Category: Purple Nails

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SWATCH SUNDAY—LA Girl Rockstar Groupie

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

💜

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Birthday Nails with Essie Birthday Girl 🎉

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Hello lovelies & Happy Tuesday! Hope everyone is having a beautiful start to their week. Today I’m breaking up my usual posting schedule because TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY! That’s right, today marks 33 years around the sun. So obviously I needed to do something fun on my nails to mark the occasion.

In years past I’ve done some obvious birthday nails, but this year I decided to let the polish do the talking. When I saw that Essie had released a polish called Birthday Girl, I knew that I was going to need to own it & incorporate it into my birthday mani this year! I also wanted to do something fun, as I snapped a nail just in time for my birthday, so I am back to some serious shorties.

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For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: Duri Rejuvocate
  • Top Coat: YSL Beauty Quick Dry Top Coat
  • Essie The A-bliss {PR sample}
  • Essie Birthday Girl
  • Color Club Pucci-licious
  • Color Club Eternal Beauty
  • Essie Play Date
  • Sally Hansen Pat on the Black
  • Nailstuff.ca 11mm Liner Brush {PR sample}

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For my base, I applied two coats of Birthday Girl over one coat of The A-bliss. I then did a whole bunch of Pinterest stalking to see what kind of design I wanted to do overtop my base of Birthday Girl & in the end I decided a Waterfall look was the way to go! Do you remember when Waterfall designs were all the rage? I feel like this design needs to make a comeback!

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For this look I decided to pick a few purples that I thought would compliment my pink base. Then o used my liner brush from NailStuff to brush thin streaks of polish at my cuticle line, & bam! An low effort design that looks super fancy & fun. Kind of reminds me of sparkling fireworks at the base of my nails which is perfect for celebrating, even if my idea of celebrating is drinking my free birthday drink from Starbucks & playing with the new stamping plates my Mum bought me for my birthday! I can’t think of a more perfect day. ☕️💅🏻

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Hope everyone has an amazing day! Let me know what you think about this look & what colour combination you’d love to see me do in a Waterfall look next! 💙

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Shimmery Teal & Purple Half Moons

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Good morning lovelies & happy Thursday! Hope everyone is having a lovely week so far. Today I’ve got some more Fall nail art to share with you, in a fun jewel toned colour scheme!

There is something I love SO MUCH about pairing purple & blue/teal together. I just find they compliment each other so well, which is probably why–regardless of the season–it is a go to combination for me. I was already wearing my Swatch Sunday pick for this week, & I wanted something to pair with it in a quick half moon, so naturally I had to reach for a purple to complete the look.

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For this look, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: Gel overlay
  • Top coat: Essie Gel Setter
  • Quo by ORLY Breathable Freudian Flip
  • Essence 25 Arabian Nights (new formula Shine Last & Go!)
  • Essie Jiggle Hi, Jiggle Lo
  • Paper hole reinforcements
  • small dotting tool (Mine are from NailStuff.ca)

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Trying out this new purple from the reformulated Essence line at Shoppers Drug Mart. I’m trying my best not to buy too many new polishes (since, you know, I have a million) but I can’t resist $2.99 nail polish so I picked up this pretty shimmery dark purple called Arabian Nights, & I really think it compliments my base of Freudian Flip really well! I decided to add in some gold as well, so keep it feel luxe, & I think the end result looks super fancy. (Also Arabian Nights applied over my base in only one coat, which made this manicure even quicker to do!)

Feeling like this has a bit of a Mardi Gras vibe as well, although a little bit early for that! But I really do love how fancy these feel, thanks to the jewel tones & gold accents. Of course, the fanciest place I’ll be wearing these is the grocery store, but that’s okay with me! I’ll have the best looking nails at Sobeys!

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What do you think about this half moon look? What manicure are you planning on rocking this weekend? Let me know all your thoughts down in the comments below!

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SWATCH SUNDAY — ORLY Plum Sugar

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Good morning lovelies & Happy Swatch Sunday! Today I pulled from deep in my stash for some deep & dark Fall inspiration.

Today I’m wearing ORLY Plum Sugar, which was originally released as part of the Spring 2015 Sugar High Collection. This shade came to me thanks to the Marshall’s clearance section, one of my favourite places to find hidden polish gems. & even though this shade was originally released as part of a Spring polish collection, to me it is the perfect Autumn polish pick!

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Plum Sugar is a super rich purple cream with a fantastic formula. For my swatches I did two coats of polish over my base, & finished everything off with a thick coat of glossy top coat (Essie Gel Setter). On the first coat, the polish was a bit streaky, but once you apply your second swipe, you have perfect opacity.

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Seriously, how gorgeous is this purple? I love a good purple polish & I’ve definitely been craving vampy shades lately. & Plum Sugar is just the perfect gateway shade for these almost-Fall days. You would have seen this pretty purple base as the background of my Fall inspired bestie twin floral that I posted yesterday. 🍂🌼🍁

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Oh gosh, I’m just absolutely obsessed with this polish! Hence why I took about 50 thousand pictures of it. I just couldn’t stop staring it at! If you’re interested in adding this shade to your collection, I found it for sale at NailPolishCanada.com, as well as on Amazon (link through my Amazon Shop).

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What is your favourite perfect purple for Fall? Have you already started breaking out the vampy shades for Fall, or are you still holding onto those last days of Summer?

Let me know what your wearing on your nails this week down in the comments below!

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Bestie Twin Floral Nails

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Happy Saturday lovelies! Did everyone survive Full Moon Friday the 13th okay? Today I’m sharing a fun design that has been in planning for a while–bestie twin floral nails that I did with my girl Victoria over at @nailstuffca!

We’ve been talking about doing some twin floral nails for absolutely ages, so I was really excited that we finally managed to come together to create our matching looks! The inspiration for this floral comes from my favourite place for inspiration: Pinterest! I found this pattern while browsing for Fall floral & that was where we started for our manicures.

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The polishes used for this manicure were:

  • Base Coat: Gel overlay (trying to grow out some damage on my tips)
  • Top Coat: Essie Gel Setter
  • ORLY Plum Sugar
  • Essie Stop Drop & Shop
  • Acrylic Paints (set purchased from Dollarama)
  • Nailstuff.ca Dotting Tool Trio
  • Nailstuff.ca Mermaid Tail Brush Brush Trio (I used the 11mm liner brush)

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This was my first time using acrylic paints to create a look like this (floral) & I was a little nervous at first, but it was actually pretty easy to do! I still had to use polish for the pinky roses, as the set of paints I bought didn’t have any red. But other than that, I was pretty impressed that a $2 set of acrylic paint could create such beautiful art on such a teeny canvas. I don’t think I’ll use paints every time I go to do nail art, but for a design like this that is supposed to be a bit rustic, I think they worked perfectly!

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Ahhhh, how pretty did these turn out? Considering I was definitely feeling rusty since I hadn’t created any floral since before our baby girl was born, I feel really good about the end result.

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What do you think about these floral nails? Don’t forget to hop over to @NailStuff.ca & check out Victoria’s version of this design & give her some love!