Sparkles on top of sparkles

It never fails that if there's something you really want but you don't buy it, when you finally decide to get it you can't find it anymore. When I was looking for an outfit for my Halloween costume I wandered into Target, which has the best selection of nail polish. Of course I decided to wander over there just in case something awesome was on sale. They had a display of Hard Candy nail polishes, some of which caught my eye. Beautiful, bright, sparkly colours. I stayed strong though and walked away. They lingered on my mind though, and after seeing a few pictures around I knew I made a mistake. I went back to buy a couple and.....they're gone.

Thankfully they had a few other polishes that lived up to the glittering beauty of the other ones! They're from Sally Hansen's new Triple Shine line. I got "Sparkling Water", a glittering blueish-green with hints of purple sparkles, and "Hypnautical", which I can best describe as being halfway between a glitter and a flakie. It's mostly blue and green but turns many, many different colours depending on what light you're in. I couldn't decide which one to try first, so I decided to put the two together!

I did two coats of sparkling water as a base coat, and then used "Hypnautical" to attempt to make a glitter gradient on the top. This has turned out to be VERY difficult to photograph, and I had serious tip wear after only one night, but otherwise it's fantastic. It's too bad it's raining outside because I think this would look amazing in the sunlight!

This doesn't show all the colours in the glitter very well, so I tried taking pictures in a few different lights. You can almost see the purple in this one:

And this one really shows how blue it can get:

These are so much prettier in real life, I highly recommend checking them out! That way you can see how absolutely gorgeous they really are.

Happy Halloween!

I don't have a lot of time to write something, so I'll just stick to pictures for today! Here's my Halloween stamping manicure, and it's the last Halloween one this year. Promise!

The polishes used are LA Colors in Fiery Orange and Konad Special Nail Polish in black. The stamps used are BM plates 4, 13, 213, 223, 224, and 225.

I hope you all are having a fantastic and fun Halloween!

Cyborg inspired nails

As I mentioned in my previous post I love Halloween. The main reason is that I really enjoy dressing up and I don't get many opportunities to do it in my day to day life. This year I was invited to a sci-fi themed party, and the first thing that popped into my head was being a cyborg. I usually go all-out when it comes to costume making, but this year I didn't have a lot of time in advance to put something together. Eventually I decided to go for a terminator-inspired look, where I used makeup to create cyborg pieces showing through wounds. The party was last night, and while I don't have a lot of experience doing this kind of thing the end result was pretty good!

Of course I had to do my nails to match my costume. I decided to do something similar to my circuit board nails as I figured it had the right look without being over-the-top obvious. It also matched really well with the dress I ended up wearing. Thankfully this did not take anywhere near as long as my last attempt!

I did this design by putting on a base coat of "Celeb City" by Sally Hansen, then laid down some striping tape and painted a layer of "Black Out", also by Sally Hansen, on top. I'm really happy with the end result, though I feel like they don't make sense unless you see the whole costume. So here's the final look all put together:

You can't see all of the "wounds" I did very well, there's one on my shoulder and one on the back of my hand. They were hard to get in a picture! I also got a red grid pattern contact to complete the look, here's a close up to show it off:

It's safe to say I creeped a lot of people out! This costume isn't my best work ever, but given the time I had to put it together I'm pretty happy with it. Can't wait to do it all over again next year!

Halloween monsters

Well, after two long months I'm finally able to return to doing nail art! My nails are (almost) back to normal, so I've bought a new nail hardener to try and I have my fingers crossed it's going to go better than last time. I've decided to use Sally Hansen's Hard as Wraps, I've seen some good reviews for it and I haven't had any problems with the brand before. I'm still a little sad that Nail Envy didn't work out for me. It was, and still is, so highly recommended by so many people I know. C'est la vie.

Of course my return ended up being slightly less than triumphant. I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to do, and with Halloween coming up I was sold on the idea of doing a variety of monsters. I'm a bit out of practice but overall I was happy with the results...until I put the top coat on. Smudges. Everywhere. I thought I'd left lots of time for it to dry too, so it was very disappointing. They still look good from a distance though, so I just left them. I've gotten some compliments on them too, so they must be all right!

Here's the colours I used:

Skull: Sally Hansen's "White On" for the base, Quo's Instant Artist in black for the design

Mummy: Sally Hansen's "White On" for the base, Quo's Instant Artist in black and white for the design

Zombie: L'Oreal's "Safari Chic" for the base, LA Color's "Pink Chiffon" for the brains, Tivoli Art Deco polish in red for the blood, Quo's Instant Artist in black and white for the rest

Frankenstein: L'Oreal's "Safari Chic" for the base, Quo's Instant Artist in black and white for the design

Vampire: Sally Hansen's "White On" for the base, Quo's Instant Artist in black for the design

It's good to be back!

On Hiatus

I am writing today to inform those of you that follow my blog that it will be on hiatus for an indeterminate amount of time, probably around a couple months. It is not a choice that I have made, rather a choice that has been forced upon me by an unfortunate circumstance.

You see, a few months ago I decided to make the switch to using OPI Nail Envy as a strengthener. It had been personally recommended to me a few times and I've heard nothing but good reviews. I was reluctant to purchase it as I found it to be a bit pricey, but when I found it on sale for $10 I couldn't resist taking advantage of the opportunity. I eagerly began to apply it as a base coat under all my manicures, excited to see the benefits that everyone else had raved about. Unfortunately that's not how things went for me.

A few weeks in I began to experience some pain in my nail beds and in the skin around my nails a few minutes after application. It didn't happen every time I applied polish, but became more and more frequent. At first it was bearable and I would just ignore it, but eventually it got to the point that I had to take my polish off and run my fingers under cold water to alleviate the symptoms. I knew this was not normal, but I thought I must be using it wrong. The fact that I might be allergic to it also crossed my mind, so I turned to the internet for advice. I was told I should stop wearing it, that the pain wasn't normal, and that I was likely having a reaction to it. This was all good advice, and it was advice I should have taken. At this point, however, I noticed that the pain only occurred when I painted my nails immediately after removing my old nail polish. If I took a break and washed my hands thoroughly in between then everything was fine. I decided that clearly it was a reaction between the Nail Envy and the nail polish removed, and once I began taking steps to make sure they did not come in contact then life was peachy keen again.

In July, I began a new job. While I love it and am very happy to be working at this company, the work is not very kind to my fingernails. I first started noticing my nails lifting slightly shortly after I started. I mentioned it to one of my coworkers, and they assured me that it had happened to them too. It was normal. As it didn't seem to be progressing much, I stopped worrying about it. Until one day, at the start of August, I took off my nail polish and the lifting had seriously progressed in a very short period of time. They looked diseased. I knew as soon as I saw it that I could no longer deny what was happening. My pinky and ringer fingers are the most affected, which doesn't make sense if it were trauma from work. No, it was clear that I was paying for my stubbornness and denial. I immediately stopped wearing Nail Envy, though I continued to wear polish with no base or top coat so that I didn't freak out the patients I work with.

After a week I wasn't seeing much improvement. I decided to give my nails a breather for the weekend. This was also a weekend where my boyfriend and I were doing a deep clean of the apartment. The cleaning products, combined with scrubbing and frequent hand washing, caused my nails to worsen significantly in a matter of a few hours. Worried that they were going to fall off completely, I finally consulted a professional on how to keep from making it worse. I need to wear gloves at work to prevent trauma and to stop me from washing my hands all the time, as getting your nails wet repeatedly can make them lift more. I was also told to cut my nails as short as I was comfortable with (some of them would end up really short if I cut them all the way down) to help protect them. Finally, and the reason my blog is now on hiatus, I was told I shouldn't be wearing nail polish at all. I'm not comfortable going to work with my nails uncovered as I have reason to believe that some patients may mistake my issue for nail fungus and not want me to work on them, so they recommended a polish free of the bad chemicals that cause the most problems with nails. I have one bottle, one colour, that my nails will be until they grow back out, and that doesn't make for very exciting blog posts.

So there you have it. I believe it will take a few months for my nails to grow back out properly, and as soon as they do I'll be back painting them all kinds of colours again. In the meantime, I'm going to be resting them and taking care of them so I can get back as soon as possible.

Until then!

-Danielle

Maybelline Polka Dots

A few weeks ago I was at Walmart picking up some nails supplies and I spotted a display for Maybelline's new "polka dot" nail polish. I really love the look of it, but unfortunately the only colour they had left was orange and I didn't think I would use it that much. I figured I'd find more colours somewhere though, so I decided to just keep my eye out for them. Turns out I was wrong. The next time I went to Walmart the display was nowhere to be seen, and none of the other stores I shop at had it in stock. I looked everywhere and couldn't find even a single bottle. Finally, a Target opened up near my work and had all the colours to choose from! I chose to get the green colour and dress it up for the weekend. I apologize in advance as this isn't my cleanest manicure ever, I was a bit rushed in doing it and it took a few days before I had time to take pictures so there's some tip wear.

I absolutely love this nail polish. It took 3 thin coats to get good coverage, but each layer dried really quickly and it didn't end up being too bulky, and the glitter distributed itself fairly evenly across the nail. I got lots of compliments on them too, even from my boyfriend's friends who were over for a guys weekend. You know it's good polish when boys like it.

The colour I got was "Drops of Jade", and the extra decorations are done with Quo's Instant Artist polish in Black and White.

New nail shape and fancy french triangles

Well, after having spent years trying to get my nails long and strong my goals are going to have to change. I started a new job recently, which is fantastic. However, I'm using my hands a lot and that's not really conducive to having long nails. I'm still going to work at getting them strong, but they're going to have to get shorter again. I decided to try out a more square tip for a while because I think it's a nicer shape for shorter nails. So far I've been semi-successful, hopefully with practice I'll get better at shaping them.

I want to try a french manicure with my new nails and a wedding this weekend should have been a perfect opportunity. Unfortunately, one of my nails has completely lifted in the corner and doesn't look all that wonderful. As my french manicures usually involve a fair bit of nail showing through I had to adapt my plans. I have a grayish-pink polish that I love so I decided to use some white and silver nail art polishes to do something fancy. I think I still had french on my mind though, because the results ended up being rather similar!

The base colour is Sally Hansen's "Gray-t Escape", and the design is done using Tivoli Nail Art polish in silver and Quo Instant Artist polish in white. I still don't have the nail shape right, but I've decided to leave it for now and try to fix it next time. If anyone has advice on how to get this shape it would be much appreciate it!

Circuit board nails

The last couple times I've tried to paint my nails it's been a total disaster. I've had problems with the polish bubbling up on my nail like a poorly applied sticker, water marbles where the polishes refused to spread properly, and even glitter that appeared to be determined to only apply to one corner of my nail. You know you're having a bad run when you can't even apply glitter properly. I painted my nails 4 times and not once did I end up with a successful manicure. So when I did my nails today and they actually came out good, I could have danced for joy.

I had a gold and a dark bluish-green that I knew would look great together, so I decided to do some geometrical stripes using striping tape. I finished the first nail and realized that I had accidentally done circuit board nails! It was completely unintentionally, but I think it's a cool look so I'm happy with it.

This took hours upon hours to do and seemed to use up about half of my roll of striping tape. When it looks this good, it's all worth it!

The colours I used were LA Color's "Jungle Fever" and Maybelline Color Show's "Bold Gold". 

Happy Canada Day!

I'm going to keep this short because I'm off in Montreal celebrating Canada Day! I made sure to have appropriate nails for the occasion, and what would be more appropriate than a Canadian flag?

I wasn't confident in my ability to paint a maple leaf, I can't even successfully draw one on paper. So I cheated a little bit recruited my boyfriend to do the hard work for me. I think he did a fantastic job! The pointer and ring fingers I did using tape to attempt to get a clean, crisp line, though as you can see that didn't quite work on all of my fingers. I used a nice sparkly red as well, because who doesn't love a little sparkle?

The colours used are Sally Hansen X-treme Wear's "White On" and "Red Carpet". Before I go, I also thought I'd share with you the cool calligraphy my boyfriend did of my initials while he was practising painting maple leafs. Like I said, definitely artistic!

HAPPY CANADA DAY, EVERYONE!

Green to blue gradient

I've been seeing lots of gradients around on other nail blogs and it's made me want to try one on my own nails again. The first tutorial I saw (which I now can not find for the life of me) used a small piece of sponge to dab two different colours up and down the nail. It worked, but it was generally really difficult to make a smooth transition from one colour to another. For today's gradient I tried out swirling the nail polish together on some plastic wrap and then stamping the whole thing on my nail. I decided to try a green to blue gradient so that I could do an accent nail using a blue and green glitter polish that I haven't tried out yet. Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

The gradient ended up being a little more subtle than I originally intended, but I still like the colour combination. The only downside is that it took a LOT of polish to get the blue to show up. I must of used about half a bottle of each colour. Thankfully I used cheaper polish, which is probably why I had to use so much of it, so if (when) I do this again I'm going to try a polish that I know is a bit thicker.

The colours I used for the gradient are LA Colors "Palm Tree" and "Splash", and the glitter is "Cosmic" by Jordana. I love this glitter, I'm definitely going to have to use it again!

Bumblebee from Transformers!

I love doing my nails, but it can be really hard to come up with ideas for what to do time and time again. A few days ago I mentioned my lack of inspiration to my boyfriend, and his response was "You know what would be cool? Black and yellow stripes. Like a bumblebee. Oh, like the transformer!" So, these nails come to you courtesy of inspiration from my boyfriend. 

This was my first time trying to use striping tape where it wasn't just a straight line across the nail. I'm always in awe of The Nailasaurus and her ability to make impressive designs using striping tape. I did my best to follow her tutorial, and as you can see I haven't quite mastered it yet. I think it was a good first attempt though! I'm also disappointed that the autobot logo smeared a bit when I put the top coat on, but thankfully you can't really see it from a distance.

For the striped nails I did two coats of Joe Fresh's Onyx, laid down the striping tape, and painted a thick coat of Sally Hansen's "Lightening" on top. For the accent nail I did two coats of Sally Hansen's Lightening and then used Konad Special Nail Polish in black to paint the autobot logo.

Decorated french manicure

Back in December my mom gave me some nail stickers as a gift. I've been waiting for a good reason to use them as they're a little bit too fancy for everyday wear, and I figured the wedding I'm going to this weekend is the perfect excuse. One of the nail stickers I got was clusters of jewels and pearls and I thought it would look great with a french manicure. The jewels stick out quite a bit so I'm a bit worried that they won't make it through the night. I've got some serious nail bling going on though!

I used the Kiss french manicure guides to do the tips, and I'm a bit iffy about them. On some nails, my pinky especially, it ends up being pretty much straight across rather than a nice curve. I guess I'll just have to get better at free-handing it. Also, what looks like bubbles around the jewels is actually glitter! I took a picture with natural light to try and show the decorations a little bit better.

For these nails I did a base coat of Rimmel's "French Lingerie", then did the tips with Sally Hansen's "White On". The stickers are from Daiso, a fantastic $2 store that has anything and everything in it. I've already gotten some compliments on these nails, and I only left the house for about 30 minutes. I love them, let's just keep our fingers crossed that they'll last!

Sugar spun nails

I've been seeing sugar spun nails around a lot, so I decided to try them out. I'm still job hunting (yay...) so my nails need to be subtle and professional so I can be ready for a job interview any time, just in case. I stuck to more neutral colours and I liked how it turned out!

Painting these nails was a bit of a nightmare though. Not because it was hard, this actually was super easy and quick to do. The issue was I was impatient and didn't wait for my polish to totally dry before I added more layers. I went to cook dinner and ruined three nails in the process. When I went to fix them I realized that on two other nails the polish had either come off the tip or pulled away from it. I was just about ready to give up and take them all off, but thankfully another layer of top coat managed to hid the missing tips and painting the other three took no time at all.

I took a picture with the flash on to try and show the colours a little bit better, it's not the picture but hopefully it'll do.

The colours I used were Sally Hansen's "Gray-T Escape" and "White-On", L'Oreal's "Eiffel For You", and Sephora's "Queen Of Everything".

Solid glitter half moons

I love solid glitter. It is one of my favourite looks to put on my nails, just sparkly and fun. Of course, my love quickly turns to hate when it comes time to take it off, but it's definitely worth it. I'm going to a Jack and Jill party this weekend and couldn't think of anything more appropriate than glittering nails. I wanted to do something a little different though, so I decided to try half moon nails using solid glitter for the half moon. It turned out even better than I expected. Can someone remind me how much I love these when I have to take them off?

Trying to get a good picture of these nails was a nightmare. This is the only picture that really shows all the colours in the glitter. Two of the nails are out of focus, but.....well, the colours show. I've got a few more pictures below, they don't show the colours as well but they're a little better quality.

The base colour is "Morrocan" by LA Colors, and the glitter is "Gemstones" by Jordana which I actually got from a dollar store! It reminds me of birthday confetti. I have a few other glitters I got from the same dollar store, I'm looking forward to trying them out. Maybe when I get over taking this off.

Classy copper

The job hunt is still on, so my nails need to stay appropriate for all potential work places. I originally tried a few hand-done designs, but my ideas weren't working out and my base colour took 4 new coats every time I started over. After a few attempts I gave up and did some stamping instead. I knew the colour combination I wanted and let my boyfriend pick out the design. I think he made a good choice!

The base colour is Rimmel's "French Lingerie" and the stamping was done using Covergirl's "Perfect Penny" and Bundle Monster plate 201. I hadn't use the copper polish before and it was a bit thinner than I anticipated. I was expecting the design to stand out a little more than it does but I think the look is still fantastic! 

Please excuse the flashlight I'm holding, I put my nail polish away before I took pictures and was too lazy to bring it back out. It kind of blends with the background so it works, right? Right?

Professional leopard print

I'm currently on the market for a job, so I've been avoiding painting my nails in case an interview comes up. As much as I love bright, colourful nails, not all companies are polish-friendly so I'm trying to play it safe. I've been dying to do something with them though, and after a week of having them pretty much completely bare I've caved in and settled for a really subtle leopard print.

The base coat is "Bares Bones" by Revlon Colorstay, and has turned out to be an interesting colour. In most lights it's this wonderful sandy beige, which I love, but in some lights it gets a really yellow tinge to it that looks terrible with my skin tone. Overall I like it though. The design is done with NYC in "Park Ave" and the white is done with Kiss Nail Art Polish in white. I topped it all off with a matte top coat to help keep it subtle and professional. I think this turned out just right, I feel like I've done my nails but no one's going to notice them unless I point it out. That should be okay, right?