as sort of a surrogate until I get a polish I really want. I've been lemming Sephora by OPI's Traffic Stopper Copper for some time now, but considering it's $12 and Rust was only $3.80 I went for it. My biggest problem with this one is the density of the glitter, and the amount of the small glitter vs the larger hex glitter. There's way too much little glitter, it looked messy and overrun the first time I swatched it.

So let's see - American Classics Bridge the Ridge, 2 coats of JF Pumpkin, SH Mega Shine, 3 coats of SH Pumpkin Spice, Gelous, SH Mega Shine, 1 coat of L&B Rust, Gelous, SH Mega Shine.

Did I just count 13 layers of polish?

>_>


<_<


Good luck to me taking this off. At least it was worth it, I'm in love with this. I have a really hard time capturing
glitters in all their glory so bear with me. Trust me when I say it's beautiful.

As you can obviously tell, I experienced a great deal of shrinkage due to all the layering and the thickness of the Gelous/glitter. In regular lighting (ie: not direct sunlight) the base colour looks like a darker brown giving it a more Halloween-y kind of feel, and boy is it ever shiny. I can't help but grin when I look down at my nails!

NOTD: OPI I'm Suzi & I'm A Chocoholic

This polish was one of the first OPIs I ever bought (along with Ski Teal We Drop and Yodel Me On My Cell), it's from the Swiss Collection that was released in 2010 for fall. This shade is a reddish brown (or brownish red), which is appealing very much to the autumn-fiend in me at the moment. It went on fairly opaque, this is only two coats, it was just a b!tch to clean up. I hate cleaning up reds, I don't know why they give me such a hard time - but they do.

Every. Single. Time.

I was inspired to use this polish because I'm kind of lemming China Glaze's new Brownstone polish from the Metro collection. Can anyone tell me if these two are similar? I think Brownstone is more ... well, brown. Anyway!

Going on kind of the same thread, this is my favourite fall-time tea. It's called Market Spice from Teaopia and it's a black tea with Orange peel, cloves, marigold, black pepper. It's actually spicier than Chai which is its biggest selling point in my book. Umm, delicious!?

Absolutely, yes.

NOTD: Dorky Cow Print!

I'm going to start trying my hand at nail art more and more often, since apparently practice makes perfect? After this mani Lord knows I need it. I used Sally Hansen's White On, Rimmel's Black Satin and American Apparel Raccoon to make this cow print. I don't really like using polish to make my designs, I find it's really hard to work with, so from here on end I think I'm going to go back to using acrylic paint (like I used to do in high school).

..... MOOOOOO!

NOTD: Agate Water Marble

I haven't posted any of my water marbles yet, as I'm pretty sure the only good one I've ever done was my first, and I haven't bothered trying to do one since February... so here goes! 

I tried a bunch of different methods with this and screwed a up a few (I actually had to start two nails over completely from scratch) but this is the end result. I really like them! It took about an hour and a half to do it all (re-dos included). I used American Apparel's Cotton for the base, then the other colours are American Apparel Raccoon, China Glaze For Audrey and OPI Greenwich Village.

NOTD: Accidental Camouflage Nails

What I was aiming for with this mani was something forest-y or wood nymphy, and what ended up happening was I guess I got a little over-zealous with my colours and it turned into a camo mani. That's okay! DBF really liked it, and so did a couple of my friends so the world isn't over this time around.

Mmm, tea!

I guess it's kind of cool eh? Too bad I'm not into the camo pattern, otherwise this would be heaven.