Mani Monday Mermaid Nails

Who doesn’t love a good mermaid manicure? 

When I made my What’s Up Nails order I knew I needed to stock up on some of their scale stencils so I could create mermaid nails. They just make me so happy! I just can’t stop playing with my vinyls. 

For this manicure, I used: 

  • Base Coat: Perfect Formula Pink Gel Coat 
  • Top Coat: Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat
  • Essie All Access Pass 
  • Icing Breakfast At Tiffany’s
  • China Glaze Sand Dolla Make You Holla
  • What’s Up Nails Scale Stencil

I really wanted an excuse to pull out my bottle of Sand Dolla Make You Holla. Sadly my bottle has seen better days, & I’ve been trying to bring it back to life with polish thinner, but it’s not going well. Anyone else have trouble saying goodbye to old polishes at the end of their life, or is just me? I find it especially hard with polishes that are discontinued because you know you can’t get go out & buy a new bottle easily. I mean, yeah there is EBay but I feel weird buying polish off of EBay. Guess I will just have to hope & pray I come across it at Winners or Marshall’s one day soon. 

What do you think of this mermaid mani? What polish do you keep even though it’s seen better days? Let me know in the comments below!

Easter Mini Egg Nails

Is there anything more Easter-y than  Cadbury Mini Eggs? Well, I mean back in the day when they only came out at Easter. Sadly my lactose intolerance has come back since having the little one, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still love those delicious chocolate eggs (it just means I can eat them.) & since I won’t be enjoying them in my Easter basket this year, I thought I would continue the tradition of recreating them again on my nails. (I did mini egg nails previously in 2015 here & 2016 here


For this mani, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: Perfect Formula Pink Gel Coat Base Coat
  • Top Coat: Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat
  • Matte Top Coat: L’Oréal the Matte Velvet top coat. 
  • China Glaze Sun Upon My Skin
  • Hard Candy Sky
  • OPI Getting Nadi On My Honeymoon
  • Revlon Minted
  • Nubar New Mood
  • Essie Cocoa Karma
  • Wet N Wild 2% Milk
  • Crinkled Up Plastic Wrap


 I’ve been doing these nails every year and I love how each time year turn out differently depending on the polishes and techniques used. I also think it’s because they’re just so easy to do, but it looks fantastic & just the right amount of festive! But fair warning: they will make you crave chocolate mini eggs. & if you can’t eat chocolate that could become problematic. Haha.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you!


 

What’s your favourite Easter designs to create & recreate? Do you already have planned what you’re wearing on your nails for Easter? Let me know in the comments below! 🐰

Mani Swap with @teenynails

It’s been a long while since I teamed up for any Mani swaps, so I have a few swap collabs coming up with some of my favourite girls on Instagram.

Up first, I have a swap with the very talented @teenynails. For this Swap she recreated my leopard patterned half moons & I had to recreate her beautiful purple vintage floral!

The polishes I used for my recreation were:

  • Essie Play Date
  • CND Crimison Sparkle
  • Kiss Nail Art Striper in Black
  • Kiss Nail Art Striper in White
  • Sally Hansen I ♥️ Nail Art pen in White 
  • Essie Brides No Grooms
  • My Beauty Spot unnamed pink
  • Essie Off Tropic 
  • Essie First Timer 
  • Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat
  • Small Nail Art brush from Bundle Monster

You know how I feel about floral, & I thought these were so perfect for the Spring-y weather we’ve been having. Plus it gave me an excuse to pull out Essie Play Date again. & these are definitely some of the best roses I’ve done in a while. I just can’t stop staring at them.

What do you think of our recreations? Let me know in the comments below!

And shout out the the lovely @teenynails for joining me in this swap. 💜 Don’t forget to check out her account on Instagram & check out all her amazing nail art!

Drip Marble decals inspired by @SimplyNailogical 


I’ve tried water marbling, & it was… not my thing. I’ve tried drag marbling, & it’s usually hit or miss. But I really love marbled nails, so naturally when I picked up a silicone craft mat I knew I needed to try drip marbling recently done by @simplynailogical.


For this mani I used:

  • ORLY Decades of Dysfunction 
  • Sally Hansen Pretty Piggy
  • Nicole by OPI We Got Beiber Fever
  • Finger Paints Wanna Gogh Dance?
  • ACO by Ardene Base Coat
  • Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat

To create my decals, I started off by dropping my polished of choice onto the mat, starting with my lightest colour (ORLY Decades of Dysfunction) as my base, then continued with my darker colours, & finished with my metallic shade (Finger Paints Wanna Gogh Dance?). Once all my colours were down, I moved my mat around to create my marbled effect. Once I was happy with one decal, I’d let it sit & dry for a few minutes before starting on the next one. When I was happy with the amount of decals I’d made, I left them to Dry for a few hours (around 2 hours).

I’m not going to lie, trying to apply these wasn’t the easiest. I started off by painting my accent nails with a base colour (again I used ORLY Decades of Dysfunction) and let dry. I then peeled off my decal & figured out which part I wanted on my nail, trimming it down to a more manageable size. When I was ready, I applied a coat of my ACO by Ardene base coat & immediately stuck my decal onto the nail. Using a brush dipped in acetone, I cleaned up around the cuticle. This was probably the least fun part–I wish I had better nail art scissors to trim off the access instead! When the decal was fully cleaned up & my cuticles were clean I sealed everything in with top coat to finish. I also surrounded my cuticles in oil to help after all that remover. No one likes wrecked cuticles.

And how does the final result look?

Continue reading “Drip Marble decals inspired by @SimplyNailogical “

My Spring Polish Picks


If you’re like me, your love of nail polish may run into barriers such as money & time. Being a new Mom, I can’t afford to go crazy on buying nail polish like I used to, because you know… diapers. That means when I do want to buy polish, I have to make sure it is really something special. So instead, I’ve been “shopping” my own stash instead of buying new polishes.

In that spirit, I decided to go through & pick my favourite polishes for Spring from the shades I already own! It took me a while to pick my personal favourites from all the polishes I own, but these are all shades I can see myself reaching for in the coming months, & screams Spring to me!  I’ve listed the seasons these polishes were released, but I know some are part of the permanent core collections.

Continue reading “My Spring Polish Picks”