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!

Catching Up

Since I got back from the UK, work has been crazy, with terrible shifts, and when I'm not at work, we've been going out a lot.
It's just been a crazy summer, and I haven't been able to keep up here.

I've still been doing my nails though - so here's what I've got:

Polka Dots:

This was a base of Sinful Colors Rain Storm
Dots were done using two sizes of a dotting tool and China Glaze Holographic in Cosmic Dust and Galactic Grey.
This was for the Reddit challenge "Polka Dots"

Neon:

I started with Sinful Colors Snow Me White to give the neon a solid base.
Three coats of Ardene Neon Yellow - this is a highlighter yellow. It's ridiculously bright.
Over top of that, I dabbed Icing By Claire's Shredded. This one is pretty neat, it's not really what I'd call flakies, but it's shredded black glitter. The clear base has a slight blue tint to it, so it unfortunately changed the yellow a bit. I tried to do a sort of gradient with it, and reversed the gradient on my ring finger.
This was for the Reddit challenge "Neon"

Secret Periwinkle:

oops! this was my 100th manicure on here.
um ... I'll try to remember to do something fancy for 150?
I bought China Glaze Secret Periwinkle, because periwinkle is an awesome colour. Not quite blue, a hint of lilac. This is a really nice polish - 2 coats. I will be wearing this often.

Green Mermaid:

Three coats of Wet n Wild Fast Dry Sage in the City.
For my ring finger, I poured out a small amount of hexagonal glitter on to a piece of tin foil, and added a dab of topcoat next to it (not fast dry!). I applied a coat of the same topcoat to my ring finger, and then used a toothpick dipped in the topcoat to pick up the glitter and applied it one-by-one to my nail. This didn't take as long as you'd think - but I don't know that I'd have the patience to do my whole hand. I had to apply two coats of a thick topcoat to seal it off, and even then, there was some texture.
This was also a giant pain in the butt to take off, even with the foil method.

Jeans:

My friend bought me a bottle of Maybelline Color Show Denim Dash - it's a pretty blue polish with fine silver glitter that dries matte. I used two coats for this manicure.
I added a stud to my ring finger, to look like the button, or the rivets on jeans.

Gorgeous Bling Bling:

In honour of the cooler weather these last few days, and inspired by the pumpkin body lotion I just bought from Bath and Body works, I decided I needed to use an autumn shade on my nails.
This colour is essence Gorgeous Bling Bling (what a terrible name!), but it really is a gorgeous colour. Rusty orange with teeny tiny orange-gold flakies.

phew. OK, I'll try to keep up with this a little better.

Reddit Challenge - Inspired by Colour

I have really liked blue lately, so I figured, why not choose blue for this challenge?

I started with two coats of Ardene's Elektronika - a very pretty dark blue creme that I've used quite a bit. I used this as a base for the star of this manicure ...
Color Club Total Mystery - a sheer blue base with a blue-purple shimmer. I'd put this as a subtle duochrome - you can see it in the bottle, and you can sometimes see it on your fingers. I like it a lot, it's really pretty. I wish I could get better photos of it.

Time And Relative Dimension In Space

Before Christmas, I decided that I was going to finally sit down and teach myself how to knit, so I could make a Doctor Who scarf (4th Doctor, Tom Baker).

Fan Expo also came back to Vancouver for it's second year last weekend, and I decided I wanted to try and finish the scarf in time for the convention. To make it even more fun, I figured that I should keep an eye out in my travels for other pieces to make a Femme 4th Doctor costume.

Well, I managed to finish everything and find the costume pieces just in the nick of time, and I couldn't just go with any old manicure ...

Ardene Elektronika - two coats on each nail.

China Glaze Cosmic Dust - two coats on top of the blue. Yep, I finally managed to track down some holographic polish. I absolutely love it. I grabbed this one (silver) and Galactic Grey (gunmetal). New favourite polishes. The holographic effect is strongest in bright sunlight, but you can still get a bit of a shine under artificial lighting. Neither is completely in your face holographic like some of the other polishes out there, but it's definitely there. This one also doesn't seem to dull under topcoat, as I've read about other holographic polishes (it does at first, but once the topcoat is dry, you're good to go).
Someone described it as appropriately 'wibbly wobbly'.

To create the tardis, I just used my striping polishes in white, black and metallic blue. I wasn't originally intending on using the blue, but I felt the nails needed a little more definition.

Also ... one of the dealers had a Tardis set up for photo ops, so ... I just had to.

Two Weeks of Reddit Challenges

I'm on a deadline for a couple of craft projects so it's difficult to fit fancy nail art in as well.

Sorry I've been a bit behind!

Also, I wanted to share that my favourite nail blogger (and fellow Canadian) Kayla Shevonne is doing a nail polish giveaway sponsored by Butter London Canada. Today is the last day - go enter!

**** Giveaway ****

This post has two weeks worth of challenges in it, just so I can focus on getting my other projects done.

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First up, this last week's challenge was "Inspired by a Flag"

I chose the Union Flag (or Union Jack), but I also wanted to show what flags were used to create the Union Flag ...

It's a little wobbly because it was all done freehand with normal sized nail polish brushes. I really need to get a striper brush.

Thumb: Union Flag

Index: Flag of England - St. George's Cross

Middle: Flag of Scotland - St. Andrew's Cross (sorry, I didn't have an appropriate blue, it's supposed to be an azure blue background)

Ring: St. Patrick's Cross. From what I understand, this one is frequently used by the government to represent Northern Ireland. Check out Wikipedia for some information on Flag disputes in Northern Ireland.

I just used the blue on my pinky to tie everything together.

Colours Used:

Blue - Ardene Elektronika

White - Zoya (colour unknown)

Red - Essence Flame Fatal

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This coming week's manicure is "Flowers"

I settled on daisies.

Two coats of Essence Wake Up!
Then I used my Claire's white detail polish to create the daisy and added a dot of  Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine for the centres.

Easter Nails

Inspired by my jelly sandwich from a few weeks ago, I did some Easter themed nails.
I decided to make it a ruffian manicure to incorporate some chocolate brown into it as well.

I used 2 coats of Revlon Chocolate Truffle to create the base for the ruffian. I only painted it near the cuticles, because I didn't want to create too many layers.
I went over that with a thin coat of Zoya White to create a base for the lighter colours.
From pinky to thumb, I used Zoya White, Fascino Blue, Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow, Sally Hansen Pink Blink and Ardene's Stereo Love. Two coats of each.
Once those were mostly dry, I added Ardene's Paris Nights multicoloured glitter. It's in a slightly green tinted base so it did alter the pastels a little bit, but it's super pale and sheer, so you don't notice it once the manicure is done.
Once the glitter coat was mostly dry, I went over it with Sally Hansen Polar Bare to mute down the colours and matte the glitter.
Topcoat to even everything out and protect it and voila! speckled Easter eggs!

The Ardene's polish and the Sally Hansen Polar Bare both take ages to dry, but it's a super cute effect.

I wore this over to a friend's house and once they saw it they said "you have Easter eggs on your nails! Chocolate ones!"
I think the concept was a success.

Reddit Challenge - Violet

This week's challenge is Violet. I wasn't sure if I wanted to just do purple or actually violet flowers on my nails.
I seem to be coming down with something, so I'm tired and I decided on purple nails with some floral stamping ...

I used two coats of Ardene's Stereo Love - a lilac not-quite-jelly not-quite-creme. It's thick but sheer on the first coat, and the second coat makes it opaque, but it has an odd ... depth (?) to it. I like it.

After that was thoroughly dry (and Ardene's polish takes ages to dry), I used my Claire's white detail polish and Bundle Monster plate BM10 to stamp on some little white flowers.

Since the polish is lilac and not violet, I'll use the excuse that the flowers are supposed to be Canadian white violets ... haha

I'm going to try and do a second manicure this week, but we'll see how I'm feeling.
Next week's challenge is "Inspired by a tutorial"
I've posted every tutorial I wanted to try so far ... so I'm going to have to go in search of a new one!

Royal Blue + Heavenly + Matte

I found a bottle of Revlon Heavenly a while back and was trying to figure what to wear it over.
I saw this review on Pretty Girl Science blog and loved the way it looked, so I wanted to try and recreate it.

Without flash, so you can see the sparkles:

With flash, so you can see the blue base:

I started with 2 coats of A.Co (Ardene's) Elektronica - a lovely royal blue creme. It was a bit streaky on the first coat, and I had to be careful of creating bare patches, but the second coat solved all this and it was perfect.

Then I topped it off with Revlon's Heavenly. This is a really pretty iridescent chunky glitter polish in a slightly milky base. It is a dupe of a Deborah Lipmann's Stairway to Heaven nail polish.
You get two shapes, and they're two different iridescent colours. The hex glitter is an orange-green shift and the square glitter is a turquoise-blue shift.
Super pretty.

When that was all dry, I slapped on a matte topcoat.

I'll definitely do this one again. I don't care if glitter is a pain in the butt to remove.

I've got another post coming up on Monday - another challenge theme.

Reddit Challenge - Rainbow

I've wanted to do a rainbow water marble for a while, so I thought this was the perfect opportunity.

Except, I didn't want to do it on every finger. I thought, why not do water marble tips?

A few tries and lots of nail polish remover later ...

2 coats OPI Black Onyx on each finger, except my ring finger. Then I taped off the tip and painted on a coat of Zoya White.

2 coats Zoya White on my ring finger.

Water marble: 

1 drop Zoya White, 

1 drop Wet'n'Wild Red, 

1 drop Sally Hansen Sun Kissed

1 drop Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow

1 drop Claire's Scented Lime

1 drop Ardene's Electrified

1 drop Essence Break Through

Swirl and dip!

For my ring fingers, I taped off around the edge of my nail to help cleanup and dipped the whole thing.

While my other fingers were still taped from the white, I dipped them 2 fingers at a time (to save time and polish). I did my index and middle finger, then my thumb and pinkie. 

I did not wrap the tape all the way around, so there was a LOT of clean up on those ones.

The photo shows some spots that I missed on cleanup - darn it - there was nail polish all over my hands.

I think it looks really neat! I don't think I'd do it again with that many colours, but if I was to do a water marble with 3 or 4 colours, just doing the tips would work really well.