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!

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.

ORLY Galaxy FX

I saw these on a trip to Sally Beauty Supply, and grabbed two of them right away.
ORLY's Galaxy FX are jelly (or crelly - creamy jelly) polishes that are absolutely jam-packed with glitter. Oh my God the glitter.

This one is called "Gravity Bound"

The polish is a dark blue jelly base with fine blue glitter, small purple hex glitter and large white hex glitter.
This is two coats.

The polish is very thick, so it can be a bit goopy if you don't work fast.

Because of the glitter, it's a bit gritty as well. I had to apply two coats of my fast-dry topcoat that normally smooths everything out in one coat.

The polish is gorgeous, and I couldn't stop looking at it. It really does look like it was inspired by outer space - a nebula and stars.

Only drawback?
I guess the thick glitter and two coats of topcoat caused the polish to just pop right off:

Thankfully, this was after about 4 days of wear, so no big deal.

The other one I picked up is called Intergalactic Space - which I will post photos of another time. I have something in mind I'd like to try with it.

For Audrey / Pop Rocker

My sister bought me Hard Candy's Pop Rocker for Christmas - it's like Black Tie Optional (which she also grabbed for me), but with the addition of pink bar glitter.

I figured I needed to use Pop Rocker, so I needed to find a good base colour.

I went with China Glaze For Audrey - their ever popular perfect Tiffany blue. Two coats to get a nice even base. I finally picked up this polish using a Sally Beauty gift card I also got for Christmas. It's so pretty.

Topped it off with one coat of Pop Rocker - you have to dig a bit to get the larger sized glitter chunks, but, like the other Hard Candy glitters, you get awesome coverage without really trying.

With the Pro FX Epoxy Bond base coat and Quick Dry top coat, this manicure lasted over a week before I even started to notice tip-wear.

Revlon Selects - Revlon Parfumerie

I actually received a couple of Revlon Selects packages in the last couple of months.
First one was some more of their 3D nail strips. I got two designs. I gave one to a friend to try (I don't believe she's used strips before, so I wanted her take on them), and I kept one for myself to use for my company Christmas party - that's next weekend, so I'll have a review up hopefully next Monday.

The second box had a single polish in it - from their new Parfumerie line.

The bottles are super cute, rectangular with beveled edges, and the lid is small and round - it looks reminiscent of a simple perfume bottle. Obviously what they were going for, and it worked.
The smaller lid was actually pretty easy to work with. It's about the same height as a mini polish lid, but the shape makes it easier to hold than a traditionally shaped lid on a mini bottle.

The scent/shade I received is "Spun Sugar" - a metallic off-silver, almost pewter shade.

This is two coats - I decided to fancy it up by adding a jewel to each nail (pale blue, round; from the Claire's gem wheel). I thought it would give it a bit of a wintery feel.

First coat wasn't quite opaque, but second coat evened it out. You can just barely see some brushstrokes; and I find that's pretty typical of these frosty metallics, so no complaints there

The scent is creamy and sweet. I don't really know how else to describe it.
I just applied it, so we'll see how long the scent lasts :)
While it was drying, the smell reminded me of a new magazine with an unopened perfume sample - weird, but that's where my brain went. Once it fully dries, the sugary scent really comes out.
I did find the scent to be a little on the strong side at first, but my nose has been very sensitive to perfumes lately. I don't know if I'm just used to it now or what, but it has mellowed out to where I can only really smell it if my fingers are about two inches from my nose.

I DID use a topcoat, and the polish passed the test. Once the topcoat was dry, the scent came back, just as strong as before.

The box also contained a brochure with two scent samples
- Autumn Spice:  looks like a beautiful coppery brown shimmery bottle of goodness, and it smells like pumpkin spice, which, well, I am obsessed with.
- Surf Spray: looks like a (metallic?) teal-blue, smell is very typical of "water" scented perfumese (if that makes sense). I don't really know how else to describe it.
There were 16 shades at the time of release, and it looks like there are more now.

If I don't get any of these for Christmas, I will be buying Autumn Spice, and another one I saw in stores called Italian Leather.

The Day of The Doctor

I've already established that I am a Doctor Who fan, so I have definitely been looking forward to today - the 50th anniversary of the show.

I figured I should do a manicure that would be appropriate for today.

I think I am most proud of my ring finger - it turned out pretty much exactly how I wanted.

The TARDIS on my thumb:

• China Glaze First Mate - for the base
• It's So Easy Stripe Rite Blue Metallic - for detailing
• It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black - for detailing
• Claire's White striping polish - for detailing
• Sinful Colors Snow Me White - for the windows and the door sign

The 10th Doctor on my index finger:

• Revlon Chocolate Truffle - for the jacket
• It's So Easy Stripe Rite Blue Metallic - for the pinstripes
• It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black - for detailing
• Claire's White striping Polish - for the shirt
• Chine Glaze First Mate - for the tie

The 11th Doctor on my middle finger:

• Icing Skinny Dipping Beauty - for the jacket
• It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black - for detailing and pants
• Claire's White striping Polish - for the shirt
• Sally Hansen Celeb City - for the buttons
• Ink Nail Art Dark Red - for the bowtie

A Dalek on my ring finger:

• Revlon Vincent Van Gold - for the base
• It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black - for detailing
• Claire's Gem Wheel - yellow rhinestones - for the "Dalek bumps"
• Claire's Gem Wheel - silver rhinestones - for the eye stalk.

A Cyberman on my pinky:

• Claire's Celeb City - for the base
• It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black - for detailing

Also ... I just finished watching the special. So. Good.

Catching up Part 2

I was looking up autumn nail trends, and found a couple of shades that I thought would really work well together: navy blue and chocolate brown. I also wanted to use the striping tape that I bought at a local Asian night market, so I thought diagonal two-tone would be fun.

I used China Glaze First Mate for the blue and Revlon Chocolate Truffle for the brown. The striping tape is a holographic gold.
My topcoat picked up the brown and deposited it on the blue on a couple of nails ... oops.

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Oxblood was another autumn trend, so I thought it would be a good choice.

I used two coats of Sally Hansen Burgundy Child for most of the fingers, and two coats of Nabi 3D Rainbow Effect in Tawny
The Nabi polishes aren't bad - I get them 3 for $5 at Urban Planet, and while not super strong, they do have a slight linear holo effect going on.

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I needed some orange for Thanksgiving / Halloween:

3 coats Nabi 3D Rainbow Effect in Bronze (mine is mislabeled as "Brone" - hah!) and I did a "sideways Fench" with Avon Golden Twilight - a black with gold glitter.
Fuzzy image for the slight holo effect:

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Finally, for Halloween, I decided to do something different on every finger.

- Thumb was a vampire mouth: Color Club Red de Rio for the base, Claire's black detail polish in the middle and detailing at the top, Claire's white detail polish for teeth and a "shine" on the bottom lip.
- Index finger was a jack-o-lantern: Revlon Nude Beige base, NYC Pumpkin for the pumpkin, Claire's black detail polish for the face and outline, I used a no-name green glitter detail polish for the stem.
- Middle finger was one of my favourites - a ghost. I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White, added Wet n Wild glow in the dark topcoat, then created the outline with Claire's black detail polish - I used a dotting tool for the bottom and the eyes.
- Ring finger was my other favourite - a blob of slime. Revlon Nude Beige for the base, Nabi 3D Rainbow Effect in Green for the slime, Claire's black detail polish for the outline.
- Pinky was done by applying a layer of Sinful Colors Snow Me White, a layer of Sally Hansen Sun Kissed and finally a layer of Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow. I outlined it all with Claire's black detail polish to create the triangular Candy Corn shape.

phew!

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.

Reddit Challenge - Summer and Galaxy

This is proving to be a busy few months!

I have two weeks for you again.

First up is Summer ... I actually received an email from Butter London with a video tutorial on how to achieve this look using their summer shades. I picked 3 similar shades from my collection and went at it. I'm not that great with my dotting tools yet ... but I'm sure I'll get better at it.
Super bright and super cute!

1 coat of Sinful Colors Snow Me White
1 coat of Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine
Blue dots with an unnamed blue from an Ombre set I bought.
Pink dots are Sinful Colors Dream On

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After I took off the above manicure, the nails on my left hand started to peel really, really badly, so I had to cut and file my nails down to nubbins ...

Next challenge is Galaxy - I wanted to do a single galaxy on all my fingers - I think it worked.

This was done using mostly Essence polishes, so I'll just list the shades.
2 coats of  Black is Back
Using a sponge, I dabbed on (in order) Choose Me!, Walk on the Wild Side, Let's Get Lost, Grey-t To Be Here, and Date in the Moonlight.
On top, I dabbed a bit of KiSS Big Break Blue #3 (glitter in a very sheer blue jelly base) from their blue Gradation kit.
Then I finished it off with Quo silver glitter from their "Nice" Christmas nail polish pack.

phew!

Reddit Challenge - Inspired by a Pattern

My "inspired by a pattern" manicure was actually inspired by a game!

My gaming group is just starting a Pathfinder game set in Ancient Greece, so I thought, why not do a Greek Key pattern on my nails.

2 coats of Sinful Colors White on White - I finally switched over to my new white. My Zoya one is getting a bit thick, and it's also an off-white, so I didn't think it would work as well with this one, especially since I was going to be using a white detail polish.

On my ring finger, I did one coat of It's So Easy Stripe Rite polish in blue.

For the white nails, I used the same striper polish to add the design
On the blue nail, I used my Claire's white striper polish.
I also used these for corrections where needed. Unfortunately, the Clair's polish has a single long hair that sticks out and I couldn't find my nail scissors to trim it down, so it was a bit messy. I'll have to fix that before I try another really detailed manicure.

I think it came out pretty well.

Reddit Challenge - Text

I knew this one would be a stamping challenge, because I didn't want to do another newspaper manicure just yet.

I used 1 coat of Sinful Colors Rain Storm - I really love this blue. It's got a slight grey tone to it, and the polish is perfect in a single coat.

I used my Zoya white and Bundle Monster plate BM-311 to add the ampersands.
BM-311 has stamping images with numbers, a love letter, "love" written in different fonts and then the ampersands. I figured having little &&&& all over my fingers would be cute.

Next week's challenge is Pastel.
I've been a bit tardy with my posts lately, but that's mostly because work has been wearing me out and we've barely been home. I've always had something on my nails, but haven't had a chance to get nice photos of the manicures.

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.

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.

New Year's Manicure

This week's Reddit Challenge was New Years - even if I wasn't doing the challenges, I'd still want pretty nails for New Years Eve.

I knew months ago that I wanted to do a glitter gradient, and it seems that they're the 'it' thing right now - which is pretty awesome.

I tried it with the glitter at the top of my nail this time and I went with a subtle colour combo.
Please pardon the tip wear - my nails are too short for me to wrap the tips and the top coat I used seems to be causing the polish to shrink (you can see on my thumb where I didn't quite get it all the way to the edge, so the polish cracked vertically)

I used two coats Color Club Blue-topia - it looks black, but it's actually a deep inky blue. First coat is pretty sheer, but it would be hard to do this one as a single-coat polish because wherever you overlap, it gets darker.

The gradient was done using Essence Choose Me! a teal glass fleck polish. I dabbed it on near the cuticle and dragged it down my nail to create the gradient effect - I used a few layers to build it up closer to the cuticle.

This one was really hard to photograph - the contrast is much more obvious in person.

Christmas Haul

So, of course I asked for nail polish for Christmas ... here's what I got:

My sister-in law bought me:
It's So Easy Stripe Rite polishes in turquoise, blue, black and hot pink
Nail Bliss spiderweb nail stickers
Cina nail art pen in white

I did this manicure while we were opening presents:

My mom bought me a ton of polish - I asked her for the whole Essence collection (since it's pretty inexpensive). She wasn't able to find many of the new ones - I guess her Shopper's got all the old stock - but she bought me all of the old ones she could find, plus more!

Essence new collection:
110 Modern Romance (shimmery peach)
128 Let's Get Lost (bright blue)

Essence old collection:
04 Space Queen (iridescent glitter)
05 Sweet as Candy (sheer pink)
26 Break Through (purple with a slight hint of gold shimmer)
34 Walk of Fame (purple-brown-grey)
38 Choose Me! (teal glitter)
39 Lime Up (x2)
43 Where is the Party? (purple/green duochrome)
46 Wake Up! (traffic cone orange)
59 Black is Back (x2)
68 High Spirits (olive green / gold)
70 Nude It (brownish nude)
75 Gleam in Blue (shimmery light blue)
83 Luxury Secret (pewter?)
95 Wanna Be Your Sunshine (shimmery yellow)

Sally Hansen HD polishes (just the shimmery ones, not the duochromes):
Digital (hot pink)
Blu (um ... blue)
Pixel Pretty (turquoise)
Three D (orange)
Lite (yellow)

Sinful Colors neon mini polish collection, which comes with Dream On (fuchsia) Pink (derp), Irish Green, Neon Melon (surprisingly, yellow) and Fusion Neon (a bubblegum pink)


My husband bought me the Bundle Monster stamping plates 2012 Collection.
I didn't take a photo, but he even tagged the package "To: B2" haha!
I'm just trying to figure out which image to use for my nails right now.

Reddit Challenge - Inspired by a Song

I had a really tough time with this one, and I asked people for help.

I asked my husband first. At the time, I was painting my nails black for my company Christmas party, and he just looked at my nails, looked back at me and raised his eyebrows. "Paint it Black" ... I really didn't want to cop-out, but I kept it in my back pocket.

I asked a co-worker. "99 Red Balloons", he suggested and gave me a link to a website with a list of songs that have colours in the title. Very crafty!

I browsed the site and thought "Yellow Submarine!" but since I'm going to be taking it off quickly to do a manicure for another Christmas party, I didn't want to put a lot of time into it.

I started typing in bands, looking for lists of songs, I finally went back to The Beatles, and figured why not just go for their costumes for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

So ... here it is!

Thumb is 3 coats Claire's Scented Banana
Index finger is 2 coats Wet n Wild Lavender
Middle finger is 3 coats Claire's Scented Lime
Ring finger is 2 coats Fascino Blue
Pinkie is 2 coats Wet n Wild Red

Details are done with Claire's and Icing detail polishes in gold and silver.

Fast and cute!