Author: Shannon Rae

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SWATCH SUNDAY—China Glaze Cast A Spell

Happy Sunday everyone! Hope you’re not too hung over from whatever Halloween shenanigans you got up to this weekend! (& hey candy bar hangovers count too!) I thought for Swatch Sunday this week, I would delve deep into my stash & grab a Halloween shade to share with you! 

This is China Glaze Cast A Spell which the internet tells is from the 2012 Wicked collection. I picked up my bottle a year or two ago in a clearance bin at Chatters—one of my favourite places to find lost polish treasures—so it’s relatively new to me. 

Cast A Spell is a blacky green thickly packed full of golden flecks of shimmer. The formula was fantastic, & it applied in two super easy coats. It’s one of those shades that glows on the nail, & I can see why it would be part of a Halloween polish collection—it’s the perfect shade for the modern Witch who cares about her mani while out casting her spells or buying eye of newt from her local Trader Joes. 

Seriously though, this polish is gorgeous. I only own a few Halloween shades in my extensive stash, & I think 90% of them are from past China Glaze collections. They just do extremely well when it comes to Halloween collections & you can’t help but just love them. Cast A Spell is outside my usual polish comfort zone colour wise, but there is just something about it that makes me not want to take it off. It’s a great Autumn shade that I don’t think exclusively needs to be kept for Halloween night. 

& for fun I added some pumpkin stickers I purchased at the Dollar Store on vacation for an instant accent nail! 🎃


Do you have a favourite Halloween polish/collection either from this year or years prior? Let me know in the comments below!

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Mermaid Inspired Glitter Gradient using NailStuff.ca Flakies

Guess what! I have anothe review of one of the items sent to me from Nailstuff.ca. This time I’m sharing these beautiful irredentist flakies. 

Now I know I said I would share more Halloween looks & these aren’t spooky, but I thought this would be an awesome look for anyone going with a unicorn or mermaid look for Halloween! I know I can’t be the only one whose costume (or outfit in general) isn’t complete until her nails are done!

Okay, I’ll be honest—I’ve never used loose flakies before so I was going into this as a newbie. I knew I wanted to create a glitter gradient with them, so I glanced around at a few posts on Pinterest & Instagram until I felt confident enough I could achieve the look I wanted.

  1.  I started off by painting my nails with a base of Essence Out of Space Stories Intergalactic Adventure & let it dry. I chose this shade because I thought it would compliment the shift in these gorgeous flakies. 
  2. Apply liquid latex around cuticles. I used Edge Perfection to keep the flakies from spreading to my skin during application. 
  3. After about 10ish minutes, I took a little bit of clear polish & applied it at the base of my nails so they would be a bit “sticky”. Like I said I’ve never used these before so I wasn’t sure if this was a necessary step. 
  4. Next I opened up my little pot of flakies & using the little eyeshadow sponge provided, pressed the flakies down at the base of my nail. I also brushed lightly up the nail to create the gradient effect.
  5. Peel off your liquid latex & seal in your whole nail with top coat—I used Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat. I think using Matte top coat would also look beautiful! 
  6. Time to get distracted by your pretty shifty mermaid-esque nails. 

These flakies were a lot easier to apply than I thought they would be! You can see I got the hang of things are I went along with my pinky being my first nail & working towards my thumb. I think using a light touch really makes a huge difference on how they turn out. Also, I’m definitely going to try not applying the clear polish this time to see how well they go on. I feel like it made an extra step that wasn’t necessarily needed, so I’ll keep you updated!

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Check out that shift! 😍 Had to include a shot of these nails in action because you really see how gorgeous they are in motion. & this mani totally matches my Starbucks multichrome “nail blogger” cup from a couple of years ago. Which is obviously the perfect excuse to fill up on iced lattes! 

If you’re curious about checking out these flakies for yourself, you can order these (& many more) straight from the NailStuff.ca website! Don’t forget that all Canadian orders over $29 have free shipping, & all US & International orders over $49 are free shipping. 

*PR SAMPLE* Some of these items were sent to me for review. However, all opinions are my own

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Halloween Skull Nails 💀 

We are only FOUR days away from Halloween which means I only have a couple more days to get in a few more spooky designs. My next Halloween design is one that is quite popular on Instagram—Jack Skeleton’s face (or just a skull since I don’t want any Disney copyright person coming after me!) 

For this design, I wanted to do something quick & easy for those who may be looking for a last minute Halloween nail design that isn’t too complicated to do. 

  • Base Coat: OPI Natural Nail Base Coat
  • Top Coat: Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat
  • Revlon Elusive
  • Ardene Ice Mist
  • Sally Hansen Hard To Get 
  • Kiss Products Nail Art Striper in Black 
  • Bundle Monster small nail art brush
  • Bundle Monster dotting tool 

This design was super simple to do! I decided to freehand my stripes because I wanted my stripes to look somewhat imperfect. I also like that they’re over such a sheer base colour. These really are super simple to do & I feel like you can accomplish them at any nail art level. My eyes/nose were the hardest to get right but even though they’re not perfectly symmetrical, they still turned out fun & Halloween-y. 🎃 For the eyes, I just created blobs using my larger size dotting tool & the mouth length using my striper. I then went in with my smaller brush & created the teeth & nose. 

What are you wearing on your nails for Halloween? Do you have any Halloween designs you’d like to see me take a stab at before Tuesday? Leave your suggestions here or on Instagram & I’ll try my best! 🖤

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Edge Perfection Easy Peel Polish Barrier Review

So recently I mentioned that I seriously needed to invest in some new liquid latex because I’ve been out for a while & like magic the nail art gods listened! Or, at least, the lovely folks at Edge Perfection did as they sent me their peel off polish barrier to try! 

From their website:

Edge Perfection is…

5 Free, Thiuram Free, Ammonia Free, Cruelty Free, Vegan, Prop 65 Compliant, Canadian Cosmetics and EU Cosmetics Compliant too! 

Edge Perfection is a low oder polish barrier designed to make clean-up around the nails easier than ever. When using our product you’ll be happy knowing you’re using the highest most pure liquid latex on the market.

Pretty awesome claims & definitely had me curious! I’ll be honest… my previous experience with cuticle barriers only includes glue based peel off base coats (didn’t really work for me) & a Born Pretty Store liquid latex which did work but smelled weirdly fishy. So I was definitely excited to try out something new. 

My first experiment? Well a gradient of course!

So you can use this as a barrier while applying your base coat of colour (perfect for those whole have trouble painting with their non dominant hand!). I don’t have much trouble staying “within the lines” so I applied it around my cuticles after my base was already painted. It goes on a pale green-ish shade (above) with no smell that I could notice. When applying I suggest using a light hand to get the best application. The tub has a wand with brush inside. I like the fact the brush is shorter—makes for a more precise application. 

Apply to all nails. I always stick to one hand at a time as I find trying to sponge with latex on my fingers just leads to my fingers sticking together. Dry time is pretty speedy—as you can see above I started with my pinky & moved to my thumb & pinky was already dry by the time I grabbed my phone to snap a picture. It dries down almost clear but with a hint of the mint so it’s easy to find to pull off. 

Now it’s time for nail art! I sponged on my gradient using three shades (Color Club Silver Lake, Revlon Elusive, & Essie Under the Twilight) until they were well blended. Always a messy process. 

Using tweezers, pull off your latex barrier. Above is right after I peeled off Edge Perfection (before I applied top coat). As you can see, it really did keep things quite clean! There are a few little bits of polish left on the nail but that is just an issue of not getting the product close enough to the edge (middle finger) or not far enough down the finger (pinky) & can easily be fixed with a clean up brush & a little acetone. 

& after I cleaned up the little scraggly bits of polish left over & applied top coat. Pretty gradient nails! 

As you can see, Edge Perfection seriously minimizes the mess usually associated with gradients & other messy nail art. There is nothing worse than trying to do a cool but messy nail art look & spending half an hour cleaning up around the nail. I really, really like the brush applicator with it because it’s so easy to apply & get in as close to the nail as you need to be. I also really love the fact that there is no overwhelming weird smell. 

If you’re interested in purchasing Edge Perfection for yourself & giving it a try, you can purchase it directly from the Edge Perfection website as well as CVS & What’s Up Nails. Personally, I think it’s a great product & I was really impressed with results! I can’t wait to use it for more (messy) nail designs! Except to see a lot of gradients in my future. 

*PR SAMPLE* Some of these items were sent to me for review. However, all opinions are my own

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Nail Art Goodies from NailStuff.ca & my first experience with Water Decals. 

I’m back from my vacation, & while I enjoyed being away I definitely missed home! I was also excited to arrive home because I knew I had some nail mail waiting for me! My hubby was sweet enough to open my packages for me on a video Facechat, which added to my excitement. I couldn’t wait to get home & play with these goodies.

One of the parcels I received was from the new nail art site in town: nailstuff.ca! I’d recently seen items from them popping up on my Instagram feed, & when they offered to send me a few items to try out I couldn’t say no! I received a sheet of nail water decals, a sheet of nail stickers,  a wheel of nail art studs, & three little tubs of glitter (silver, holo pigment & flakies.)

First up, I had to try out the Halloween themed water decals!

This was my first expirence using water decals. I’ve bought them before, but never actually used them. Thankfully these decals came with very clear instructions to make applying them easy. Here’s what I did to apply the water decals (as a first time user):

  1. I started off by painting my base shade (China Glaze Swanky Silk topped with Revlon Holographic Pearls) & letting dry.
  2. While my polish was drying I grabbed a cup of room temperature water & scissors.
  3. Once my Base was dry, I cut out my desired designs & dunked them in the water for 10-20 seconds. I recommend doing this with tweezers.
  4. Pull out your design & using a dry finger pick up the design carefully. Make sure your finger is dry, or else your decal will crinkle up.
  5. Immediately press the decal down on your base. You only get one try with this, so make sure you’re putting it down where you want it.
  6. The instructions recommend using a blow dryer to dry your decal, but I found if you wanted a minute or two it also worked.
  7. Seal in your decal with top coat. I used Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat.

These decals were surprisingly easy to use even though I had no prior experience with them. They sit so flawlessly on the nail, you don’t have to worry about them sticking up or peeling off (after you seal them in with top coat). They are a quick & easy way to spruce up a basic colour & would look even more awesome over a gradient! There are also a whole variety of different design options in a variety of shapes & sizes for whatever look you’re craving.

Nailstuff.ca is based out of Canada, so shipping is a lot faster some than those other nail art companies, & it’s free shipping for Canadian orders over $29 & US & international orders over $45.

Even better, they’re currently having a promo that if you use coupon code SCARYNAILS you’ll save 15% off all scary nail items for all your Halloween nail needs. So if you haven’t checked out them yet, I definitely recommend giving their site a look & stocking up!

Stay tuned because I have lots more goodies to review!

*PR SAMPLE* Some of these items were sent to me for review. However, all opinions are my own