Swatches: Nabi Magnetic Nail Polish

For about a year or so a few of my favourite clothing store have started carrying Nabi magnetic nail polish, and it's always selling for 2 for $5. I've been tempted many times to get them because I wanted to get some magnetic polish but wasn't sure I would use it enough to justify the cost. However, the extremely low cost made me wonder if they would even work so I always resisted the urge. Last week I finally just gave in and bought two bottles. There were a lot of colours to choose from, but I ended up settling on a blue and a green. The blue one had no colour label on it and the green one was labelled as navy blue, but I did some searching and I think I bought "Ocean Blue" and "Dark Green".

I decided to try the blue one first. The brushes in these polishes are rather terrible. They're too spread out, and so it's impossible to paint your nails without either completely missing the edges or getting nail polish everywhere. I ended up doing a lot of clean up afterwards. It also took me a few tries to figure out the best way to use the magnet as these didn't have those useful ridges on the cap that most magnetic nail polishes have. Once I got the hang of it though it was super easy and the results were very pretty.

This was a really gorgeous blue to start with, and the stripes added a really cool texture and tone to it. Someone told me they reminded them of the movie Avatar, and I definitely agree! Maybe one day I'll use this polish to do some Avatar nails. The one downside of this colour is that it stains. Bad. I had to wait a couple days before taking pictures because my fingers were tinted blue and I couldn't get it to go away.

In contrast, the green colour didn't stain my nails at all. It took me much less time to paint my nails as I had finally figured out a good technique, but I still had to do a lot of clean up afterwards due to the poor brush quality. This colour was a little bit more demure, kind of an olive green, which I liked a lot.

I used the v-shaped magnet on these ones, it doesn't show well in the picture but it looked cool in real life. It gave a fun alternative to the diagonal stripes too.

It's cheap, it works, but is it worth it? I'm not sure. So I made a list of pros and cons.

Pros:

• MUCH cheaper than the other magnetic nail polishes I have seen.
• The colours I bought looked really nice on the nail and easily went on in one coat.
• The magnets work and come in different designs so you can make different patterns.

Cons:

• The smell. Holy fishballs does this polish smell bad. Thankfully it goes away once the polish dries.
• The lack of a ridge to keep the magnet off the wet polish made using it a little more difficult than it needed to be.
• The brush is absolutely terrible.

All in all, you get what you pay for. If you're looking for a cheap magnetic polish so you can try it out, then these are great! If you're looking at using magnetic polish on a regular basis, I would recommend investing in a better brand. You'll save a lot of time on clean-up, and maybe they won't smell quite so terrible. I'm happy I finally tried these out though, and I'm definitely going to be using them again.

Fun with scrapbooking scissors!

I'll never forget the day I figured out how to do taping on my nails. I'd tried a few times before but always ended up peeling off the base colour. Finally I saw somewhere that you were supposed to reduce the stickiness a bit, and my life was changed. I love taping, it's such a simple way to make clean but beautiful designs. As someone who struggles with a shaky hand, tape is a lifesaver.

Long before I figured out the whole taping thing though I saw some manicures over at Chloe's Nails that involved using scrapbooking scissors to cut the tape. I thought it looked amazing, especially considering how simple they are to do, so after recently acquiring a set of scissors I finally got around to giving this a try! It was every bit as glorious as I thought it would be. Easy, relatively quick, and it got me lots of compliments.

The gray is "Fog" and the black is "Onyx", both by Joe Fresh, while the silver is "Queen of Everything" by Sephora. I couldn't help but stare at this manicure all day, it was so pretty. I can't wait to try some of the other scissors I have and see what looks I can come up with!

Winter blues

One of the few downsides to the area I live in is that "winter" generally lasts from October until April and consists of a lot of rain. Not snow, just cold, wet, rain. And every year, without fail, I find myself getting a little blue a few months in. Then we'll get two days of sunshine, and it's amazing how much my mood improves. Thankfully this year we've had a relatively good winter weather-wise, but I still found myself feeling very blah. I had planed on doing a bright, vibrant manicure, but these colours ended up calling to me instead.

This was my first time trying the reverse french manicure, and I decided to do it using the hole protectors to get the shape. My hand is not all that steady, so I tend to like to fall back on taping. In hindsight I wish I'd at least gone over the design a few times with the lighter colour as it doesn't show very well. but I do like this colour combo!

The base colour is "Blue Lagoon" and the lighter colour is "Ocean Mist", both by LA colours. I love these colours and I love this manicure, it really suited my mood. I just wish it looked as good as these pictures in real life!

Pink and gold snake skin

I have to say, I think this is going to be my new go-to manicure when I'm completely out of ideas. I got so many compliments on them, even when they started chipping and breaking off. Lots of people asked how I did them, or if they were stickers. Because I used stamps to do them, they took minimal effort. Not to mention that they still looked good even when all my nails started breaking off and I had to cut them super short. So bonus!

The pink I used is "Save The Date" by Sally Hansen Diamond Strength, the gold is "Golden-I" by Sally Hansen XtremeWear, and the plate I used was BM 215. The pink is a little bit brighten than it looks in this picture, but not a whole lot. It's a nice, rich colour and the gold really compliments it. If/when I redo these nails though I'm not sure I'll do the gold accent nail, it just doesn't look as good as the others. When all is said and done, this is definitely going to become my manicure to fall back on!

Welcome to 2013!

I technically did these before 2013, because who doesn't like sparkly nails for new years? I ended up having a nice, quiet evening with a close friend that maybe didn't quite suit the nails, even though it suited the rest of me just fine. But hey, who says your nails have to match anything?

The base colour for the tips was "Celeb City" by Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear, and the sparkle is "Sparkling Diamonds" by LA Colors. This manicure is kind of cool because from a distance it's not too obvious, but up close it's super sparkly and fun. I'll be sad when I have to take it off.