Category: Blue Nails

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Happy 3rd Birthday Coffee & Nail Polish



Today is a very special day… it’s Coffee & Nail Polish’s 3rd blog birthday! 🎈 So in honour of the occasion, I decided to celebrate with a gluten-free cupcake & a recreation of one of my favourite early manicures–chevron tips.

Three years, how crazy is that?! When I first started my nail blogging adventure I was still learning about nail care, nail art & taking pictures. Back then I was still using my Blackberry for less than stellar pictures, & hadn’t yet learned the magic powers of cuticle oil. I was just a girl who liked painting her nails & decided to share pictures with the whole internet instead of just her Facebook friends. 3 years, a bit better phone, & countless bottles of cuticle oil later here we are! 11.2k followers on Instagram, featured in Nail It magazine 3 times, & the occasional chance to swatch & review polish brands I love. It’s been an awesome amazing journey.
I cannot even begin to explain how much it means to me that you out there read and follow this blog. So to anyone who had ever read this blog, commented on my posts, or decided to follow: thank you.  You helped make my nail art dreams come true. I used to joke that the goal was for someone to want to send me free nail polish. But honestly, having people love my designs enough to recreate them? That’s how I know I’ve made it. 💜

So enough mushy stuff! In honour of this special anniversary, I wanted to go back to the beginnings & recreate one of my favourite manicures from  the early days: Green Chevron Tips. This was my first foray into chevrons, way before my obsession with chevron moons exploded. I remember creating them (freehand!) & being so excited about how well they turned out. For my recreation, I obviously still had to free hand these… & still feeling pretty proud of how these turned out! 

For this manicure I used:

  • ORLY Gumdrop
  • Kiss Products Nail Art Striper in White
  • Kiss Products Nail Art Striper in Black
  • Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat

What do you think of my special recreation? Do you think it lived up to the original?  As always, let me know what you think in the comments below!

Thank you so much for 3 awesome years, & here is many more manicures to come! 💜

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Vibrant colour block tips. 

I was stuck on inspiration the other night, so I turned to an old favourite: colour block tips. You seriously can never go wrong with a good colour block manicure–it looks super complicated, but is actually really easy to do. 

For this manicure, I used:

  • Quo by ORLY Nail Nutrition Base Coat 
  • China Glaze Purple Panic
  • China Glaze I’ve Got A Blue Attitude
  • Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat

Now I created my blocks of colour freehand using just the brush in my polishes, but you can also using striping tape or nail vinyls to create straight lines if you don’t feel comfortable freehanding them. Just make sure you’re putting down Quick Dry Top Coat in between layers so you don’t pull up the first colour! 

This style looks so good using a variety of colours together: pinks & purple, different shades of blue, holo. Basically you can go with anything your heart desires. It’s like an updated version of the French manicure, only more fun! 

If you’re not quite sure if two colours go well together, test the two together on a price of paper first. This is how I always test my colour schemes when doing manis. 

I’m loving these two colours together. I’ve Got A Blue Attitude has been sitting untouched in my China Glaze drawer for way too long! I remember when I picked it up last summer I was so obsessed, wore it a few times, then completely forgot about it… whoops. I’ve got to stop forgetting about polishes like that! I’m working on documenting swatches of all my polishes so fingers crossed I get it finished soon, and that keeps me from losing track of my favourite shades. 

What do you think of these colourful tips? What is your favourite colour block combo? Let me know in the comments below! 

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My Spring Polish Picks


If you’re like me, your love of nail polish may run into barriers such as money & time. Being a new Mom, I can’t afford to go crazy on buying nail polish like I used to, because you know… diapers. That means when I do want to buy polish, I have to make sure it is really something special. So instead, I’ve been “shopping” my own stash instead of buying new polishes.

In that spirit, I decided to go through & pick my favourite polishes for Spring from the shades I already own! It took me a while to pick my personal favourites from all the polishes I own, but these are all shades I can see myself reaching for in the coming months, & screams Spring to me!  I’ve listed the seasons these polishes were released, but I know some are part of the permanent core collections.

Continue reading “My Spring Polish Picks”

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Blue (Chevron) Moons

It’s been way, way too long since I did chevron moons. My stash of nail vinyls is seriously dwindling so I’ve been hoarding them for special occasions until I ordered new ones (which we did this weekend so I hope they arrive quickly!) But it had just been way too long without chevrons in my life, &  I just couldn’t wait any longer to break them out. 

I’m really trying to make an effort to wear polishes I don’t wear, or don’t wear nearly enough–whether it be an unusual colour for me, or just a polish which hasn’t been pulled out in a while. With close to 1000 bottles of nail polish (I need to do a recount soon), obviously that makes for a lot of ignored polishes! I went through the other night trying to sort through favourite polishes to figure out my favourites for Spring for a future post, & it made me realize there are way too many I that don’t get enough of my love. 

For this manicure, I used:

  • Essie Mint Candy Apple (the blue version)
  • Essie Strut Your Stuff
  • Kiss Products Nail Art Striper in Black
  • Kiss Products Chevron Nail Art Guides
  • Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat


An update on testing put this new top coat I bought from Cutex: it’s pretty awesome for nail art. It dries quick… like 20 minutes & you can add nail vinyls without pulling up your base colour. As much as I love Essie Gel Setter, it takes close to an hour of dry time for me to be able to apply nail vinyls without ruining my base colour. That’s a pretty big difference. Not to mention I have a 6 week old & sometimes I’ve painted my nails only to have him need to eat within 5-10 minutes. With this top coat, I’ve had no issues with messing up my colour when having to pick him up & feed him. I still need to do an official review post, but I had to share. I’m really, really impressed! In far I’m going to go stock up on more bottles while it’s on sale at Shoppers for when I start running out. 

I love, love, love the brightness of this mani! Plus the Blues just feel fun for Spring. I definitely seem to pull out my blues more often in the Summer months. Also, even though I’ve owned it for over a year, this is only the second time I’ve actually worn Essie Mint Candy Apple. I am definitely going to have to change that! It is such a gorgeous colour. 

What do you think of this mani? Are you feeling the blues (in a good way)? Let me know in the comments below. 💙

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Squishy Marble Nails

Now that we have baby on a bit of a schedule, I have a bit more time for nail painting! My goal is to try & use polishes I don’t reach for often, & colours that aren’t my typical shades. 

On top of that, I just want all the Spring colours. I decided to pull out a few polishes from deep in the back of my stash that I haven’t worn in ages for a fun squishy marble manicure. 

The polishes I used for this manicure were:

  • Sally Hansen X-treme Wear Pacific Blue
  • Nicole by OPI I’ll Have the Salmon
  • OPI  That’s Hula-rious
  • China Glaze Meet Me at the Mirage
  • Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat 

First off, trying out a brand new top coat so I hope to have a good review on that coming up soon! Secondly–how pretty is this mani?! I wasn’t so sure about pairing these colours together at first, but they ended up looking really awesome together! I’m not sure how others test mani shades, but I literally just brush my colours beside each other on paper until I find the ones that look best beside each other. I definitely need to download some of those nifty nail guides for designing manicures so I can plan more easily! 

What do you think of this manicure? What colours are your favourite to pair together? Let me know in the comments below!