Category: Green Nails

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SWATCH SUNDAY — China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise

Good morning lovelies & welcome to another rendition of Swatch Sunday. Today’s polish is brought to you by my 2 year old who decides what colour I needed to wear. & his pick? China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise!

Turned Up Turquoise is a neon shade that dries to a very matte finish. For my swatches, I applied 2 coats over my base. The coverage was perfect but like any matte shade, it gets a little goopy the older it gets because matte polishes do dry faster than regular (in my experience) & my bottle is going on 5 years old.

Usually I apply a glossy top coat to my matte shades & then finish with a coat of matte top coat, but I really wanted to show off the true finish of this shade. As you can see, it dries down pretty well on its own, although it doesn’t hide the rough state of my current nails. If I was wearing this for a while, I would definitely top coat it & then either add my matte top coat or leave it glossy.

& speaking of glossy, I had to add some top coat to show off how gorgeous Turned Up Turquoise looks with Essie Speed Setter added.

As you can see, glossy top coat really adds to the shine of this shade. It also shows off the shimmer that gets kind of hidden when it’s matte. But honestly–I love this polish either way! It’s so pretty while left matte & it’s gorgeous when glossy.

My only complaint about this shade? It’s just so hard to photograph the true colour! It’s slightly more green-ish than you see in my photos, but from browsing the Internet I don’t think anyone can capture the shade truly. I think that just comes with it being a neon, as neon polishes can be difficult to photograph.

So what do you think of this shade? Do you have it in your polish collection? Which do you prefer — glossy or left matte? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below!

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Cactus Accent Nails 🌵💅🏻

Happy Thursday! It’s been a while since I rocked any cactus nails, & I was craving some vibrancy. I don’t often reach for green polish when painting my nails, but I’ve been trying to get out of my comfort zone. Keeping with that, I decided to pull a green (textured) polish from deep in my stash that I haven’t worn in too many years to count, & paired it with some cute cacti on my accent nails!

Polishes I used for this design were:

  • Base Coat: OPI Nail Envy
  • Top Coat: Essie Speed Setter
  • LA Girl Sand Blast Nail Polish in Green Island
  • China Glaze What’s She Dune?
  • Essie First Timer
  • Essie Off Tropic
  • Deborah Lippmann She Drives Me Crazy
  • Essie A-List
  • OPI I Eat Maine-ly Lobster
  • Small detail brush (from Bundle Monster)
  • Small dotting tool (from Bundle Monster)

Sadly I kind of hid the texture of LA Girl Green Island with my top coat, but it came through a bit. This was my very first textured polish, back in the very early days of my nail art. It was also the beginning of my obsession with finding nail polish deals at Lawton’s—I remember scoring it & a blue Sand Blast Polish for only a dollar. & so began my obsession with finding old polishes at awesome deals. & I still hate spending full price for polish to this day!

Also I love creating these little freehand cactus. Still on the search for some cactus nail vinyls, because I’m a little cactus obsessed, but in the meantime I don’t mind freehanding my cacti. I also just picked up a new stamping plate from Essence with a cactus on it, so stay tuned as I plan on trying it out soon (hopefully this weekend!)

What do we think of this design? Do you still have any textured polishes in your stash? Let me know down in the comment below!

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Rainbow 🌈 Nails

Good Morning Lovelies & Happy Monday. Today I have a special manicure to share with you in honour of it being Pride Week in Halifax right now — some rainbow nails. This past weekend, I went out to celebrate & attended my very first Drag Show ever! So in honour of that, I wanted to create a design bright & colourful, & with a touch of glitter.

For this design, the polishes used were:

  • Base Coat: OPI Nail Envy
  • Top Coat: Essie Speed Setter
  • Sally Hansen CSM Let’s Snow
  • Sally Hansen MG Just Maui’d
  • Sally Hansen MG Bourbon Belle
  • Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow
  • Essie First Timer
  • Quo by ORLY Pep in Your Step
  • China Glaze Fairy Dust
  • Latex Free Make Up Sponge
  • Wet n Wild Clear Polish

  • This design was super simple to create. I started off with a plain white base (my current favourite White polish!) & then sponged each colour over top of the white. Next I took a clear nail polish that would streak the colours together & repeatedly brushed over the nail so they blended. This is a trick I like to use with gradients, sponged looks & dry brushes because it blends them together really well (especially good with gradients!) & then I finish with actual top coat after. I also felt like this design needed a little bit of glitter, so I added some fairy dust as well.

    I really love this combination of colours & the rainbow-ness of it. It was the perfect design for the awesome night I had out dancing! I’m very proud to live in a city which can celebrate Pride with such festivity & inclusivity. There really is an event for everyone!

    What do you think of my rainbow nails? 🌈 Have you ever attended a drag show before? Share you comments down below & let me know what you think!

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    Summer Vibes Magazine Spread & My Summer Inspired Nails

    You may remember back in December, Sarah from @25sweetpeas created the most amazing holiday magazine. While once again she has gathered together some of her blogger friends to create another awesome magazine, this time focusing on all things Summer. There are recipes, pretty nails, & even a travel guide!

    The magazine has been broken up into two parts for you — part one, which holds the recipes (including 2 of mine) & pretty nails! Part two has some awesome fun things including places to travel this Summer & other bonus goodies!

    You can click below to go to the PDF & download!

    For my nails, I decided to create a pretty & bright tropical leaf pattern design which was inspired by a mix-n-match bikini I saw few months back (& didn’t buy sadly). Once if my favourite things about Summer is the colour! I love pulling out all the colourful clothing that has been sitting way back in the depths of my closet, waiting for sunnier days.

    Continue reading “Summer Vibes Magazine Spread & My Summer Inspired Nails”

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    SWATCH SUNDAY— Crafting a Layered Green Holo

    Happy Swatch Sunday lovelies!

    Today is a bit of a different post for me–instead of featuring single polishes on their own today, I’m showing off 3 polishes layered together to create one amazing look!

    I’ve been really loving layering polishes together–it’s similar to creating franken shades only instead of mixing everything together, your layering one on top of another. Obviously this could only really work with layering more sheer shades over more opaque ones (which works well with a lot of the Layla Cosmetics hologram effect polishes I own.)

    For this particular look I started with 2 base coats of Essie Turquoise & Caicos & then layered a coat of Layla Cosmetics Jade Groove over top. I’ve worn this Holo on its own but found it didn’t have enough of a green/mint pop to it on the nail. By adding some undies, it really showed off the colour I wanted. & then, because I’m absolutely Holo obsessed right now I finished off with a layer of Quo by ORLY Trash Glam (aka. ORLY Sparkling Garbage for my non-Canadian friends!) The end result is a whole lot of holo happening on the nail.

    Seriously, this is a distracting amount of sparkle happening on the nail. In the sunshine, it was actually incredible how many rainbows you could see.

    I love how you get the linear holo from Jade Groove but then the scattered holo from Trash Glam picks up the light too & it’s absolutely memorizing! I definitely need to find a linear holo top coat so I can transform every polish I own into a Holo Polish too! Let me know what your favourite ones are!

    I hope everyone had an amazing Sunday. 💚✨