Category: Glitter

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Embracing my new shorties… and pretty half moons.

Oopsie.

Sorry for disappearing for a little while. After I posted my Keira Knightley inspired nails I had a nail tragedy breaking THREE nails super duper short (and, all on the same hand of course) so I was really disappointed. Curse working in retail… it ruins everything. =( But nails grow… so I’m trying my best to embrace my new super nubs while they grow out… which is hopefully quickly!

 

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For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

  • ACO by Ardene Bridezilla
  • Layla Soft Touch Effect Golden Touch.
  • Sinful Colors Hip to be Square.
  • Essence Gel Look Top Coat.
  • Essie Good to Go Top Coat.

First off, Hip to be Square might be one of my favorite new polishes. It’s so pretty! It looks fairly sky blue in my pictures, but honestly it’s more of a cornflower blue in person, with a barely noticeable silver shimmer. (I love it so much!) I also think it might be very close to ACO by Ardene’s Sea of Beauty, so I’m going to have to do a comparison between the two.

Can you tell how much I love a half moon manicure. I especially love them with shorties, as I feel like the blocking of colors works to give the illusion of longer nails.

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Also, I think I’ve found the perfect new top coat combination for my nail art. As you might remember, I was less than thrilled with my experiences with Essence Gel Look Top Coat the first go around, but top coating it with Essie’s Good to Go squashes the wait for it to dry. The one thing I was impressed with about Essence’s Top Coat was it’s durability and from the look of this manicure now three days later….

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Whoa! Color me impressed! This is my nail art on day three… with no major chips and just minimal tip wear on my index finger. Considering I worked all weekend, that’s a feat. Usually my nails look like this after day one.. and by day two major chips will start so even if I love a manicure I have to change it! I’ll have to test out this top coat combination a little bit more with a few more manicures, but I have a good feeling about it.

So how do you deal with big nail breaks? Any tips on helping my nails grow out without any more tragedy? I’m going to be doing a post later on my own little routine, but I was just wondering what everyone else does… unless I’m the only one who has this kind of awful luck? In which case, tell me how you avoid big breaks because obviously, I need some advice!

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Purple Ombre.

When I first started getting into nail art, Ombre nails were all the trend. Even though they aren’t as popular as they once were, I still think they’re a great look. I hadn’t done ombre nails in a while so I decided to give them another try. I was feeling a purple manicure, so I grabbed five purple polishes as close to each other in tone and created a quick ombre.

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The polishes I used for this manicure were:

  • Essence Beauty Beats Baby Ooh Ooh — thumb.
  • Essence Color and Go Break Through — pointer.
  • China Glaze What a Pansy — middle.
  • ACO by Ardene Purple Rain — ring finger.
  • Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure I Lilac You — pinky.
  • OPI I Snow You Love Me — glitter placement.
  • Essie Go to Go Top Coat.

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Plus side of owning a TON of polish–makes it easy to match a few up to create  a quick ombre which still looks like the colors are supposed to go together. I also added some glitter to create a rhinestone look, just for an extra little something-something. It just pulls the whole look together for me.

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So what do you think of these ombre nails? Like I said, I still really love the ombre manicure so I could see myself doing this with all sorts of different colors. Also I’m really digging I Snow You Love Me for all the glitter placement possibilities. Plus from a distance it looks like rhinestones on the nails (but without the worry that I would knock them off in about 2 seconds at work.)

Also I’m seriously addicted to the Skinny Caramel Macchiatos at Starbucks. I go through waves of being addicted to certain drinks, and they’re my drug of choice right now. So delicious.

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‘Tis the season… for prom nails.

Tis the season for Prom. I’m long past my prom years, but my old neighbour I used to babysit is attending her grade 9 grad this year, which is pretty much a mini prom for those graduating to high school. It’s also a very big deal to them, almost as much as prom is to high school seniors. So when she asked me to do her nails for the big dance, I was more than honored. Her dress was lime green with sparkles, so I went with that theme.

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I did a glitter gradient at the bottom of her nails, with an accent nail of pure sparkle. (I also did her toes to match with a glitter gradient.) Her dress has a whole lot of glitter and sparkle going on, so we wanted to do something that would match. These are going to look awesome when the lights at the dance hit them! Just like a disco ball!

The polishes I used for her nails were:

  • Pure Ice Wild Thing
  • Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Celeb City
  • Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Ice Pop
  • NOPI Inner Sparkle.
  • Color Club Platinum Record.
  • OPI I Snow You Love Me.
  • Essie Good to Go Top Coat.

Continue reading “‘Tis the season… for prom nails.”

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Leopard Print Day Two–changing things up a bit.

So technically this isn’t new nail art. I was so in love with my leopard print nails from yesterday, I couldn’t take them off. However, my purple color chipped badly at work so I needed to change them up somewhat to pull off day 2 nails. I don’t often wear my manicures for more than a day, mostly because I chip them so badly at work on a regular basis. But I just couldn’t take off the leopard print–I am so proud of how great they look, I had to give them at least another day of work. So what could I do to chance this manicure up a little bit?

day2

After grabbing my blue Kosmic Colours nail polish, and painting on the color I still wanted to do something fun. I picked up OPI’s I Snow You Love Me at Chatters for a sweet deal a couple weeks ago, and read online about how awesome it was for a glitter placement manicure. I’ve never done glitter placement on my nails, but I really wanted to try.

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It really wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. All it took was a steady hand and my dotting tool. The blue wasn’t completely dry when I started so the glitters kind of sunk into the color a little bit, but it still turned out neat. Like little diamonds on my nails. I’ve been really wanted to try out studs and such on my nails as I see them on so many awesome manicures on my favorite nail art blogs, but I haven’t had a chance yet. These little glitters definitely gave me a taste of how pretty it can look though!

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So how do you save a manicure you really love? How long do you tend to keep your manicures on your nails?

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Kozmic Colors and Margarita Madness.

I’m really excited about today’s swatch post and polish.

I posted before about how impressed I was with my first time trying the Kozmic Colors brand, especially for a polish found at a Dollar Store. I popped into a different Dollarama not too long ago, to see if they had anything new in the nail polish section and was very pleasantly surprised with what I found.

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This polish came in a four park of glitters. It was the only milky base color of the four–the rest of them are splatter and glitter toppers. But when I saw this polish in the group of four, I knew I needed to have them. The first thing I thought of when I saw this polish was Margaritas. These polishes don’t come with nails, but if I had to name it myself I would call it Margarita Madness.

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This polish is gorgeous. It is a milky green-blue base that is filled with large and small blue and green hexagon glitters. There are also tiny holographic glitters mixed into the base which unfortunately my camera flash could not capture. It took 3 coats to cover my nail, but it was well worth it. Honestly, I have nothing like this in my stash. It’s absolutely beautiful and eye catching.

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I tried to take a picture without flash to catch the holographic glitters, but they didn’t show up as much as I wish they would have. Regardless, I’ve fallen in love with this color. And now all I want to do is drink a margarita in the sunshine, and admire my nails. =)