New Year's Nails

We went to a friend's place for New Year's Eve - they hosted a super fun murder mystery party. It was set in a school for magic, not unlike Harry Potter.

I debated doing themed nails, but couldn't settle on something that worked, since it wasn't actually in the HP world.

Instead, I looked to Pantone, for their colour of the year for 2015.

This year's colour is marsala - a brick-wine red. I bought the perfect colour a couple of years ago on clearance - China Glaze Redstone.

It's a little dark, but it's in the same colour family, and it's really pretty.

I jazzed it up with a gold glitter gradient for the party.

Candy Corn and Sugar Skulls

First Halloween manicure of the month.

Not sure I'll do another one until Halloween itself - I just really wanted to try this one.

Candy corn is my favourite Halloween treat, and sugar skulls are very pretty.

I saw a whole manicure of sugar skulls dinner with different coloured fimo flowers, but I only have the yellow ones - so I figured they would go well with candy corn nails.

Then I saw a manicure that used OPI's spotted topcoat over orange, and thought it looked great. The polish was super limited, and I'm not sure if it was available in Canada at all, so I don't have it.
Thankfully, you can recreate this look by floating black polish on water (as if you were going to do a water marble) and then spritzing it with rubbing alcohol, before dipping your finger(s) in.

Polishes used:

Sinful Colors Snow Me White

essence wanna be your sunshine

NYC Pumpkin

OPI Black Onyx

essence tattoo nail art pen

Claire's fruit Fimo wheel - flowers

Deep Breath

Saturday is the premier for Doctor Who series 8 - Peter Capaldi is taking over as The Doctor, and they're doing a feature length episode (called "Deep Breath")

Of course I had to do themed nails to match!

I don't have my usual tools, so these aren't as great or clean as I wanted, but I still like them

Polishes Used:

essence Black is Back

essence Flame Fatale

essence nail art Tatoo pen

essence French Tip pen

Color Club Blue-topia

Orly Galaxy FX Gravity Bound

China Glaze Holographic Cosmic Dust

China Glaze Frostbite

Ardene Tigers Eye

- Thumb is a TARDIS, as usual.
- Index finger is continuing companion, Clara - based on her Christmas outfit, which I believe carries over for at least part of the new episode.
- Middle finger represents the 12th Doctor's new costume.
- Ring finger is, as usual, a Dalek, because even though I don't think they'll be in this episode, they're a huge part of Who (and I love doing Dalek nails …)
- Pinky is simply Orly's Galaxy FX polish, mainly because I couldn't think of anything else to add!

Update

So, of course, shortly after I get organised and start posting again, something comes up.

We have had to bounce around between people's homes, because our bathroom is being renovated!

I didn't have internet for a week.
My nails have been bare for a whole week after that …and we've just been so busy.

Tonight, I am determined to sit down and polish my nails.
Hopefully I will have something to share later tonight or tomorrow.

At least I get a pretty, new bathroom.

Pop!

This is an older one, but it's so bright and fun, it's great for summer.

This manicure used Nabi 3D Rainbow Effects holographic polish. They're not super strong, but they give a nice linear holo effect in bright light (you can just barely see it in this photo). I always wanted to get more of these, but the place locally that sold them stopped carrying them.

The glitter polish is by Hard Candy. It's called Mom & Pop. It has peach, pale green, pale yellow, pale pink, white, and silver holographic glitter.

3 coats Nabi 3D Rainbow Effects in Green

1 coat Hard Candy Mom & Pop

They go with my ukulele really well :D

Radiant Orchid

I had some technical difficulties with this one - I originally tried to update from my phone, and it refused to save (the original is still sitting there "saving")

This year's Pantone colour of the year is a lovely purple called Radiant Orchid. I love the colour, so I had to check my collection to see if I had anything in the same family.

Turns out, I have two!

The one I chose for this manicure was Violet Voltage - it's on the lighter side and has a pink shimmer.

I will show the other one (Pep-Plum, also by Sally Hansen) another time.

I had a lot of people think I used stickers or stamps for this one - but it was all freehand. Nail art pens are a godsend.

Polishes used:

2 coats Sally Hansen Violet Voltage

3 coats Revlon Nude Beige

essence black nail art "tattoo" pen

Original idea found at Dressed Up Nails

I'm Back!

I know I've been gone for a while. I have been painting my nails the w whole time, but there are very few I've been willing to share. Nothing was working quite right.

I've got a few saved, and I seem to be back in the groove, so I want to start sharing again!

I'm going to trial updating without the use of flickr, just to make updates easier for me, but I'll still upload things there later, to have a gallery all in one place.

I will be keeping my nails short going forward, because I'm trying to learn ukulele, and long nails don't help!

So, without further ado, here is this week's manicure!

Polishes used:

3 coats Essie Sunday Funday

3 coats Sinful Colors Snow Me White

essence black nail art "tattoo" pen

Design originally found on Pinterest

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I'm stuck in a bit of a nail polish rut ...

Everything I've done lately hasn't turned out the way I want, or it gets ruined too quickly.
The second part is usually my fault - thinking I have more time than I really do, but I've had a couple that have dented or scraped off nearly 24 hours after application.

I'll have some more posts hopefully soon - even if they're just swatches.

Galaxy FX Gradient

Here is the second ORLY Galaxy FX polish I bought - Intergalactic Space.

I wanted to try a glitter gradient with it - I wasn't sure if it would work, since the polishes are all so packed with glitter, but I had to try.

I started with a base of Sally Hansen Firefly, from their Lustre Shine collection - two coats on all nails except my ring finger. This polish is a very pretty bronze to blue/green/grey duochrome. The colour shift isn't very strong on this one, but I still like it. If I was wearing it on it's own, I'd probably go for 3 coats, because it's pretty sheer.

I applied Intergalactic Space to the tips of my nails, then a second coat starting about 2/3 of the way up my nail. On my ring finger, I simply applied two coats.
This is a pretty complex polish - It's a grey jelly base with blue microglitter, small purple and bronze hex glitter, with a light scattering of medium round white glitter.

I love this one, I don't know how to describe it.

As with Gravity Bound, this polish is packed with glitter, so it can be a little bit goopy if you don't work quickly. Some reviews complained that the white circles were difficult to get. I only wanted them on my ring finger, and I had to wipe the circles off the brush while I was doing the gradient. There aren't many, but I probably could have had one per finger if I wanted to. Maybe I lucked out and got a good bottle?

Also, I just realized this manicure is pretty much perfect for ...

Periwinkle Fairy

Two favourites combined in this simple manicure.

China Glaze My Secret Peri-wink-le - I've worn this one before, and I still absolutely love it. A beautiful pale blue-purple shade. Two coats.

Topped off with China Glaze Fairy Dust - scattered holographic glitter. So, so pretty.