NOTD – Page 179 – Coffee & Nail Polish

October 30, 2019October 30, 2019

GlamnailschallengeOct—Jack o Lanterns 🎃

Oh my gosh, we did it you guys! It’s the last day of GlamnailschallengeOct! Another month of fun designs that I might not have done otherwise! & I’ve had a blast celebrating my favourite holiday with this challenge… now it’s time for one more design!

The last prompt is Jack o Lanterns. Now there are a lot of different ways you can do Jack O Lanterns on your nails, & I searched through many minutes of Pinterest for inspiration, but in the end I decided to just start painting & see what I got.

For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

Base Coat: Sally Hansen Green Tea Bamboo Strengthener
Base Coat: Duri Rejuvocate
Top coat: YSL Beauty Quick Dry Top Coat
LA Girl Rock Star Groupie
Acrylic Paint
NailStuff.ca 7mm liner brush (from Mermaid Brush Trio)
NailStuff.ca dotting tool trio

For this look, I took my base colour which I was already wearing (LA Girl Groupie) & used a few orange acrylic paints to create my pumpkins. I went with acrylic paint (again) because it’s easier to erase if you’re unhappy with how it turns out & I find can’t paint on a bit easier than nail polish — & I was working against the clock.

I liked the idea of doing a couple smaller pumpkins on each finger with a larger “accent pumpkin” on my ring finger. I thought it turned out kind of cute! I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of actually carving pumpkins–& truthfully I haven’t done it in like 10 years–but I’ll paint cute Jack o lanterns on my nails any time!

What do you think about my Jack o lanterns for GlamnailschallengeOct? Have you figured out what you’re dressing your nails as yet?

Don’t forget to pop over to #glamnailschallengeOct on Instagram & see all the final designs for this month!

October 28, 2019October 26, 2019

GlamnailschallengeOct—Skull

Good morning lovelies & Happy Monday! Can you believe this month is almost over? The countdown to Halloween is officially on & I’m both excited to celebrate, & sad for my favourite month to be over! But since we have a few more Halloween looks to go, I’m going to keep the excitement rolling with our second last #glamnailschallengeOct prompt which is Skull. A similar idea to skeleton, so I wanted to try & do something way different from my skeleton design.

& it was the perfect opportunity to use some nail tattoos by Maybelline that I recently purchased on extreme clearance at my local pharmacy (& favourite place for nail polish deals!) These nail tattoos were pretty cool, & I couldn’t think of a better opportunity to use them.

For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

Base Coat: Sally Hansen Green Tea Bamboo Strengthener
Base Coat: Duri Rejuvocate
Top coat: YSL Beauty Quick Dry Top Coat
Sally Hansen Color Therapy Slicks & Stones
Acrylic Paint
NailStuff.ca 7mm detail brush
NailStuff.ca dotting tool trio

How much fun! This was also my first time in a long time wearing Sally Hansen Slicks & Stones which is just such a pretty shade for Autumn. It also goes really well with the orange & blues of my skull tattoo. It turned out more celebratory than scary, which is fun for this time of year as well. I’m digging it! & I added roses to add to the sugar skull feel.

Close up look at that nail tattoo. This makes me excited to use a few more of the designs that came in the packs I got. Definitely fun for fancy nails when you’re on a time limit… I definitely couldn’t draw that skull design in the 60 seconds it took me to apply that tattoo & add my top coat.

What do you think about these sugar skull nails? Remember you can check out the other #glamnailschallengeOct looks on Instagram. There is just one more prompt to go!

October 27, 2019

SWATCH SUNDAY—LA Girl Rockstar Groupie

Good morning lovelies & happy Sunday! If you follow me on Instagram (insert shameless plug here) you would have saw that I posted a poll to pick this week’s Swatch Sunday polish. & the winner with 59% of the vote was LA Girl Groupie from the Rock Star collection. This collection is pretty old — I found a Vampy Varnish swatch post that date back 10 years. I purchased this particular bottle pre-blog life, in 2013. & I’ve only done one manicure with it since starting this blog: these pink & purple half moons. So a reunion was long overdue!

LA Girl Rock Star Groupie is a deep grape purple with a very prominent blue micro glitter. This is definitely a classic example of a blurple, which I was absolutely obsessed with when I bought this guy. &, I’ll be honest, is still one of my favourite kinds of purples. There is also a bit of pink shimmer that comes out depending on which way you shift your fingers. The perfect example of a “galaxy in a bottle” nail polish.

For my swatches I did base coat (always), 2 coats of colour & I did finish things off with quick dry top coat because I was planning on doing nail art over top. First coat had some streakiness, but second coat levelled everything off nicely. If you wanted an even solid application, you could do a thin 3rd coat, but I really feel like it’s not super necessary. That being said, with the polish being thin (& quick dry top coat), the polish dries fairly quickly on the nail so you don’t have to worry about drying to dry a big gloopy mess.

Sadly, it looks like this particular line of LA Girls has been discontinued & even eBay didn’t seem to have an overpriced bottle to be found. However, the LA Girl brand is still up & running & from the looks of it still has lots of gorgeous polish options to choose from at a very affordable price. In my early polishaholic days, when I was a poor retail slave, these were some of my favourite polishes to buy because I could buy 2 or 3 & still be able to afford my coffee addiction. In fact, next time I pop over to my favourite pharmacy (the one that has ALL the nail polish deals) I think I’ll have to check out what LA Girl polishes they have to offer!

What do you think about LA Girl Rock Starts Groupie? Do you love a pretty blurple like this? Do you own this bad boy in your stash? Let me know! & let me know if you’d like to see me feature more of the shades from the brand in an upcoming blog post.

💜

October 23, 2019October 22, 2019

GlamnailschallengeOct—Eyeballs

Hello lovelies! It’s time for another prompt for #glamnailschallengeOct: Eyeballs! This look was actually inspired by an old design by Chalkboard Nails, that I found via Pinterest. I thought her look was equal parts cool & creepy, so it would be the perfect look for today’s prompt. 👁

For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

Base Coat: Sally Hansen Green Tea Bamboo Strengthener
Base Coat: Duri Rejuvocate
Top Coat: YSL Beauty Quick Dry Top Coat
Sinful Colors Leather Loose
Sally Hansen MG Get Mod
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Pacific Blue
Essie First Timer
OPI How Great Is Your Dane?
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri. Jelly Belly Bubble Gum
NailStuff.ca dotting tool trio
NailStuff.ca 7mm detail brush

This look was a little time consuming but still a super easy look to achieve. I went through a few different ideas on what I wanted my eyeball design to look like, & this one seemed the most fun (& creepy!) I also was super pumped to pull out Sinful Colors Leather Loose again, because it is such a fantastic Fall shade that I had kind of forgotten about a little bit. That brown with the shimmer–oh boy is it beautiful! & my eyeballs really popped against it.

Totally creepy, am I right? I probably could have done a few more eyeballs on my design, but I was painting against the clock & wanted to make sure I got this look done!

What do you think of this look for today’s prompt? Would you wear this creepy eyeball look? Can you believe we only have TWO more prompts left before the end of #glamnailschallengeOct?

Keep following along with #glamnailschallengeOct on Instagram & don’t forget to check out all the other awesome (& creepy!) eyeball looks!

October 21, 2019October 15, 2019

GlamnailschallengeOct—Skeletons 💀

Hello lovelies & Happy Monday! The Halloween countdown is officially on, & I have another spooky design created for GlamnailschallengeOct! The next prompt on our list is skeletons, which is not an image I’ve ever attempted on my nails before, so I was really excited to give it a shot! & honestly, I think this is my favourite manicure of the challenge so far!

For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

Base Coat: Duri Rejuvocate
Top Coat: YSL Beauty Quick Dry Top Coat
Essie Leggy Legend
China Glaze Pathological Liar Liar
Sally Hansen Miracle Gel Get Mod
Black Acrylic Paint
NailStuff.ca 7mm liner brush (from Mermaid Brush Trio)
Born Pretty Store Classic Patterns stamping plate BP-L006 (item #17924)

This nail art look was built in layers. First I started off with my base, which is Pathological Liar Liar layered over Leggy Legend — I definitely need to do two coats of PLL next time, but I definitely love it a lot more when it has some undies.

Next I decided to use this skull & cross bones image from my classic patterns stamping plate from Born Pretty Store, mostly because I was unsure about free handing skeletons. On its own, the image was a little meh, so I took a risk & outlined the stamp with black acrylic paint & my mermaid tail brush from NailStuff. & that’s when this mani came to life! The outlining made the image pop on my nail & I am absolutely OBSESSED with it. I also did a few polka dots around it to fill in the space. It almost looks like nail art stickers, which is super cool. I literally didn’t even want to take these off after I put them on.

I really like how the stamping & outlining almost looks slightly cartoon-y. Going with black & white over the coppery orange base was definitely the way to go.

I feel like if 17 year old me was into nail art like this back in the day, this is a design I would have rocked in a variety of background colours… while listening to the Ataris on repeat & writing angsty journal entries. Works for Halloween & non-Halloween alike.

What do you think about my skeleton nails? Would you wear this design? What do you think about combining freehanding & stamping in the same manicure? Let me know all your thoughts down in the comments below! & don’t forget to keep following along with #glamnailschallengeOct on Instagram for all the nail art looks!

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