3 Easy Accent Nail Ideas

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Hello lovelies!

Hope everyone is having a fantastic start to their week & October! Can you believe it’s October already?! It is absolutely my favourite month of the year because HALLOWEEN! & my birthday as well, but still haven’t decided if I’m excited for my birthday this year or not.

Today though I have a fun nail art post to share with you featuring 3 different accent nail art looks that are both quick & easy! For these designs I used the same polishes for all 3 looks, & tried to do nail art that #1. wouldn’t take forever to dry, & #2. didn’t need a whole lot of complicated tools

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For all three designs, I decided to use the same polishes:

  • Essie After School Boy Blazer
  • Essie White Page
  • Quo by ORLY Breathable Nail Superfood
  • Joe Fresh Gel Look Sparkling Glitz
  • Sally Hansen Miracle Gel Frosted Berries

As always, I used my base coat & top coat for a complete look. As well, I used a couple nail art tools in order to achieve my look–a dotting tool & a striping brush. Mine are both from NailStuff.ca, although there are a ton of different places you can purchase nail art tools.

Continue reading “3 Easy Accent Nail Ideas”

Fall Leaves 🍂 Nail Art Recreation

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Hello lovelies & Happy Friday!

Today I have a fun nail art look to share with you that is a recreation of an old favourite: this Fall leaf design. This design was one of the first designs I ever posted on Instagram that I was the most proud of. So while browsing through my old designs, I decided it was definitely long overdue for me to recreate this design!

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For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: Gel overlay
  • Top Coat: Essie Gel Setter
  • Top Coat: Sally Hansen Miracle Gel Matte Top Coat {PR sample}
  • Quo by ORLY Breathable Heaven Sent {PR sample}
  • Sally Hansen Miracle Gel Good Cheer-y {PR sample}
  • Wet N Wild Blazed
  • Rimmel 60 Seconds 830 Camouflage
  • Mariposa Nail Polish gold shimmer (no name)
  • Black Acrylic Paint
  • Nailstuff.ca Dotting Tool Trio

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So obviously with it being five years since I first painted this design, I wanted to change things up a little bit & play around with the look. Instead of black polish, I used acrylic paint because I knew it would make it easier to start over if there was any mistakes. I also used my 11mm mermaid tail brush from NailStuff.ca, but looking back I should probably should have went with a small size for thinner lines.

Also this time I decided to add some matte top coat over my design, & it really made the design & colours pop! I’ve been absolutely loving the Sally Hansen Miracle Gel matte top coat.

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Just for fun, a couple shots of this design before I added my matte top coat.

Obviously I think both versions of this design are fabulous, but I’m just slightly more in love with the matte version. Something about this time of year just has me craving matte-ified nails more often, & honestly I feel like metallic nails (which I also craved more often during Autumn) pop so much more when they are matte.

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So what do you think about my updated version of this design? Which do you prefer: matte or glossy? Share your thoughts down in the comments below & let me know which version is your favourite!

Fall Inspired Abstract Nails

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Good morning lovelies! Hope you’re enjoying the beginning to another beautiful week. Also how is it possible we’ve passed the middle of September & it’s creeping (quickly!) towards October?! It feels like just yesterday I was dreaming wistfully about pumpkin spice, & now it will be Halloween before we know it!

Today I have a really, really fun design to share with you that I had an extremely hard time figuring out what to call. It has a little bit of everything in it: negative space, polka dots, colour blocking, abstract lines. This look was partly inspired by a few of these looks I’ve seen popping up on Instagram & partly inspired by my daughters new soothers. But I am 100% in love with the end results!

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For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: Gel overlay
  • Top Coat: Essie Gel Setter
  • Wet N Wild 2% Milk
  • Essie Fall For NYC
  • Essie Bobbing for Baubles
  • Sally Hansen Miracle Gel Get Mod!
  • NailStuff.ca Dotting Tool Trio

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This look is super easy to do, even though it comes across as more complicated & fancy. Basically the hardest part is figuring out how to layer your lines of colour, but because they’re “abstract” you don’t have to worry about making them perfectly straight. & then just go in with a small dotting tool for some extra dots, & you’re finished! I originally was going to add a few random lines as well, but was worried about kiddos waking up (I literally did these at 6am while everyone was asleep) so I went the safe route. Definitely want to try them again & see if I can get even closer to my inspiration! This was a fun first attempt though!

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Love love loving this look! Seriously, it feels so good to paint my nails, & even if it means waking up earlier than I might want, it’s so worth it in the end. Painting my nails is what keeps me feeling like me, & it’s important to have that “thing” that makes you feel like you, especially when you’re a new Mom.

I know I get asked a lot how I have time, with two young kids, to keep doing my nails & the honest answer is: I just make the time when I can. It’s not always easy, & sometimes it takes into the next day to finish a manicure, but sometimes that’s what you have to do. We’ll see what happens when my maternity leave is up & I go back to work, but I will keep trying as much as possible to keep the routine going & finding my times to paint & create.

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What do you think of this nail art look? What kind of manicures would you like to see next? Share down below your favourite nail art look!

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Tribal/Aztec Print for #GlamNailsChallengeAug

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Hello loves & happy Wednesday! Today marks the last prompt for #GlamNailsChallengeAug, can you believe it? We made it! & I am so excited to have completed this challenge, because it really did inspired me to try out more nail art designs than my usual go to designs. That being said, I’m also itching for some Fall inspired floral & half moons, so stay tuned for some of those coming up next month!

The last prompt for this month is Tribal/Aztec, which is one after my own heart, so I couldn’t wait to draw some new tribal inspired nail art. & obviously I had to use some of the next China Glaze Gone West polishes for a Fall colour scheme.

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For this manicure, the polishes I used are:

  • Base Coat: Fraken Base Coat combination
  • Base Coat: Quo by ORLY Bonder
  • Top Coat: Essie Gel Settter
  • China Glaze Cowboy Bye
  • China Glaze Prairie Tale Ending
  • China Glaze Take The High Rodeo
  • China Glaze Gold Mine Your Business
  • China Glaze Cattle Drive Me Crazy
  • Essence Black is Back
  • NailStuff.ca 7mm Nail Art Brush
  • Small dotting tool

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So I know I’m totally biased, but how cute did this look turn out? The colour pallet is just so perfect for Fall weather & I think goes really well with the tribal prompt. I mean, I can’t stop obsessing about these colours anyways, but combined with one of my favourite kinds of designs, it’s hard not to just keep staring at my nails. & it satisfies my craving for Fall just enough.

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I’ve really had so much fun doing this challenge this month, & I’m super excited that I completed all 8 prompts! Still deciding if I’ll be joining in again next month, as the prompts look quite fun, but if I don’t do all of them, I will definitely take inspiration from some. & I definitely plan on getting more creative this month in my nail art! So who knows what designs you will see coming up! I definitely feel like pumpkins are going to need to happen!

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Don’t forget to check out the other manicures for #glamnailschallengeaug & let me know down in the comments below if you’d like to see me do more challenges like this in the future!

City Sunset 🌇 for #glamnailschallengeAug

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Hello lovelies! & happy Monday.

We’ve got two more prompts left for #glamnailschallengeAug, & I’m going to be honest… I wasn’t sure I was going to get this prompt done! Not only was I a bit stumped on inspiration, but I’ve had a busy last week so I haven’t been able to get my nails painted like I usually can. But thanks to some late night Pinterest-ing & a cooperative baby, I pulled out a last minute nail art success!

& I’m so super in love with the end result!

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For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: fraken base coat combination
  • Base Coat: Quo by ORLY Bonder
  • Top Coat: Essie Speed Setter
  • Essence Indian Summer
  • Essie Flowerista
  • Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Trouble Maker
  • Essence Black is Back
  • Kiss Products Nail Art Striper in white
  • NailStuff.ca Mermaid Tail Nail Art Brush Trio (7mm size)

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I started off this design with what I’m going to call a “rustic” gradient — I didn’t go your typical route where you blend all your colours together at once, but instead sponged my layers on top of each other which kind of created the pinky cloud effect. I then brushed my top coat over & over to smear the layers together a bit. This created the perfect background because I really feel like it looks more like what you see when you see a sunset. & it reminds me a lot of this sunset I captured not that long ago (which was also kind of my inspiration for the colour combo I went with.)

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I’ve done a few of these sunset with background designs, but this is definitely the most unique. (Usually I do mountains & cacti, or something similar) but with the pinky sky & the buildings it really does feel like a city sunset, maybe even my own city.

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What do you think of this design? Can you believe we only have one more prompt left for this challenge… how crazy is that?

Don’t forget to hop over to Instagram & check out #glamnailschallengeaug to see everyone’s amazing city building manicures!