Category: Inspired by.

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Pretty & Prom Inspired!

It’s been a long, long time since my last prom expirence (10 years!) but I always find myself reminiscing when June comes around. I’ve been seeing a whole bunch of pretty dresses around as graduates get ready for their special night, so I thought I would do some pretty prom inspired nails! Back when I went to prom, my nails were always simple: a metallic, a red, some fresh tips. If I were a teenager now, I definitely would go with something more fun! 

I think this design would be perfect for someone going to prom that wants fancy nails that aren’t too over to top (don’t want to outshine that dress!) I went with a pretty peach shade, but you could tailor it to go with whatever colour matched your dress. 

For this manicure, I used:

  • Base Coat: Perfect Formula Pink Gel Coat
  • Top Coat: Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat
  • ACO by Ardene Sorbet
  • ACO by Ardene Misty Love
  • Sally Hansen Miracle Gel Buffalo Nickel
  • Sally Hansen Miracle Gel Pretty Piggy
  • Sally Hansen Miracle Gel Little Peony
  • Sally Hansen I ❤️ Nail Art Pen in green
  • Sally Hansen X-treme Wear Kiwi Bikini
  • Xroma Polish & Vinyls Small Moroccan stencil
  • Small dotting tool from Bundle Monster 
  • Small Nail Art Brush from Bundle Monster 


I’m so excited by these, I can’t lie. My floral seriously turned out perfect. & I love the subtle bit of shimmer of the metallic Buffalo Nickel with the pastel floral. Floral is definitely my favourite go-to when it comes to special occasion nails, but I promise it’s not my only go-to! But for special occasions like prom, floral is perfect! It’s like wearing your corsage right on your nails. 

What did you wear on your nails when you went to prom? Did you stay classic, go sparkly or not wear anything at all? Let me know what you think in the comments below! 

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Turquoise Marble Stone Nails


Happy Friday! Today I’m sharing a gemstone/Turquoise stone design. I attempted a similar design three-ish years ago so it felt like a good chance to revisit this design! This is is also the first post using my brand new iPhone 6s. I just can’t get my over the picture quality–it’s awesome! 


For this manicure, I used:

  • Base Coat: Perfect Formula Pink Gel Coat
  • Top Coat: Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat
  • My Beauty Spot unnamed Teal
  • Essie Mint Candy Apple
  • Sally Hansen X-treme Wear Golden-I 
  • Layla Bubbley Effect in Black 

For this design, I kind of made up the technique on the fly. I started off with my base of teal. I then took a piece of crinkled up plastic bag, and dabbed on Mint Candy Apple & Golden-I & finished off with some top coat to seal in the base. After I felt like my base was dry enough (about 5-10 minutes) I grabbed my bottle of Layla Bubbley effect & added splots of the polish on each nail. I then went & ran that nail under water to remove some of the polish which left the black bubbles on the nail. Depending on how it turned out, I would add more black again and repeat the process. When I was happy with each nail, I finished off the whole design by sealing in with top coat. 

This is a super simple design, & it ended up being relatively quick to do. & definitely less clean up than using the traditional water spotted technique that you see for creating stone nails. However, because Layla Bubbley is a special effect polish, I’m not sure how well it would work with normal polish (I’m guessing probably not very well.) However, I’m thinking it might work out with acrylic paint which I’ll have to add to my list of things to do! If you try it out, let me know how it works out! 

So what do you think of these turquoise stone nails? Would you wear these? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below! 

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Hug Your Cat Day Collab! 😸


Happy Hug Your Cat Day! Did you know that June 4th was Hug Your Cat Day? I didn’t until @highchanceofpolish announced on Instagram she was organizing a collab for it, so obviously I had to join in on the kitty love. 

For this manicure I used:

  • Base Coat: Perfect Formula Pink Gel Coat
  • Top Coat: Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat 
  • Colour Club Peppermint Twist
  • OPI Who You Callin’ Bossy
  • Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Hard To Get
  • Sally Hansen X-treme Wear Mellow Yellow
  • Sally Hansen X-treme Wear Kiwi Bikini
  • Small Nail Art Brush from Bundle Monster
  • Small Dotting Tool
  • Kitty vinyls from The Base Coat 

For my design, I was inspired by my own kitties Abbath & Hades. It’s been a long time since I tried freehand kitty nails, but I think they turned out so lovely! 

So what do you think of my kitty cat nails? Are you celebrating Hug Your Cat Day? I feel like wearing my kitty cat shirt just for the occasion. 😸 & just for fun, how about my inspiration for this mani? Who doesn’t love kitty pictures? 

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Feeling 90s With Neon Spotted Nails 

Too many rainy days have left me craving some neon nails, so I decided to grab some bright colours to cheer myself up. In the process I saw my bottle of Layla Bubbly in Black & thought it would look really neat over a neon-ish base colour. 

For this manicure I used:

  • Base Coat: Perfect Forumla Pink Gel Coat
  • Top Coat: Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat 
  • ORLY Scenic Route
  • Icing Breakfast at Tiffany’s 
  • China Glaze Sun Upon My Skin 
  • Icing Pink A Boo
  • Layla Cosmetics Bubbly Effect in Black

I’ve owned this bottle of Layla Bubbly effect for a while (I scored it on sale at Lawton’s in the clearence like 3 years ago) but this was the first time I really got it to work for me the way I imagine it’s supposed to work. I did wait until the next morning to add the black, so maybe that made the difference? Either way I’m super excited about how it turned out! Like crackle nails, it just offers an easy way to create nail art without excessive work (or mess). 

& incase you were interested in seeing what my base looked like before I added the Bubbly topper, here was the base. I tried to attempted @laqvid‘s wet dry brush design but I’m definitely going to need to give it more practice. 

What do you think of this design? Have you ever tried the Layla Bubbly Effect polishes before? Let me know the comments below! 

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Drag Marble Decals 


If you’ve been around a while, you’ve probably heard me mention before how I can’t water marble. I’ve tried to do it, I really have but the results never turn out quite right. So thanks to rewatching old Simply Nailogilcal videos on YouTube, I wanted to see if I can cheat at watermarble using my silicone mat, ala Cristine!

So for my first Drag Marble decal experiment, I decided to try a couple different designs that would sort of look like watermarble (if you didn’t look too closely). I did about 15 different decals using different polishes to see which colours/polish formulas worked best & picked the three best to apply.

For each manicure I used my silicone craft mat & a water marble tool from Bundle Monster. For how to apply decals, there are lots of useful tutorials on YouTube. I also topped all designs with my Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat.

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