geez...

Valentine's Day Nails

2012-02-14T12:08:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! And happy belated Gal-entine's Day (Feb. 13), completely forgot about it until I watched the Parks and Rec Valentine's episode again.

I did three coats of Borghese Rapido in Capriccio Blue then proceeded to use acrylic paint for the polka dots and hearts. Then I stamped using the Charming Nails Q1 plate and Kleancolor Black. Filled in the bird with the same red and and white acrylic paint and then tried to restamp over top. Thankfully the best restamp happened on my left ring finger. The others were full of fail. But I still left them instead of redoing them.

New Stuff

2012-02-13T22:26:00.001-05:00

Bought some new polishes recently from Winners and I won a stamping plate from solongkitty.ca.

The Borghese Rapido polishes were in a pack of five and were on clearance so I picked it up since I had a gift card from Winners to use up. Colours from left to right are Romanzo Pink, Felice Tangerine, Capriccio Blue, Incantato Purple and Fantastico Lime. The polishes are alright, they don't dry much faster than others. Plus three coats are needed for them to be opaque.

Here's a closer look at the stamping plate.

It is the Charming Nails Q1 plate. Super awesome plate and first time I won a giveaway.

I did a Valentine's mani using the birds on the plate, didn't turn out so great, but I'll post it up tomorrow after I take some pics.

ASK Rich Sapphire + RA-106

2012-02-09T21:06:00.000-05:00

Here is the is the mani I did on Sunday to test out the longevity of the ASK polishes on the nails. Pictures are from two different cameras so that's why the colouring is different. I painted on one coat of the ASK base coat, then three coats of Rich Sapphire and topped it with two coats of ASK top coat. For the ring finger accent nail I stamped on an image from Red Angel plate RA-106 using Konad white special polish before the two layers of top coat.

I don't think the base and top coats helped to keep the mani from lasting a long time. When I home Tuesday night I noticed that there were a few chips on my nails with one peeling away.

These are pictures of my left hand, I couldn't get focused pictures of my right hand. My index finger had the peel while my ring finger had the corner chip.

Not very long lasting. Two days, maybe 2.5 days of chip-free-ness. I didn't even do anything like crafting or sewing, I just went out to have some wings and gelato.

I'm not sure if it's the polish itself or the base and top coats being crappy. I think it might possibly just be the top and base coats not being that great. I did my nails earlier after cutting down my nails and I've already got small chips on three nails. And I didn't even take pictures yet.

I'll test the longevity of the polish again, but with my regular Seche Base and Seche Vite. If it's no good again then the polishes are probably not gonna provide long lasting wear.

One last thing to add, my bottle of ASK Romantic Sunset has already started to separate.

No biggie, just shake to mix it back up, but odd as I've only had the polish for a week. This hasn't occurred in any of the other ASK polishes. So just weirdness with this one.

KimsKie's Nails: 160 followers Giveaway!

2012-02-07T21:45:00.002-05:00

KimsKie's Nails is having a giveaway and you can win your choice of 4 essence polishes.

Giveaway is open internationally and closes February 28th, 2012.

Disco Ball

2012-02-05T11:57:00.000-05:00

This was two coats of American Apparel Imperial Purple, forgot to take a picture of it. You can click here if you want to see a bottle shot, it was a gift from my friend Judy. My camera makes purples look bluer than they actually are, so colour is inaccurate. It's a really deep rich purple, kind of like those dark chubby oval-ish eggplants.

I place these mirrored circles on my ring finger in a random pattern. These didn't photograph well either. They're so shiny in real life, but in pictures they look kind of dull. But you can see the reflections of the mirrors on the sides of my middle and pinky fingers. The circles laid pretty flat on the nail and two coats of Seche Vite made a pretty smooth and even surface.

Pink Tips + Lace Stickers

2012-02-02T18:16:00.002-05:00

When I bought the gold metal stickers/decals I also bought some lace stickers. The stickers are alright, but they all have some greenish glitter on them. It's most noticeable on the black parts of the lace. I would rather have them be a flat black and white, no glitter. Oh well.

Two coats of Quo by Orly in True Love on the tips, stickers and then non fast drying top coat. The stickers weren't too fond of Seche Vite. It made them scrunch up and lift from the nail.

Golden Skyline

2012-01-29T13:00:00.000-05:00

Another nail look with the gold metal bits, but this time it's gold metal strip. These pictures show the shininess of the metal bits, better than the last one. I did one coat of Dabo RD440 and then two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme-Wear Black Out to the side. Gold strips placed so that it'll hide any imperfections, but sometimes the strips made dents, but that's OK.

The strips are bit harder to work with because as your pulling it off the sheet it could break at weak points. Just gotta be extra careful. Also because this was more solid with less cut outs it was harder to get it to lay flat. Had to use the flat handle end of a pair of tweezers to get it to lay as flat as possible.

Gold On Gold On Gold

2012-01-26T15:03:00.000-05:00

I recently purchased what I thought were gold stickers from ebay, but they're more like really thin metal pieces. They are attached to an adhesive sheet instead of being loose in a jar. You kind of have to smoosh them down so that they'll adhere to your nail better, but some edges still don't lie flat. Can be a bit annoying, but it's OK.

Started off with two coats of Etude House LUCIDarling Fantastic Nails 01 Sparkling Royal Gold. Then I placed the metal bits and smoothed them down with a nail buffer which sort of made the residual glue on the metal bits turn dark and hard to remove sometimes. Lastly a coat of Ardene Disco Ball which isn't really noticeable in the pictures, but does make the nails more sparkly.

Gold Glitter Gradient

2012-01-21T12:05:00.000-05:00

Something quick and easy to do and it looks really nice. So sparkly in real life.

I applied one coat Color Club Gingerbread on just the tips and then let it dry. Gingerbread is pretty dense with the glitter so it nicely covers the white part of nail tips preventing VNL. Then starting from mid-nail I applied one coat of H&M Gold. There's quite a bit of glitter in Gold, but not as dense as Gingerbread and the glitter is smaller than Gingerbread. Lastly I did one coat over the entire nail of Ardene Disco Ball. Light gold-ish glitter with larger sliver holographic glitter.

Super love this, but I love glittery gradients.

Scales + A Couple of Giveaways

2012-01-18T11:48:00.000-05:00

Fish scales? Dragon scales? Either one would be OK for the upcoming Lunar New Year. It'll be the year of the dragon and fish is a symbol for something. At the Asian malls there are various sweets shaped like fish and one of the dishes for new year's eve dinner is suppose to be a whole fish. I think every Chinese holiday or special occasion tends to have fish present.

Anyway, for this I used two coats of Quo by Orly in Turquoise Moonlight. There were some bald-ish spots, but since I was stamping over it I didn't really care, they weren't that noticeable. I then stamped with American Apparel Gold Flash and Red Angel plate RA-111.

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A couple of really awesome giveaways that I thought people may be interested in.

First up - Giveaway by The Polished Perfectionist

You can win the Hits No Olimpo collection, that includes 12 colours and one top coat. Click on the above picture to take you to the giveaway.

Giveaway ends January 28, 2012.

Next up - Giveaway by Bunny Nails

Bunny Nails has tons of prizes so the next part is taken directly from her blog.

There are going to be 13 winners!

The prizes are:

1 winner: XL nail stamp plates A, B, C & D (same as magnonails)

1 winner: QA series nail stamp set of 19 plates (QA 1- QA 19)

1 winner: A series nail stamp set of 20 plates (A 01- A 20)

2 winners: 7 QA nail stamp plates 1, 2, 3 , 4, 12, 14 & 17 (Cartoon characters)

2 winners: 6 QA nail stamp plates + 2 A series stamp plates (random selection)

6 winners: 1 Kleancolor nail polish in Chunky Holo Black + 6 nail art sticker sheets

Click on the picture to take you to the giveaway.

Giveaway ends February 17, 2012.

Diagonal Stripes and Flowers

2012-01-15T11:18:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post before heading out. I did two or possibly three, don't quite remember, coats of Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau. I used Konad special polish in white and SHANY plate SH23 for the stripes. These stripes are much thinner than the one available on the first set of BundleMonster plates. The length of the SHANY stripes image is also longer than the BundleMonster one, but the width is approximately the same. The flowers are puffy nail stickers that I forgot I even had. Found them while cleaning some junk off my desk.

Polish Gifts #2 + Layered Reds

2012-01-11T19:19:00.001-05:00

Here are the other polishes I received during the holidays. The American Apparel polishes were Christmas gifts from my friend Judy. The Color Club polishes which I believe to be from a Pardon My French set were gifted to me via my friend Dawn from her brother's girlfriend. It's all the colours minus Si Vous Please.

And that's it for polish gifts this year.

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I used two colours from the Quo by Orly mini set, Garnet (left) and Red Hot (right). Pictured top right is both colours swatched on their own with two coats each. Red Hot is pretty pigmented and one coat would have sufficed. As for Garnet, it's pretty sheer, on the nail by itself you'd probably need three coats for opacity. For the mani I did one coat of Red Hot and one coat of Garnet. Then I used some water decals that look like they could have been hand painted.

Polish Gifts #1 + Grey Glitter Snowflakes

2012-01-04T20:43:00.000-05:00

Long time no write. Not because I was super busy or anything just that I haven't been photographing my nails much. I didn't really paint my nails much during the holidays. When I did do my nails they usually didn't last all that long.

Hope everyone had a happy holiday and a good start to the new year. To start off this post I have a pic of a set of mini polishes of Quo by Orly polishes that my friend Amy got me for Christmas. (Hi Amy, that was your shout out, though you had to wait a while for it, thanks for the polishes.)

Quo by Orly polishes are available at Shoppers Drug Mart stores and I had never tried them before so this set was a great introduction to them. No pictures of any of them yet, but I will get on it. Ah I just realized that the bottom of the pic is missing the names for the bottom row. D'oh. I'll list out all polishes.

From left to right, top row:
Very Vixen, Mystic Night, Garnet, Precious, Sapphire Sparkle, Cold Stone, Rock Show, Rock Star and Night Sky.

Bottom row:
Turquoise Moonlight, Celestial Star, First Class, Filthy Rich, Red Hot, Wine and Dine, Old Hollywood, Love Game and True Love.

Most of the polishes are glittery or shimmery and seems like they may work best as layering polishes. However 3 thin coats will get you full coverage with minimal or no bald spots. The tiny brush is not to my liking, but that's OK.

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Next up nails. I did this some time last week.

Base colour was two coats of American Apparel Echo Park. I forgot to include Konad special polish in white in the photo, but that's OK. Used Konad white to stamp with and plates SH17 for the snowflake on the index finger, RA 119 for the thumb and ring finger and HB23 for the smaller not so well stamped snowflakes on the middle and pinky fingers. I also did some glitter snowflakes with Color Club Sugarplum, but they didn't turn out as nice as I thought they would. They kind of just looked like blobs of glitter on the nail. Topped everything with CoverGirl Boundless Color in Disco Dazzle.

That's it for today.

Green on Green + Nude Stars

2011-12-22T20:51:00.001-05:00

I've got a couple of manis to show today and first up is this sort of festive green on green one. Two coats or maybe three of Barry M Spring Green with Color Club Perfectly Mol-Ten as the stamping colour. I used SHANY plate SH20 for the pattern. This pattern is wide enough for my thumb, but it's kind of on the short side. Perfect coverage for shorter nails, longer nails would need to be double stamped.

Next up a nude colour with some sparkly stars.

Nails are still short so I thought I would change the shape for a more elongated and feminine look. Three coats of joe Latte as the base. For the stars I used a flimsy piece of plastic (scotch tape works too) and painted on a layer of Color Club Gingerbread (polish on left). Waited for that to dry and then painted half of it with Color Club Take the Stage. After everything was dried I peeled off the dry polish and used a star paper punch to punch out the stars. Put some top coat on the area that I wanted the star and then placed the star on top. Finished it off with two coats of top coat.

Here's a slightly better look at the stars.

I think I've done something similar to this before, but I can't remember when. It's probably somewhere

Santa + Reindeers Stamped

2011-12-18T12:09:00.000-05:00

I used images from SHANY plates, the flying reindeer from SH13 and the Santa face from SH03. I'm not sure if it's suppose to be Santa's face or just a bearded old man's face. I thought it was going to turn out smaller, but it filled up most of my shorter pinky nail.

Two coats Etude House LUCIDarling 04 Indigo Blue, stamped with Konad white and added a little bit of Color Club Beyond the Mistletoe to add some sparkle.

Awesome AA Polish Deal

2011-12-14T23:03:00.001-05:00

Hey just a quick post to share with you guys a teambuy coupon. You can get 5 American Apparel polishes for 15$. You can buy a coupon to use in store or online. Limited to one for yourself and two as gifts. The coupons are good till March 12, 2012. There's 4 more days left to purchase the coupon and this may be limited to within Canada only.

Red Angel + SHANY Stamping Plates

2011-12-13T20:54:00.000-05:00

A friend helped me buy these plates and sent them to me from the U.S.

First read about Red Angel plates from Canadian Nail Fanatic and the SHANY plates I read about from omgnoodles. I haven't really stamped with the plates all that much yet. I broke two nails trying to remove the battery cover from a cordless phone. So I have shortie nails and haven't really been painting my nails much. Waiting for them to grow a bit longer 'cause I they are too short for my liking.

There are 21 plates in the Red Angel set, 12 plates with full nail designs, 2 with french tips and 7 plates with individual images. The plates are the same size as Konad and BundleMonster plates, but they have no backing to them. Not really a problem I just use some contact paper/drawer liner to cover the backs. The plates stamp perfectly fine. The full nail designs aren't wide enough for my thumb, but I take that as a norm. Some or maybe most of the individual images are quite large so if you've got short nails it may fill up all or most your nail. A few images might be slightly similar to those of Konad and BundleMonster. Also I mislabeled the numbering of the plates, they should read like RA 120.

There are 25 plates in the SHANY set, 5 full nail designs, 1 french tip and 19 plates with individual images. These plates are OK. Some of the designs here are also slightly similar to Konad or BundleMonster. The plates are slightly smaller than other plates and also have no backing. The blue film that covers the top of the plate is very difficult to peel off. But once you've lifted a large enough section off the edges you can pull it off in one large piece. A few plates also have random scratches/dents on them, but they don't affect the images, the scratches are often in between them. Everything stamps just fine, except for the french tips, but I think that's more user error on my part. The full nail designs vary in size, some cover my entire thumb while others don't. Weird, but that's how it is.

And a bit of a comparison between Konad, BundleMonster, Red Angel and SHANY plates. They all seem to have a similar full nail circle pattern so you can compare the images and stamp sizes.

Looking at RA 105 it's not really circles, but looks close enough. If I ever wanted to do various circular patterns on my nails all at once I've got options to make them all different.

And finally a nail look using one of the plates. The last mani before the breakage.

Not quite centred, but still like. Two coats American Apparel Poppy stamped with Konad special polish in blue and Red Angel plate RA 105.

An Owl

2011-12-08T18:02:00.001-05:00

I was working on a different owl design, but it wasn't working out so I did a simple owl in a tree. The owl was suppose to be smaller, but the acrylic paint kept spreading into the branches so it gradually got bigger.

Three coats of Cosline 303 and black acrylic paint.

Fairly short post today, but the next post will be bigger. I recently purchased some new nail plates from Shany and Red Angel, they arrived yesterday so I'll show some images from those plates.

Minty Faux Marbling + More Nail Max

2011-12-06T19:19:00.001-05:00

Didn't really like this when I first did it, but it grew on me. I sponged on Wet N Wild Craze Undercover Graffiti and Sally Hansen Xtreme-wear Mint Sorbet. The Undercover Graffiti got lost in the sponging, but you can still sort of see it. Then I did a layer of KleanColor Holo Green. Once that was dry, which took a while, I stamped on the draggy marbling design from large plate b or Konad m78 with Konad special polish in white and then again with Mint Sorbet. The Mint Sorbet overlaps the white polish a bit so the white bits aren't super bright and you can see the mint stamp more.

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Three more designs from the December issue of Nail Max.

My favourite is the last one. I think the characters are just too cute, but my versions are definitely less cute looking than the ones in the magazine.

Sparkly Fame and Fortune + Nail Max X-mas

2011-12-05T18:41:00.001-05:00

Here's Color Club Fame and Fortune layered over two coats of a holo franken that I did ages ago. The franken is sort of sheer so the Color Club really deepens the pink. The large flecks of glitter plus the small holo glitter looks great in real life, but sort of dull in picture. My camera can't capture sparkliness. Had this on my nails for a few days. When I first saw Fame and Fortune I thought I wouldn't get much use out of it, but I am loving this combo and will probably like it layered over other polishes too.

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Was browsing through the December issue of Nail Max and decided to try out a few of their Christmas designs. I wasn't ready to take off glitter yet so I did them on nail wheel.

Here are a couple that I did. Christmas-y, but not CHRISTMAS-Y. And super easy. Except for the words. I think Konad has a nail stamp image for the words 'Merry Christmas', but I'm not sure which plate at the moment. I don't have it so I can't use it. I used a silver polish for the words, but I think I might need to pick up some metallic acrylic paint that I saw at the Dollarama. It would be easier to use when writing out words. I did a few more so I show them in another post.

It Snowed!

2011-11-30T18:47:00.001-05:00

It snowed today! Light and fluffy snow. But it didn't stay on the ground and melted all away in the afternoon. Much better than the rain that we had yesterday.

Did this a couple of days ago, seems kind of wintry. One coat of Color Club Cold Metal, which was sort of unnecessary since the two coats of Color Club Jingle Jangle covered it up. Stamped using Konad special polish in white using large plate B with an image that can be found on Konad plate M51. Jingle Jangle is super sparkly but not noticeable in my pictures. I really love the blue and purple glitters and I love the name Jingle Jangle too. It's a bit like nonsense words that you might sing to yourself or something.

I bought Jingle Jangle in Color Club set along with another set from Winners last week.

Beyond the Mistletoe - Sultry Color for a Glittering Holiday and Backstage Pass - Glitter Shades to Rock the Stage.

And here's some others that I bought last week too.

A box of H&M mini polishes, three Gosh polishes - Black Passion, Blue Monday and Gasoline and some polishes from the aerie store - Pink Frost, Champagne Shimmer and Brownie Points. Bought everything except for the Gosh polishes with a gift card and they were all on sale due to Black Friday sales happening on the Thursday before. The Gosh polishes were also bought on sale last week but on a separate occasion when I had to stop by Shoppers Drug Mart to pick up something for my mom.

I am pretty sure I am set for a no buy in December, but I can't say I'll absolutely stick to it. I'm already done my Christmas shopping and whenever I go grocery shopping I always stop by the Winners first. And always to the polishes first too. A habit I must break. Early new year's resolution.

More Double Yolks + Hex Polka Dots

2011-11-27T12:24:00.001-05:00

Quick post befor heading out.

From the same carton of eggs there were more twin eggs.

Pretty awesome and jumbo eggs are freaky.

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Two coats of Gosh Black Passion and the teeny tiny hex and rhinestones were used. Black Passion looks alright with the hex, but I think it would have been better with Etude House Extreme Black or Eyeko Cosmic, a black with multicolour shimmer/glitter in it.

Double Yolk

2011-11-23T19:41:00.001-05:00

I thought this was pretty cool since I've never cracked an egg and saw two yolks come out.

Normally I don't take pictures of food cooking, but two yolks in one egg means picture time.

Comparison pic with a normal one yolk egg.

Pale looking breakfast sausage in the upper corner.

Half Moons and Reindeer

2011-11-22T18:58:00.001-05:00

Recently lots of nail blogs were doing half moons, mostly from the 31 day nail art challenge. Never did them on my own nails so I thought I would give it a go.

I started out with two coats of Barielle Swizzle Stix then I used some paper reinforcements to tape off the base of the nail and did one coat of Grape Escape. The sides were kind of wonky so instead of doing the easier and less time consuming thing of just taking a nail art brush and filling in the wonks I used the mini hexagons to cover the wonks. The tips were a bit messed up due to trying out Duri Dry and Shine Speedy Top Coat.

Didn't really like this on my nails. Colours used, the hexagons, the moon-ness, I dunno, wasn't really a fan.

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Lots of Christmas decorations and gift wrap have been put out on displays in stores now and most are soooo pretty. I love pretty wrapping paper, but am refraining myself from buying any since I've still got wrapping paper that I bought like 10 years ago that I still haven't used. And I bought quite a few rolls last year. And I'm more into buying wrapping paper that I can use for all occasions now. And I like wrapping paper that's nice and thick and hard to tear. The ones from ten years ago are superb quality, I love them and I haven't found any that has come close to the quality of those papers in years. So I've been saving them. Saving them for what I don't really know. Bit of a hoarders thing going on.

One that I particularly liked that I saw at Winners, but did not buy, was a silver foil with purple reindeer pattern. I don't have a purple that's dark enough for my liking to stamp with so I switched it up with red reindeers over a gold background.

Base was two coats American Apparel Gold Flash, stamped with Konad special polish in red and I used plate BM-214 for the reindeer image. The gold is very bright in real life and maybe a tad too yellow for my skintone. This is alright, but I think I'm gonna try frankening a dark purple stamping polish. And I'm unsure about the stamped positions of the reindeer. I kinda wish the image was smaller. Or I guess I could paint on the reindeer instead.

More New Polishes

2011-11-17T20:09:00.001-05:00

My local Winners started stocking a lot more polishes. There's now a couple of bins of polishes along with some nail displays of the China Glaze Let It Snow collection, Color Club crackle polishes, Duri Wine Tasting Party collection and Sally Hansen Fast-Dri polishes. There's also a bunch of polish sets available from a bunch of different brands. I saw a couple of sets of Barielle polishes available and since I've never tried them I decided to pick one up.

The set I purchased included Grape Escape, Swizzle Stix, Do Unto Others, Blossom (looks more pink in real life) and Buddha-Ful. And there was a another set that looked like it had some sheer nudes so I skipped them. Here's a nail wheel swatch of the colours.

I think the flakiness of Buddha-Ful is hard to see in the swatches, but I have a mani for you see.

This was two coats of Buddha-Ful with Konad special polish in white stamped on with an image from Large Plate B. The polish is pretty packed with flakes, but because the milky pink colour is so sheer I did two coats instead of one. And because it's so sheer and I didn't really want VNLs I did the stamping. Kind of crappy since I'm not so great with stamping nail tips.

Here's what Buddha-Ful looks like layered over a couple of other Barielle polishes.

You can see the orange/green flakies better in this photo.

Nail Venus Inspired + AA Metallics Stamped

2011-11-13T11:05:00.001-05:00

Saw a design from the current issue of Nail Venus that I really liked and just had to do it.

Here is the pic of the nails from the magazine. The copy I downloaded was cut off there so I don't know what the thumb nail would have looked like. And this is what I did:

Super love! Love the colour combination, love the look and love that it was super easy to do.

Thumb and ring - Two coats of American Apparel Dance, then I used Color Club New Bohemian to do the first chevron freehand. I didn't have chevron nail guides and didn't cut up tape so I just eyeballed it. The chevrons didn't have to be perfectly straight either since the gold stripe was going to cover up weird lines. After New Bohemian I used American Apparel Make Up and lastly American Apparel Gold Flash for the gold lining.

Index - Three coats of American Apparel Dance, still has a bit of VNL, but I can live with it.

Middle - Two coats of Color Club New Bohemian.

Pinky - Two coats of American Apparel Make Up.

I didn't have any gold or silver studs to put on my nails so I finally found a good use for my larger hexagon glitters. The gold hexagons looked best placed at the base of the nails so I did that for the index, middle and pinky fingers.

I will probably do this again in different colours. I just love it.

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Bunny Nails wanted so see an example of the American Apparel Metallic polishes stamped so here's a pic of them stamped on Rimmel Lasting Finish Pro Black Satin.

At some angles it seems like the gold and silver polishes kind of look alike. They all stamp very well, no gaps in thick lines. Will stamp with them on my own nails soon.

Polka Dot Pumps w/Flowers + AA Haul

2011-11-09T20:32:00.000-05:00

I didn't take very many pictures of this, so the pics aren't very good. After 15mins of taking pictures and they all just end up looking the same, I stop and say, good enough.

Two coats of China Glaze Ruby Pumps, used the polka dots on large plate B along with Konad Special Polish in White. I added some floral water decals. The decals have little dots too and didn't realize it until after I had put them on my nail. So that's where the white dots that sort of arch come from.

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On Saturday I went shopping and used my second American Apparel Teambuy coupon to buy some more polishes. Though I think I should have saved it for later. I was talking to the girls behind the register and they said that some glitter polishes were going to be arriving in stores soon. They didn't know when exactly, but they said that the polishes looked pretty based on the pictures they had on their computer. I didn't see the pictures though as they couldn't swing the computer monitor around for me to see. Oh well. On to what I did buy.

Mostly neutrals and the metallic polishes. Names are already in the picture but here goes:
Top - Make Up and Dance (this is actually quite sheer, wasn't expecting that and also a bit more pink in real life)
Middle - 7th and Alameda and Echo Park, I wasn't going to pick up Echo Park thinking it was close to Factory Grey, but completely different, they didn't have any Factory Grey on the display.
Bottom - Silver Jazz, Gold Flash and Bronze Dash, these were the polishes I wanted to pick up, very good stamping polishes, looks fantastic over black or other dark colours.

And here's a nail wheel swatch of the polishes, two coats each though really the metallic polishes were good with one.

Same Rub On Transfers

2011-11-07T17:23:00.000-05:00

Used the same rub on transfer from the last set of nails I did, but this time I added some blotches of colours before putting on the transfer.

Base colour was three coats of NYX Girls Pistachio, the pink was a franken and the white was Kleancolor White.

I like this one quite a bit more than the previous one. And yea, these transfers do seem like they could have been done freehand.

Super Quick

2011-11-05T11:00:00.000-04:00

Quick post before heading out. Found another decent rub on transfer sheet from the Dollarama.

So here's a mani that I did.

Two coats of Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac, forgot to take a picture of it. I liked this quite a bit and didn't really use much of the transfer so lots more usage from it.

Lace Plate A34

2011-11-01T21:47:00.002-04:00

Recently bought a new stamping plate with lace designs.

It's a very difficult plate to work with and the images are also quite short so I filed down my nails so that I wouldn't have to double stamp on all my nails.

Here's the first decent looking set that I did.

Doesn't look too bad. Spent a long time trying to stamp it so that the image wasn't completely blurry. Colour scheme reminds me of the Sally Hansen lace nail strips. One coat of American Apparel Summer Peach (my photo makes it look beige, but it is more pink toned). Kleancolor Black as the stamping polish.

Here's a second one I did with the same plate.

I think the results were better this time round. I was using a hot glue gun before taking pictures and the glue kind of ruined the tips a bit. One coat of American Apparel L'Esprit and Kleancolor Concrete Gray as the stamping polish.

Little Monster Ghosties

2011-10-29T13:50:00.001-04:00

Saw a t-shirt at Bluenotes that had a bunch of different monsters on it and thought I'd draw them on my nails.

The shirt can be found here. I don't wanna go through screen capturing and cropping the pic of the shirt to put it up here.

This is my left hand. On the thumb it should be a wereghost, but ended up kind of looking like a bear. Then we have an ugly ghost, a zombie ghost, a bat ghost and a frankenghost.

On my right hand we have a witchy ghost on my thumb. From left to right we have uggo spideyghost, alien ghost, one eyed monster ghost, and vampire ghost.

Everything looks a bit like a mess and I didn't like it at first, but they slowly grew on me. My favourite little ghost is the zombie one.

Two coats of Kleancolor Neon Orange, one coat of Kleancolor Holo Orange and acrylic paints for the monsters.

New Polishes + Tiny Hex Glitters

2011-10-26T21:05:00.000-04:00

I saw these at my local Winners, decided to pick them up since they were inexpensive. There was another set with green, orange, purple and white polishes. The bottles with the black bows are matte polishes while the blue is a creme and the deep red is shimmery. They don't have individual names or numbers and they're supposed to be one coaters, but two coats is best.

And recently some nail art supplies that I bought off ebay arrived in the mail. I bought these tiny hexagon glitters along with some larger nail gems and some gold/silver ball chains. Wasn't really sure what I was gonna do with them, but decided upon an argyle design to use the glitters.

My hands are drrrryyyy. Indoor heating makes my skin dry and itchy. Anyway, I used the blue polish from above along with some acrylic paint for the diamond shapes and then used the hex glitters. So happy that the colour from the glitter doesn't bleed. I had previously bought a different set at the beginning of the year, but they lost their colour as soon as I put on a top coat.

Blue/Grey French + Crawling with Spiders

2011-10-23T14:02:00.000-04:00

Something simple in between some Halloween manicures.

This was three coats of joe Cement and then I used some tape and one coat of American Apparel The Valley. I really love this colour combination and especially love this blue. I used this same colour as the background of the octopus and boat design.

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This was two coats of WetNWild Sleepwalker, should have done three, but I thought two was sufficient. Then I used Color Club Antiquated to stamp spiders from BM13. Didn't really like this, but it's alright.

Halloween Vignettes

2011-10-19T15:33:00.000-04:00

Inspired from a design I saw from the October issue of Nail Up.

I did my left hand freehand with black/white acrylic paint, base colour was two coats of American Apparel Sunset Blvd.

For my right hand I used BundleMonster stamping plates BM13 from the older set and BM-224 from the newer set. I also used acrylic paint for the frame.

For both nails I also added a little bit of sparkle with LA Colors Art Deco Silver Glitter.

Wheel Art

2011-10-15T17:26:00.000-04:00

Haven't been painting my nails lately. I've shortened and squared off my nails again since I wasn't liking the shape before. But I have been doing some nail art on some nail wheels.

Zombie Nails

From left to right:
1. A sort of zombie crossing.
2. Eye and nose with worm coming out of the nose. The pupil streaked down when I put on a top coat so it sorta looks like the pupil fell out of the eye. I don't think that can actually happen, but I left it instead of a fixing it.
3. Zombie eye.
4. Zombie hand, but you can barely see it, should have used a different background colour or a lighter green.
5. Hand reaching out from the ground.

Show Off Skeleton

Skeleton showing off some painted tips.

Octopus Attack

Not really Halloween-y, but I was watching an episode of Arthur and it was the episode that D.W. was afraid of octopi after watching a show and wouldn't go into the water at the beach. So octopus attacking a boat. Scary to somebody, real or fictional.

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Also, Treat Yo Self. I love Donna from Parks and Recreation and soooo happy that she was featured more in the latest episode.

Skeletons

2011-10-12T19:49:00.002-04:00

Simple skeletons on the nails, though the ribs of the skeleton on my index finger looks weird, I still quite like this. The skeletons look like they could be dancing.

Three coats of American Apparel Sunshine State with acrylic paint for the skeletons. I think Sunshine State looks brighter in my picture than in real life. I think it looks a tad bit more mustardy in real life.

Haul + Girly Gothy

2011-10-08T13:59:00.000-04:00

Went shopping again and because I had a teambuy coupon for American Apparel I bought some new polishes from them.

Top row: L'Esprit, Dynasty and African Violet - for some reason the African Violet bottle is slightly rounder than the others.

Middle row: Mount Royal and two new shades The Valley Sunshine State

Bottom row: Two more new shades Pink Ladies and Sunset Blvd, lastly Summer Peach. The colours are actually brighter in real life, but my camera couldn't capture them properly.

Didn't mean to buy this much, but they were in the process of adding new colours to the shelf so I bought more.

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This isn't really my style, but I wanted to try out some acrylic skulls. Looks alright I guess. I think the skulls could have been more rounded and 3D looking. I also used some gold beads to make a star. A spider water decal for the middle finger. And some stamping using the stars image from BM17.

Colours used KleanColor Black, White and Neon Pink.

Haul + Mixed Mani

2011-10-04T19:20:00.001-04:00

My local Winners recently had some new Color Club sets in stock so I bought two of them. First six polishes are from collection A of the Back to Boho sets. Colours include Nomadic in Nude, Earthy Angel, New Bohemian, Shabby Drab, Rad Nomad and Red-ical Gypsy. The set also includes a Stuck On You Basecoat.

The second set I bought was the Foiled collection, didn't see the Back to Boho collection B available. Colours included in this set are Antiquated, Foil Me Once, Hot Like Lava, Perfect Mol-ten, Lumin-icecent and Cold Metal.

Haven't swatched these or really use 'em much except for one plastic wrap experiment. However, I did use a couple for the following mani.

Flowers, stripes, polka dots. For the thumb and pinky I did one coat of Perfect Mol-ten, middle and ring fingers were three coats of New Bohemian and the index finger was two coats of Wet N Wild Mad-Styles. The nail art was done with acrylic paint. Just something simple and girly.

Leopard Print with Flowers + Experiment

2011-10-02T14:27:00.000-04:00

Saw a make up bag at Forever21 with a leopard and rose print and quite liked it so I thought I would try it out on my nails. Not super in love with it because of the decals I used. Probably would have been better if I had painted on the roses.

Base colour is Ardene Barely There, used Color Club Soft As Cashmere for the stamping colour and plate m57 for the print. Was feeling lazy so I used water decals instead of painting.

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Sorry for the dry looking hands picture above. From the Korean blog 달빛샤워의 Coffee Break :: 네이버 블로그 there was a scan from a Korean nail magazine that featured using plastic wrap to I guess smoosh around the polish. I'm not too sure but that's what it looked like from the pictures. Here's a link to the blog post with the scans, you'll have to scroll down to see the tutorial.

It looks alright, but it's kind of bothersome to do. Basically paint the nail, dab on some dots of colour, place a piece of plastic wrap over the nail and move it around a bit, remove plastic wrap let dry a bit and then put on top coat so it blends the colours a bit.

Here's another version that I did with different colours.

Did the same thing as above but I added some starry glitter top coat and some rhinestones which were a misstep. Will probably continue to practice this until I am happy with the way it looks or just give up.

Liberty Charm

2011-09-25T17:09:00.000-04:00

My friend who gifted me the polishes from Europe also gave me a teaspoon and butter spreader from Sabre Paris. The butter spreader is a floral Liberty print and I thought it would be fun to try to replicate the print on my nails.

I didn't do a base colour, but maybe I should have, I dunno. I was going to be doing super layered stamping so I thought a base colour wasn't needed I used Wet N Wild Craze Mad-Styles, Etude House WH709 and WH708 to stamp on my nails multiple times until the the design was opaque. I used my large plate, but the images I used can be found on Konad plates m60 and m64, the grid style images. I didn't count how many times I stamped on my nails, but quite a bit. I wanted to achieve a woven fabric look, and I think it looks quite nice, though it turned out a bit dark. The grey I used turned out darker than I thought it would when stamped. The flowers were done using acrylic paint. They look OK, but this style is not my forte.

Water Decals

2011-09-17T13:24:00.000-04:00

I recently got some new water decals that sort of have a lacy look and could probably be done by hand.

First up is Sally Hansen Xtreme-wear Lacey Lilac with some black and white decals. The decals are nice, but kind of difficult to work with since they don't really move around like some other water decals I've used before. Wherever you place the decal is where it's going to stay. Kinda messed up on the ring finger, still looks OK though.

Another water decal, this time a more lacy look. Used joe Seashell as the base colour. I thought this look would be easily replicated so I quickly tried it out on a nail wheel.

The lace part would have probably looked better if I used a thinner pen nib, however this still looks alright.

EU Gifts

2011-09-12T19:44:00.000-04:00

Long time no post. I've just been kinda lazy and haven't really been taking pics of my manis in the past week or so. So I now have a post that should've been posted sooner. Some polishes from London and Paris from my friend.

At the end of August my friend went to London -> Brussels -> Paris for vacation and she picked up a few polishes for me. I had wanted greens, oranges and yellows and this is what she gifted me. Three Barry M polishes, three Top Shop polishes and three various French polishes.

Here are nail wheel swatches. Some look like dupes of one another, but still different. Kinda smudged Top Shop Bee's Knees so it looks rather sloppy in the pic. All the polishes were really nicely pigmented. Two or three (yellows) thin coats were needed for full coverage on nails. Great polishes all around.

Here's a swatch of Barry M Spring Green on my nails.

My hand looks really tan in this photo, but the green looks lovely.

Stamped Purple Gradient + Haul

2011-09-01T12:15:00.000-04:00

Sponged on Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lively Lilac and Innisfree PU08, then a layer of Color Club Starry Temptress Top Coat. Stamped using a Konad Princess Polish in not sure which colour using a full image design from a large plate B.

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Wasn't really intending on buying new polishes while out shopping, but I ended up getting these four on separate shopping outings.

The Tip Toe polish was from Old Navy and I only got it 'cause my friend needed something to put her over 20$ so she could use a coupon to save 10$. My swatch picture makes it look like it's kinda matte, but it's actually shiny.

On a different shopping trip I stopped by a Loblaws while killing time before heading to dinner and picked up a few joe polishes. I picked up Seashell 'cause I thought it would be a perfect match to a dress that I was going to wear to a wedding and got Slate and Iris 'cause I liked the colours and it was three polishes for 10$.

Neon Splatter

2011-08-28T23:25:00.000-04:00

Another splatter, different from the droplet splatter of large plate A. Large plate B has a full nail image with splatter lines. Just used a bunch of neon colours and layered over one another. Even though the purple was the first colour stamped it still stands out quite prominently. The other three just weren’t as pigmented I suppose so they didn’t really cover up any of the purple.

Base colour is Wet N Wild Craze Mad Styles stamped with mini versions of Color Club Power Play, Limelight, Amp’d Up and Lazer Pink.

Paisley Print

2011-08-23T00:08:00.001-04:00

The pink looks much lighter in the pictures than it does in real life. Dunno why. Always liked this image from the Konad plates and glad I have this on the large plate.

Base colour is The Face Shop PK101 stamped with ELF Smoky Brown.

Super short post.

Houndstooth

2011-08-20T11:24:00.000-04:00

Houndstooth design from the large plate. This one looks a bit awkward. On some nails it looks like the darker pink was stamped onto the lighter colour and on others it looks like the lighter colour was stamped onto the darker one. Weird. I chalk it up to my lack of stamping. However I will get back into it since I’ve got this large plate and I still haven’t used all the designs available on the newer BundleMonster plates yet.

Base colour is NYX Girls Heather stamped with a light pink ENAS stamping polish.

Lazy Plate Comparison

2011-08-18T19:35:00.000-04:00

Here’s a pic of one of the large plates that I bought off eBay. This one features the full nail designs. I am going to do a comparison between the large plate and some Konad plates. I would have done it with the other large plate with just individual designs, but I didn’t have any Konad plates that matched those designs.

One close up pic of the plate.

I just simply stamped all the designs from the Konad plates then did the large plate designs underneath. You can click the pictures to see the differences and similarities better.

Overall the images on the large plate are good copies of the Konad designs. Some images may be thicker or thinner. Any gaps in the stamping is more my stamping error than the plate being off.

Here’s the first mani I did with the big plate.

Done on shortened nails. Once again going shopping has made me chip the nail on my index finger and this time a bit on my middle finger.

Faux water marble looking design. Base colour was a faux mini OPI that I got at a random store in Markham with KleanColor Metallic Aqua as the stamp colour.

Little Roses Again.

2011-08-15T22:06:00.000-04:00

More floral nails. This time taupe with red roses.

Two coats Etude House BR309 with acrylic paints for the roses with Etude House RD106 to added a bit of sparkle to the roses. I don’t think you can really see shimmer from the red polish, it is super sheer and I only put a small dab on each rose.

Colourful Waves

2011-08-13T10:17:00.000-04:00

Lots of colours used for this. Two coats of KleanColor White as the base then I used the lighter colours to make a sort of wave or off centred top of heart on the nails. Once that was dried I did same thing with the darker colours, but made it off centred to the other side of the nail. Lastly added a rhinestone where the colour dips.

Colours from thumb
Light Colours - KleanColor Pastel Teal, Etude House PP903, Color Club Vintage Couture, KleanColor Pastel Yellow and Color Club Twiggie.

Dark Colours - Color Club Chelsea Girl, Color Club Pucci-licious, Color Club Poptastic, Color Club Wham! Pow! and American Apparel Malibu Green.

The colours in my pictures are a bit off for the pinks. They’re actually brighter in real life, I don’t know why they photographed so light.

Yellow Polish, Purple Flowers

2011-08-10T01:21:00.000-04:00

More acrylic bows. A different bow from the same mould as the one from before. Three coats of The Face Shop YL701 Pastel Yellow with purple roses painted on with acrylic paint. I didn’t really like the colour of the bows, they turned out darker than I thought they would. Still ok. I like yellow nails, but they don’t like me. In real life it makes my hands soooo red looking. Makes me sad, but I still love yellow polishes.

Polka Dotted With Acrylic Bow and Hearts

2011-08-04T16:45:00.000-04:00

Decided to use my acrylics once again. This time I used a mould with lots of bows and another one will hearts and circles. Firstly two coats of Orly Blue Collar then used a dotting tool and white acrylic paint for the dots. Then I added the acrylic bows and hearts and added a rhinestone to them for some extra pizzazz. Need to work on using the acrylic moulds more. Or try not to use the moulds and just freehand some acrylic designs, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen.

Yellow Laushine Crackle

2011-08-02T18:08:00.000-04:00

The formula for the yellow is much thinner than the pink and blue that I have. I thought that it would not be opaque when I put on it, but as the cracks started appearing the polish became more opaque.

One coat of Color Club You Got Soul-ar with a thin layer of Laushine 17. I should have done two coats of the Color Club you can see bald spots in the cracks where the base colour was thinner.

Layering + Zombies

2011-07-30T10:30:00.001-04:00

Don’t really wear dark colours alone and most of the time I usually have something stamped or painted on, but I liked this layering experiment alone.

One coat of Wet N Wild Vandalize with one layer of H&M Blue Wave and also a layer of Maybelline Colorama Ruby Rays on top.

I found the Colorama polish at Winners in a value pack thing with other make up goods. I didn’t really care for the other things in the package, so I just gave those to my mom and kept the polish for myself.

After awhile I decided to stamp on my nails after all. Used the zombie images from the large plate and also some hearts from the same plate.

Stamped using Konad special polish in white and also used made it matte with Orly Matte Top.

I also dented index finger nail after putting on the top coat. Always denting and smudging my nails lately. I think I need to get those nail guard things that help to prevent denting and smudging.

Glittery(?) Splatter

2011-07-28T19:01:00.000-04:00

Splatter nails done using large stamping plate A that I purchased through eBay. I had wanted the Konad plate that had the splatter design, but didn’t want the other images on the plate so getting the big plate was cool with me. Getting tons more images for the price of about three/four Konad plates. Though I think some of the images on the plate are a tad smaller than what’s on the actual Konad plates. Most of my Konad plates are full nail designs, but I’ll try to see if there’s any that match up with my plates and do a comparison.

Base was an XO Hugs and Kisses sheer pink with Wet N Wild Fast Dry Party of Five Glitters added. When I swatched the polish on a nail wheel more glitters showed up than what’s on my actual nail. I tried to use the same colours that were found in the glitter for the splatter. Konad special polishes in sky pearl, red, pink, violet pearl and green and KleanColor Barbie Pink were the stamped colours.

Also I didn’t notice that my pinky was dented/smudged until I saw the pictures. D’oh.

Newsprint + Roses

2011-07-23T19:34:00.000-04:00

Finally tried out the newspaper nails. This is similar to something that I saw in a Japanese nail mag months ago, can’t remember which one.

I used some movie reviews and stamped on roses. Base colour was two coats VOV Nail Cone It Girl’s 1420A with Sally Hansen Xtreme-wear in Cherry Red, which turned out darker than I thought it would. Stamped with Konad special polishes in Red and Green using fauxnad plate F01. Glitter stripe was done using L.A. Colors Art Deco polish in NA903 Silver Glitter.

And here’s another one with newspaper print nails with swirly roses.

This was four or five coats of a really sheer pink - KleanColor Pink Sleepers. More movie reviews and acrylic paints for the flowers. I like this one more than the first.

I was just going to leave it as just the newsprint nails, but I had some nicks and smudges so I covered them up with the swirled flowers instead of redoing my nails.

Trying Out Windows Live Writer

2011-07-21T11:37:00.002-04:00

I hope this works out.

Thought I would do something super girly so stripes with some lacy-ish bows. It’s a bit messy looking, but I’m okay with that. It’s a lot better looking than my right hand. I did three coats Etude House PP903 and acrylic paints for the bows.

Now hopefully this will get published properly without having me to actually sign on to blogger.

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Still need to log in to put labels on posts.

A Bit More Hauling

2011-07-19T20:37:00.001-04:00

Some crackle polishes that I bought off eBay way back in May finally arrived in the mail.

There were 40 colours to choose from, but I went for colours that I would wear often. I quite liked them except for the fact that the colour turns darker after putting on a top coat. You can’t really tell from the picture above, but in my mani pic below it is definitely noticeable. However I still went ahead and bought a couple more. You can get crackles from this brand at the born pretty store, but there’s not much selection there.

Here is the mani I did with L006

Base colour was three coats of Ardene - Malibu Splash.

On my nail you can see that with the top coat parts are light while other areas are darker. I’m not really sure why that happens. On the nail wheel you can definitely see the difference. Looks better without shiny top coat, but I worry that everything would just chip off when washing dishes or showering. Since it dries matte, maybe a matte top coat wouldn't change it.

Here's a polish I picked up from H&M.

My first H&M polish, Blue Wave - sheer blue with I think blue, pink and purple shimmer. Quite pretty.

And now for a random photo.

Just a picture of blurry Instax photos of my recent hauls. You can also see the additional Wet N Wild Craze polishes, they were still around when I went to buy some new hangers.

Water Decal and Stamping

2011-07-14T23:46:00.001-04:00

Wasn’t feeling like painting my nails so I used water nail decals.

Didn’t really like this on my nails. Wasn’t really into this print. So I changed it up after a day.

Hadn’t stamped in a while so I used one of the newer BundleMonster plates.

Three coats of Wet N Wild - French White Crème, stamped with a dark blue Konad special polish and plate BM-224

Quite like this. Reminds of the rice bowls that we have.

Wet N Wild Craze Haul + Graffiti Nails

2011-07-12T20:50:00.001-04:00

I haven‘t bought any polishes in a while, but then I saw these in my local Zellers and I just had to have ‘em ‘cause I liked the bottle caps so much.

Wet n Wild Craze polishes with Graffiti theme. I only bought these five, but there was also a hot pink, red, black and white available. The colours I did purchase are (from left to right) Scribble, Tagger, Undercover Graffitti, Art Crime and Scratchiti. I may pick up the others, but I don’t know if they’ll still be around the next time I visit. The display I saw was very small with only one or two bottles of each colour. If they’re still available upon my next visit then it was meant to be and I will buy them.

Here is a nail wheel swatch of the colours.

The only one that’s not really colour accurate in the photo is Scribble. Purples and blues were never really photographed well by me. It’s slightly brighter and less…plumy looking? I dunno.

Here is a mani I did with some of the colours.

Not super happy with how this turned out, but it’s okay. I sponged on all the colours except for the orange. After looking at it I think I should have just colour blocked the colours so that there would be crisp lines of distinguishable colours. Next I did some lettering with acrylic paint to write my name in a similar graffiti font to the bottle tops. While taking pictures I realized I should have rotated the H 90º. Oh well.

Dress Inspired

2011-07-06T20:47:00.000-04:00

This manicure was inspired by a dress that I picked up from the Indian Bazaar/Little India after dinner one night.

My interpretation of the dress on my nails.

I really like the nails with the flowers. I think I’m going to do my nails with just the flowers sometime. The flowers were done with acrylic paint. I basically just blobbed on the pink with the toothpick that I used to mix white and red acrylic paint, then lined the flower with red, made some dots with blue acrylic paint and leaves with green acrylic paint.

Here are the polishes that I used.

Both hands - KleanColor Black and White, Cosline 004 White Sparkle (not pictured)
Right hand - Dabo RD440, Etude House WH709, Hello Kitty PK04
Left hand - American Apparel Cameo Blue and Palm Springs, Innisfree GR06

Wedding Nails

2011-07-04T19:10:00.000-04:00

I’m not getting married nor did I have a wedding to attend, but I do enjoy watching shows like Rich Bride, Poor Bride, Bridezillas and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. More for the ridiculousness of the people on those shows than the weddings.

Base colour is KleanColor White with Etude House VIP Girl Pink PK011 as the stripes. The hearts, ring and bow were scrap booking rub on transfers that I found at a dollar store.

Tangy Flowers

2011-06-28T18:06:00.000-04:00

Was gonna be labelled as Tropical Flowers, but when I went grocery shopping I noticed the colours were similar to a box of Tang juice mix so Tangy Flowers it is. Two sponged coats of Innisfree OR05, YE07 and GR06. Then I stamped on some flowers from a fauxnad GCOCL plate C02 using Konad white special polish. For the leaves and details I used acrylic paint.

I was going to free hand the flowers completely, but thought that stamping would be faster. I was wrong. I think stamping might have taken longer than just free handing.

Post shopping trip I also had to file down my nails to super nubs. Major break on my right index finger. The nail on that finger is always the one that breaks. And always during a shopping trip of some sort. Bleurgh. The difference in nail lengths was too great so I had to file 'em all down.

Simple Lacey French + More Roses

2011-06-25T15:43:00.000-04:00

Something simple on the nails after busy nails. Two coats NYX Girls Naked and two coats of NYX Girls Golden Pink on the tips. White acrylic paint dotted along the line to simulate lace.

After something simple back so something busy. This one didn't turn out like I thought it would, mainly because the colour change was pretty much gone after I layered the China Glaze on top of the mood polish. Two coats some Mood Struck polish, one coat China Glaze Good Witch? and acrylic paints.

Nail Up July 2010

2011-06-21T17:53:00.000-04:00

I've been going through Japanese nail mags lately and trying out designs on nail wheels. Here's one that I thought would be a bit complicated to do, but actually turned out to be easier than I thought.

From the July 2010 issue of Nail Up!

I thought it was gonna take a super long time, especially while doing my right hand, but I finished both hands while streaming an episode of Passions.

Two coats American Apparel - Palm Springs and black acrylic paint.

Lucky Stars, Hello Kitty

2011-06-17T11:52:00.000-04:00

I was recently gifted a box of candy from a friend in a cute Chinese take out box. The candy was not yummy, but the box was lovely. So I tried to paint the flowers on my nails. Base colour was American Apparel Poppy. Used the white ENAS stamping polish and fauxnad plate B87 for the Hello Kitty head and white acrylic paint for the flowers.

Rhinestone Heart

2011-06-13T18:50:00.001-04:00

For this mani I was inspired by a manicure from Nail Up’s 2011 Wedding Special Issue

For the spongy multicolour look I followed a tutorial on a Korean blog luuthienluv .

Colours used, two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme-wear White On, the sponge colours were Sally Hansen Xtreme-wear Sun Kissed, Eyeko Lilac Polish, Hello Kitty PK04 and Innisfree NYE05.

Sliver rhinestones for the heart and used pink magic clay and a 3D acrylic rose mould for the rose, green acrylic paint for the leaves.

Quilted Argyle

2011-06-11T16:37:00.000-04:00

Didn't keep the leopard so I changed it up this afternoon. Quite liked this. I rarely use my half pearls, but thought they would be better to use than rhinestones. Colours used for thumb and ring Sally Hansen Insta-dri in Whirlwind White, joe Mint and Powder Blue for the other fingers and the argyle pattern along with Etude House Dear Darling WH002 Bling Bling Silver as the stripes.

Lipstick Leopard

2011-06-10T20:29:00.001-04:00

Did this because I wasn’t sure what to do, saw my Hope Girl lipstick and decided to stamp the leopard pattern on to my nails. Two coats Etude House LUCIDarling Fantastic Nails 01 Sparkling Royal Gold, stamped with Konad special polish in black using plate Konad plate m57. I used an Orly Matte top coat over the ring finger to see if I liked it matte. The difference wasn't really too noticeable so I just left it.

Lots o'Hearts

2011-06-08T12:06:00.001-04:00

Was inspired to do this design from the spring issue of Nail Venus.

Mine isn’t so blingy and also kind of messy looking. I don’t think I can handle having that much bling on top of the already busy looking hearts.

Base Colours - One coat each of Etude House VIP Girl PK012 and Etude House LUCIDarling Fantastic Nails 01 Sequins Pink Topaz

Hearts - joe - Fuchsia and Kiss, Innisfree BL04 and GR06, Sally Hansen Extreme-wear White On, The Face Shop - GR501 and VOV Nail Care It Girl’s 1420A, outlined with black acrylic paint.

I used a dotting tool to draw on the hearts, to outline I used the nail art pen.

Kleancolor Holos Skittle

2011-06-05T10:52:00.002-04:00

Recently got some full sized Kleancolors since I liked the mini ones I had purchased. Mostly holos and glitters, but I think I may also get some of the metallic ones later as I think they would be good for stamping. The holo polishes are kind of sheer so I used two coats of a cream base colour for all of them and two coats of the holo.

Polishes used:
Thumb - Hello Kitty OP01, Kleancolor 138 Holo Orange
Index - Hello Kitty PK01, Kleancolor 134 Holo Pink
Middle - Hello Kitty BL01, Kleancolor 135 Holo Blue
Ring - Hello Kitty GN01, Kleancolor 136 Holo Green
Pinky - Innisfree NYE05, Kleancolor 137 Holo Yellow

Quite like the Kleancolor holos, very sparkly out in the sun.

Roses

2011-06-02T17:24:00.000-04:00

Have had this on for the past few days, been practicing doing roses. Unknown red Color Club, Cosline - 702, Kleancolor - Military Green and black acrylic paint. I bought a nail painting pen kit, which looks just like a fountain pen without an inkwell. I used that to paint on the black outlines. It was much easier to use the pen then to use a paint brush, especially when painting on my right hand.

Nerdy Kitty

2011-05-29T19:04:00.000-04:00

Did something new instead of keeping the dented mani. Plus I had to file down my right thumb nail after bowling on Friday night. The nail had split at the sides from bowling.

Nerdy Hello Kitty. Inspiration from a candy tin. Base colour is Cosline - 607. Acrylic paint plus some additional polishes for the bow (joe - Powder Blue), nose (L.A. Girls - Pineapple) and the nose/bridge of the glasses (American Apparel - Factory Grey). Was gonna use a stamping plate for it, but I couldn't get it to stamp properly so I used some acrylic paint it on.

Decal Update + Dented Plaid

2011-05-28T16:29:00.000-04:00

Here's what the brown floral nail decal looks like after five days. Still good with minimal tip wear. But I couldn't wait to get it off my nails. Just wasn't loving it.

Plaid nails done using Konad plate m60. Colours were joe - Powder Blue as the base colour, stamped with Konad Special Polish white and a pink franken that I made for stamping purposes. Not exactly sure how my pinky got dented, but it did, oh well.

The nail decals were okay, but I missed polishing and stamping and painting on designs on my nails. I usually change my polish every couple of days so having something on for five days was a bit of a challenge for me. I did do some nail wheels while I wasn't polishing my nails. I'll post those up later.

Full Nail Water Decals

2011-05-23T17:27:00.000-04:00

Got a bunch of full nail water decals from ebay. They're OK, but too bad I wasn't able to choose the decals myself. A bunch of floral designs with some random ones thrown in.

I used four different ones in the past week, so I don't know how well they actually last. Put on base coat, cut up the decals to fit my nails, dipped them in water for a few seconds then slid them onto my nail. Wait a bit for them to dry before using the provided mini file to remove the excess at the tips. After all that apply top coat. I didn't really like the first one I tried, wasn't too fond of the colours.

Next up was this Burberry design.

This floral design is what's currently on my nails. Not too sure I like it, but I think it's maybe because I'd much rather be wearing bright colours on my nails right now.

Checker board design, didn't keep it on 'cause I put top coat on too soon and bits of the decal floated up.

The decals were pretty easy to apply, no real problems. I'm gonna keep the brown floral on to see how long it'll last.

Color Club Scented Neons

2011-05-20T12:46:00.002-04:00

Wicked Sweet

This is Wicked Sweet from the Wicked Sweet collection. I did 4 coats, but I think 3 is okay too. I just quickly did this before heading out to watch a movie and had some bald spots that needed extra coverage. My pictures are sooooo inaccurate. My camera just couldn’t pick up on the tealnees of shimmer and made the polish just blue. Not great with colour correcting in editing programs so I just leave ‘em as is. It’s a really great colour and so yum smelling. This one smells like blueberry candies. Also reminds of Tval’s Skin Smoothie in Blueberry Vanilla Parfait, but much sweeter. After I removed the polish the scent lingered for a bit on my nails.

Yum Gum

This is Yum Gum. Absolutely love this colour, three coats and again photos aren’t quite accurate. Photos in natural light because the light box pictures were completely washed out that it made the polish look pale. The colour is much brighter than what my pictures show. This one smells like Juicy Fruit. Haven’t chewed sweet gums in a while, but that’s what I’m reminded of when I get a whiff of the polish.

The heart on the ring finger was done using Cosline in 002 White. I painted a strip of polish on a piece of scotch tape, left it to dry, peeled the polish from the tape, used a heart punch to punch out a heart, placed the heart on my nail and then topped it with top coat. I could have painted it on free hand, but this way the heart is much more symmetrical.

Cannot wait to try out the other polishes.

More Stripe-y Bows

2011-05-19T12:44:00.000-04:00

I really liked the stripe-y bows from the last mani so I did it again with all the neon polishes from the mini Kleancolor set Candy Cast.

Colors Used:
Both hands - 5 Black and 4 White from the Wicked Sweet mini set and black and white acrylic paint.
Left hand - 20 Neon Pink, 20 Neon Orange and 153 Neon Amethyst
Right hand - 18 Neon Yellow, 14 Neon Aqua and 204 Neon Lime

The colors look a bit washed out in my photos. They’re brighter in real life and the yellow and lime do look different though you can’t tell from the picture.

I thought I didn’t like neons, but after using the Kleancolor minis I’ve changed my mind. I’m glad I tried out some neons ‘cause otherwise I might have passed up on the Wicked Sweet set of scented Color Club polishes. I saw them the other at my local Winners while out shopping with my mom and picked up the seven piece set. I also picked up a mini Color Club set with 4 neon polishes. Will have some pictures posted up in my next post.

Yellow Striped Bow

2011-05-15T13:51:00.001-04:00

Have had this on for the past few days. I just really like the brightness of it and with gloomy grey skies back again after it being so sunny and warm. Three coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme-wear in Mellow Yellow. Painted on the bow with acrylic paint done in a modified Supa Nails Bow Wow style.

Nails for Cherry Blossom Viewing

2011-05-09T19:29:00.000-04:00

These are the nails that I had when I went cherry blossom viewing at High Park. Three coats of a blue Mood Struck nail polish. When warm it's greenish and when cold it's blue. Was three coats, but still kind of streaky. Used Rimmel Lasting Finish Pro in Black Satin for the branches and Cosline - 002 White and 117 Champagne Pink for the flowers.

This was kind of messy and rushed since I did it late at night. I only really like the thumb. The other fingers aren't as pretty.

Day at High Park

2011-05-09T19:01:00.001-04:00

Picture heavy post about my day at High Park in Toronto. Continue if you like, no nail pictures, that will be a separate post.

My friend and I decided that this year we'd go view the cherry blossoms at High Park so off we went for a picnic at the park. Went from house to the park on the 501 streetcar, went into the park via the Queensway entrance right by Grenadier Pond. In the pond we saw a couple of ducks and a swan.

After snapping some pics we went along our merry way and saw the cherry blossoms that lined the path. Very pretty, but there weren't really that many trees. It was hard to get snaps of the trees without people in them. I also tried to take pictures with my Instax camera, but everything was overexposed. Too much sunlight for my Instax. I thought the batteries might finally be dying after 3/4 years, but they're still going strong since the photo I took when I got home was fine.

Saw a smaller pond by the big pond, but this one had frogs. They were really loud. There's three of them in this picture though it might be hard to tell.

Might be a bit difficult to see what I was snapping a picture of, but if you look at the rock in the centre you'll find a chipmunk. This picture reminds me of Island School way back in grade 5 when I tried to take a picture of some other squirrelly animal.

Lunchtimes! I made a bento filled with rice balls, kimchi pancake, egg battered zucchini, green onion pancake and a salad of pickled carrots and cucumbers. Friend got two separate containers because she forgot to bring her bento box over, so lock and lock for her. But she did bring the blanket and dessert. I forget what was in it but some kind of yummy cake that was made with bread flour and some other flour, along with some vanilla yogurt with strawberries. Friend also brought along glass bottles of Coca-Cola, but no bottle opener. However, I was able to open them up with my little travel spoon and a push of my thumbs.

A tram/trackless train we saw while dining. It tours around High Park.

After lunch on our way to view the cherry blossoms at another part of the park we went by the little zoo there.

More cherry blossoms, these ones were more pink than the ones by the pond.

On our way to the 506 streetcar stop we saw a woodpecker pecking at some wood.

That's it for my day at High Park. Didn't visit all of High Park, but pretty much most of the southern part of the park.

S'more BundleMonster + Sliders

2011-05-01T13:22:00.005-04:00

Here's some more images from the new BundleMonster plates. I didn't go in order. The images from plate BM-202 weren't really that exciting to me so I decided to try some images that I liked from other plates.

Sort of a floral tapestry design from plate BM-225. Quite liked this. Two coats of Cosline - 608, stamped with pastel purple Konad special polish.

This one didn't turn out like how I imagined it to be, but still nice. Image from plate BM-214. Two coats Etude House BL501, stamped with black Konad special polish.

Really loved the shoes when I saw them from the previews. Thought it would be too busy on all nails so I just stamped it as an accent on my ring finger. Image from plate BM-213, two coats Etude House PK006, one coat Etude House LUCIDarling something 01 something and stamped with ENAS black stamping polish.

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Next up, MINI BURGERS!

Made these for my older brother's birthday yesterday. Baked the buns, ground the meat and pickled the cucumbers myself. Burgers were topped with swiss and cheddar cheeses and thousand island dressing.

BundleMonster Plate BM-201

2011-04-29T18:20:00.001-04:00

Played around with the BundleMonster plates yesternight. Quick pics of what the full size images look like on my nails. Love the bigger size, but too bad my thumb is a bit too wide for the width of the images just like the Konad plates.

This is plate BM-201. Plate was kinda dirty when I took the pic so I super brightened the picture and added in some vignetting.

Mini Kleancolor polishes from the Wicked Witch set, in 101 Concrete Grey and 4 White. Never used Kleancolor polishes before and they were great. Went on smoothly and only needed one coat. When I saw that they were pretty pigmented I thought I would try stamping with them. The white wasn't that great, but the grey seems like it would be good for going on light coloured polishes.

Tried stamping with colours used as base colour again, this time with joe Sun Kissed and Gunmetal. I really like this swirly pattern. Sun Kissed as a stamping polish kind of resembles the Konad gold special polish.

I believe in the older set of plates there's an image with just a single flower that's similar to the flowers in this full nail design. I think I might have used a similar colour combo with that image. The picture isn't on this blog, but it is on my tumblr. Base colour = Cosline 709, stamped with yellow Konad special polish.

Lastly, my favourite of the lot. Did a sponged gradient with four colours from another set of mini Kleancolors - Candy Cast, 153 Neon Amethyst, 20 Neon Pink, 19 Neon Orange and 18 Neon Yellow. Loved the polishes, dabbed the sponge on my nails once and they were completely covered. The wavy lines, stamped with black Konad special polish, helped to enhance the gradient-ness. Too bad while putting on a top coat it got streaky, but still very nice.

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That is all, I didn't stamp with the small images from the plate. I dunno if I'll do this with every single plate, it was rather time consuming.

Seeing Stars + Surprising Find

2011-04-28T12:14:00.006-04:00

While waiting for the new BundleMonster plates to arrive I used a star pattern from one of the older plates BM21. Colour I used was a franken that I had made, a milky yellow glitter. Took about 3 or 4 coats to get to this opacity. Stamped on the star pattern using Konad light blue special polish. For some reason the pictures all turned out kinda dreamy looking.

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Surprising find = New Kids On The Block concert video found while spring cleaning.

Thought this was forever lost years ago. But my brother found it among a bunch of old stamp books. Video should still work, but I haven't watched it yet. We do still have a VCR, but I dunno if it's hooked up to a TV. Haven't used the VCR in years.

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While writing this the new BundleMonster plates arrived. Yay! Can't wait to use 'em.

Flowers

2011-04-23T21:21:00.005-04:00

Here's a couple of floral designs that I did.

This one I didn't really like and and took it off pretty much after taking the pictures. The green and yellow was just not for me. Sponged on Cosline - 203 Pure Yellow and 702 Spring Green. Then I used a dotting tool with a couple of Mood Struck polishes that I recently purchased from Winners. They came in a package of three with no names. The top left corner is what the flowers look like when cold and the bottom right is when the flowers are warm/hot.

This one I really like and currently have on my nails. I've seen this design plenty of times in Japanese nail magazines. It seems to be a popular design since it is in pretty much every magazine every month though usually in pinks/reds. The blue is an Ardene polish in Deep Sky Blue. They seem to have changed their bottle design once again. Third bottle design within a year. Used some Sally Hansen nail guides to tape off areas then used white acrylic paint. Instead of painting on roses I decided to stamp them on since I wanted them to be more uniform, especially on my right hand. Red and green Konad special polishes for the stamping colours using fauxnad plate F01. Glitter stripes were done using L.A. Colors Art Deco polish in silver glitter.

Butterfly Wings

2011-04-22T01:49:00.004-04:00

Recently Deez Nails did a butterfly mani and featured a little picture tutorial. I'd seen this design done before, but never did it because I hadn't graduated from just doing Konad stamping.

The pictures on the left are with natural light while the pictures on the right were taken in my light box. Light box pictures are slightly yellower. The picture in the top right were just some practice ones. I ended up doing the middle one. Polishes used for the sponging gradient were all from Color Club - an unknown blue, Velvet Rope and Feel The Beat. The black was acrylic paint and the white was Sally Hansen Xtreme-wear - White On.

Painted Roses

2011-04-16T14:16:00.003-04:00

Decided to practice doing some painted roses instead of the swirly ones. Wasn't really a big fan of those since I found them to be kinda thick.

I think these turned out alright. Used acrylic paints to paint them on instead of polishes. Really liked the black with white roses so I decided to do a full mani with it.

Really liked this, but it was difficult to paint my right hand. Two coats of Rimmel Lasting Finish Pro in Black Satin, black and white acrylic paint and a green Dabo polish for the leaves.

Food Post: PBJ Taiyaki

2011-04-16T13:59:00.004-04:00

Peanut butter and strawberry jam filled taiyaki. Was recently gifted a mini electric taiyaki machine and this is the first batch that I made. The machine came with a booklet with a recipe, but I can't read Japanese so I just used a pancake mix. I did find a recipe online, but was too lazy. They were very tasty, but like my mom says anything with peanuts/peanut butter tastes good.

Blossoms and Mini Haul

2011-04-13T11:58:00.004-04:00

Something springy for a pretty crappy day today, but it was quite nice yesterday, though a bit chilly. Base colour is Color Club - Ready to Wear, and the branches were painted on with a no brand/name brown polish, Etude House - GR605 for the greenery and a pink franken for the blossoms.

Went to Zellers the other day and saw that they finally had the Wet n Wild Fast Dry polishes. I had already bought Party of Five Glitters and Gray's Anatomy in January from Walmart so I just picked up one - Hannah Pinktana. Also picked up the NYC IndividualEyes eyeshadow palette for brown eyes. Just something new and inexpensive to try out.

Also took the picture of the above items in a cruddy lightbox I made over the weekend. Got the Idea from here. I made a fairly small one, but I can take pictures of manicures in it, but I still prefer using natural light.

Glitter Franken

2011-04-11T17:41:00.001-04:00

Here's a franken that I made sometime last week. I love this. It looks so pretty. I had an almost empty bottle of Nailene Total Care 5 in One so I decided to use it for a franken. I wanted to make something like Debra Lippman's Glitter in the Air, but in pink. Mixed in some Wet N Wild - Party of Five Glitters, Dabo - RD411, Cosline - 002 White and an unknown pink Color Club. I also added in some large hexagon glitters. This turned out to be somewhat sheer and needed three coats.

H&M Scarf Inspired

2011-04-09T19:39:00.004-04:00

Hellos, here's something that was inspired by a scarf gifted to me for my birthday not too long ago. The stripes are a bit sloppy since I didn't use any nail guides or tape. Quite liked it, but the stripes kinda killed it for me. Should have done them properly or maybe incorporate those colours in a different way.

Base colour = Ardene - Barely There
Stripes = Color Club - Vintage Couture, Etude House - PP903 and American Apparel - Cameo Blue
Stamping colours = Sally Hansen Insta Dri - Lively Lilac and Snappy Sorbet and American Apparel - Cameo Blue
Stamping plate = E05

I did this mani because I found the birds on the E05 plate otherwise I probably wouldn't have done it. Might have drawn super large birds if I was doing it freehand.

Gradient Tutorials..sort of.

2011-04-08T16:51:00.003-04:00

Here are a couple of picture tutorials on how to do some gradient nails.

First up, sponging. I prefer to line up the colours that I plan on using on the sponge, dab off some excess polish to help prevent bubbling and then apply them to the nail. Two or three sponging layers will make the polish opaque and of course glitter at the end to help blur everything together or put a top coat on soon after the last layer to make it a smooth transition from light to dark.

Next up, a more time consuming method with a sheer polish. It doesn't have to be a single colour. You can start with a darker colour and then lead up to a lighter colour like this one. Just a bit of polish at a time and slowly going up. Finish off with some glitter or just top coat. I usually put glitter polish on just 'cause it helps to hide any imperfections sometimes.

Some Crafty Goodness

2011-04-04T15:33:00.005-04:00

On Saturday I met up with my friend Selene for dinner and she gifted me a pack of loose papers from The Paper Place along with some blank cards as a belated birthday gift. There were lots of cool Japanese papers and different textured card stock paper. Inspiration hit and I did some simple crafts.

First up is a card featuring a Kokeshi type doll/figure made with some Japanese paper with fans printed on for the body, black felt for the hair and the face was a pinkish recycled paper. Drew the eyes with a black marker, the blush was a pink eyeshadow that I had close by and the lips were done with a franken polish. That same polish was used for the petals/hearts falling from the tree and nail polish was also used to paint the tree. Everything was done freehanded without much thought to it so it was done fairly quickly.

The bookmark was also made with Japanese paper. I just glued it to a green textured card stock, punched a flower shaped hole out and strung through some ribbon. I think I'll need to get a spray varnish to protect the bookmark in case it gets wet.

It took less than half an hour to do both projects, so super easy.

Change purse with keyring. Saw a tutorial on how to sew this little baggie here - Noodlehead: Zippy Wallet Tutorial. This is an improvement over my last cardholder/keyring thing I sewed two years ago. I'm missing the button right now, but will be added soon. Love it 'cause there's a card slot up front and zippered part for money or whatever to go in. Will definitely be getting a lot of use out of it.

FOPI minis + Etude House

2011-04-03T20:31:00.007-04:00

Went out shopping last Monday at Pacific Mall/Market Village. Bought some cream puffs (ate them before I could take a photo of them) and these faux OPI minis.

They were just in large tubs with a bunch of other mini polishes with no names or labels. The bottles themselves have some scratches or improper printing on the bottle. The bottoms have labels with a number and some words in Korean. They also smelled pretty bad. Here's a glittery gradient I did with the polishes above.

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This is Etude House from I believe the Dear Darling line - WH020 Extreme Jewel.

I couldn't really capture it well on my nails, but it's mostly a silver glitter with purple, green, blue and red glitters thrown in too. This didn't stay on my nails too long. I think it peeled off the my index fingers the the second day of wear, which was the Monday that I went shopping. I walked around with polish on half my nails all day.

Minty Leaf? Leafy Mint?

2011-03-27T17:49:00.001-04:00

Last of the stamping from this past week. Three coats of The Face Shop - GR501 Mint, stamped with Sally Hansen Xtreme-wear - Black Out using a pattern from bundlemonster plate BM20. Polish was kinda hard to work with. It would thicken quite a bit from the first finger to the last. Also it didn't last very long. Picture was taken on the second day of wear and my left index finger already had a size-able chip. Even with using Seche Clear as base and Seche Vite as top coat.

Runway Circles

2011-03-27T17:46:00.000-04:00

Continuing with more Konading.

Color Club - Runway Muse stamped with the same franken from the previous mani using the circle pattern from Konad plate M65. I wasn't sure if the pictures turned out well or not when I was taking the pictures. I thought the circles were gonna be hard to see, but it turned out alright. Runway Muse is pretty sheer and I did 4 or 5 coats to be VNL free.

Tiger Stripes + First Polish Comparison

2011-03-27T11:31:00.000-04:00

Two coats Etude House - WH012 Extreme Black as the base stamped with a franken of the silver Konad special polish with some silver pigment. The tiger stripes from Konad plate M57. I haven't Konaded in so long, I was kinda rusty. More stamping manis will be forthcoming. I quite like this polish, but it did remind me of Eyeko Cosmic Polish so I did a comparison photo with it and also added in L.A. Colors - NP263 Rainbow glitter

1 - Two coats Sally Hansen - Black Out with two coats L.A. Colors Rainbow Glitter over top
2 - Two coats Eyeko Cosmic Polish
3 - Two coats Etude House Extreme Black

All three are quite similar with slight differences in the amount of glitter coming through.

Nails from the Past Week

2011-03-21T13:54:00.002-04:00

Lack of posting due to laziness in transferring photos to my computer. But here are some nails from the past week.

Leopard pattern nails with a heart thrown in. Got the idea from the newest Nail Up! magazine.
Colours used were all frankens.

First time doing swirly flowers. Turned out alright. Base colour is American Apparel - Office, flowers were frankens used in the leopard mani, the leaves were American Apparel - Malibu Green.

More swirly flowers with dots. Base colour = Cosline 304 - Skin Brown, flowers were also Cosline polishes, 403 - Light Red, 102 - Pair Pink and 002 - White. The green is also American Apparel - Malibu Green.

Food Post: Buns

2011-03-11T17:13:00.002-05:00

Had some left over chicken curry and was so over eating it with rice so I decided to make some curry buns. Uber yummy and best when it's hot and steamy. The second bun on the bottom is filled with leftover boiled lettuce and homemade fish cakes. Also really yummy. Liked it better than the curry. Am normally always for curry, but I think I was curried out. Also made ham and cheese filled buns, but those were snatched up before I could take pics of them.

Feb/March Gmarket Haul

2011-03-10T18:04:00.004-05:00

My Gmarket order finally arrived yesterday. It used to take a bit longer to arrive when the packages would go through Vancouver first, but now they go through PIA. So tons closer and it doesn't sit in customs as long. Originally it was two different orders (the bags and the cosmetics), but I combined the orders together to have them shipped all at once.

I didn't do a big haul. The medium size Korea Post box and it's contents displayed after I took everything out of their individual boxes.

This bag was kinda smelly when I got it out of its packaging. Actually both bags kinda smelled. The construction is ok, no loose threads or exposed seams, but the fabric is meh. There's also a slight metallic sheen to it, but you can't see it in the pictures. The bag can be worn two ways. Top left with the strap or hand held like the picture in the top right. Overall the bag is alright, I didn't pay a lot for it, but it did look nicer on the site. (Item: 204162755)

This bag I was lemming after I saw it on colorlover's blog and video. She's got a ton more pics of the bag. It's really sturdy and boxy. That's what I liked about it. And it can also be worn two ways, short strap or long strap. Two compartments with two pockets. I like this bag a lot more than the other one. (172603594)

Holika Holika haul:

1) The things I purchased (middle right pic)
2) Everything else (bottom left pic) are the freebies that came with it.

I wanted to try out their BB creams, so I got two of them, the rolling one (195150896) and the aqua jelly one (191189904). The pore cover (202748721) was to bump up my order for free domestic shipping. I've only tried out the rolling one and I like it. I've only used it once so I can't say much about it. But it is hard to wash off. The rolley sponge can be cleaned, but it stays stained.

The large freebie bottle is a Pudding Bubble - Bubble Peeling Facial Cleanser. When I tried it on my dry dry hand my dead skin cells gathered up and was indeed gross. But when I tried it on my face last night nothing happened. Maybe I'll try it on it's own tonight. I had already washed my face and thought maybe the Pudding Bubble was an exfoliator, but it didn't do anything.

Finally more Cosline polishes (128281127) , same seller as last time, along with another VOV It Girls polish. And the VOV CastleDew foundation (134288297) that really held up my order because it was not sent along with the polishes. Just a backup for one that's almost finished, polishes was just cause. Why not.