Category: Tim Horton’s

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Happy Easter!

Taking another pause to share some Easter nail art. I wore these the other night for an Easter shindig we had. I really wanted to do something festive with my nails as I had taken my speckled egg polish off. Looking at them now I kind of wish I had done each one a little bit different, just to switch them up slightly, but I do think they turned out well (especially for something I’ve never tried to do before!)

bunnynails

The polishes I used for the manicure were:

  • Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Xtreme wear in Twisted Pink — Pink base on thumb, and pinky. Inside of the bunny ears and nose.
  • Essence’s Dive with Me to the Island (from the Ticket to Paradise  collection) — Turquoise base on pointer, middle and ring fingers. It showed up more green on the finger, but it is more turquoise in the bottle.
  • Stripe Rite Striping Polish in White & China Glaze White on White — Bunnies.
  • Flaunt Beauty in Jet Black — The eye’s of the bunnies.

Hope your Easter is going well, and involves lots of chocolate (if you’re into that kind of thing) and time spent with your family. I’m looking forward to an Easter Egg hunt at my parent’s house, and competing with my nephew on who can get the most eggs!

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The 31 Day Challenge –Day 12: Stripes.

I have to say I’m actually pretty impressed with myself, and the fact I’ve been able to keep this challenge going without giving up. It’s actually been so easy for nail art because I know what I have to do, it just means figuring out the details of how.

For Day 12, my prompt was stripes. I was inspired by this manicure I found on pinterest, a combination of stripes and flowers. Mine are a little different, obviously–and I’m still working on perfecting my roses. I can’t wait until the new nail art brushes arrive so I can do much smaller details. These are a little messy, but I still think they’re very pretty. And perfect for spring weather. The days are finally getting warmer, and so I will be wearing my darker manicure less often, and concentrating on spring colors.

stripes

As you can see, I went with purple stripes instead of the black ones in the picture, and only concentrated on the flowers on a few accent nails (my thumb, middle, and ring finger). My flowers are definitely not perfect, but I think I just didn’t choose the right combination of colors–I started these pretty late the night previous, when I was already tired.

nailpolish

The polishes I used for this manicure were (from left to right):

  • ACO by Ardene in Sour Apple — light green polish in the middle of the leaves.
  • OPI’s Pinking of You — the light pink base of the roses (although they kind of got hidden by my other polishes).
  • Essie Watermelon — Accent dots of pink on the roses.
  • ACO by Ardene in Bridezilla — light ivory base of my nails.
  • Color Club Art Club striping polish in Paisley Paradise — stripes on my nails.
  • Garage Nail polish (No Name) — pink outline of my roses.
  • ACO by Ardene in Techno Green — darker green of my leaves.

All topped off with my favorite Sally Hansen Diamond Flash top coat (which you can see peeking out from the back row, behind my the Art Club striper.)

These are not my most impressive roses, but I think my stripes turned out awesome. I’m not very good at tape manicures, even with a lot of practice, so I rely on striping polishes to get them done! I’ve been working pretty hard on practicing my line work, and trying to get a steadier hand, and I really think it’s paying off. A year ago I would not have been able to draw such even lines on my nails!

Also I have to say how much I LOVE Bridezilla by ACO. I’ve been looking for a new off-white polish for wearing as a base, as I’m scared if I use my beloved My Boyfriend Scales Walls too much, it’s going to run out way quicker than I want. Bridezilla is somewhere between an off-white or cream, and a very very light nude, and I just adore it. The application was awesome (2 coats on most nails for opacity, with only one or two nails needing another coat thin coat for hiding some bald spots.) And it was the perfect base color for my stripes.

Also my best friend is getting married in August, and I’m not sure what nail art I’m going to be able to do, but Bridezilla could be a lovely color to wear just as is. (Our brides maid dresses are blue and cream stripes, and I’m pretty sure that is almost exactly the same color as the stripes on our dresses.)

 

So what do you think of this stripe and rose combination?

 

 

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ACO by Ardene nail polish in Bow Chicka Wow Wow and Tea Party

With it being Easter this upcoming weekend, I thought I would take a pause from the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge. I’m actually going to review some polishes by Ardene which I think are the perfect colors for Easter. For those who don’t know Ardene is a Canadian Clothing and Accessories store (similar to Claire’s). However in the last couple years, they’ve recently been expanding their nail polish collections, now including Sugar Effect polishes, and feather polishes.

I’ll be upfront and honest before–I work for the company. However, I’m not going to let this make me bias in my review. They have not provided me with the polishes–I went out and bought them on my own. That’s the reason why you see a lot of the ACO polishes in my manicures. I’ve accumulate quite the collection over my years with the company on my own accord. I’ve also found in the last year or so they’ve REALLY upped their nail polish game, with fantastic colors, and different effects.

coffee

The polishes I’m going to talk about today are two speckled polishes–Bow Chicka Wow Wow which is a baby pink polish (on my middle, and ring, fingers) with tiny matte black glitters, and Tea Party (on my pointed and pinky fingers) which is a baby blue polish with tiny matte black glitters. Unlike some of the speckled polishes I’ve seen online by Model’s Own and Illamasquathe glitters are all uniform size and shape.

pink

Bow Chicka Wow Wow

blue

Tea Party 

The first thing I noticed about both polishes is that they are very sheer. It took me three coats to reach opacity on each nail and I still feel like it’s not fully opaque. My guess is that they are so sheer so that when you apply multiple layers, you can still see the black glitters underneath. However, because the polish is so sheer each coat dries quite quickly, which is a bonus. I had no bald spots with application, which is always something I like in a polish (nothing worse them having to go back and fix spots on your nail where it didn’t smooth out properly.) The black glitters do leave a little texture on the nail, but that is easily fixed with a coat of top coat or two.

bottles

I was quite impressed with these polishes. They gave me the speckled egg look I was coveting, at a very reasonable price. (You can pick up ACO by Ardene polishes at Ardene locations, 3 polishes for $10.)

I can’t say anything about wear, as I’ve only had my polishes on for a couple of hours, but from experience Ardene polishes tend to hold up pretty well for me without chipping for 2-3 days–and I use my hands at work A LOT so chipping my manicure is always a fear. I’m also not sure how removal is going to go–Glitter is always a pain to get off. But with the foil method, I’m sure it will be no issue.

So if you’re looking for a fun, but not too expensive, polish to wear for your Easter festivities, I’d recommend hitting up your local Ardene and picking these up. I can’t wait to apply a matte top coat to these, and really upping the level of my mani!

 

 

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31 Day Nail Art Challenge — Day 8: Metallic Nails.

Okay so for day 8 of the challenge, I may have cheated a wee tiny bit. Technically, these aren’t really metallic. I had just picked up three of the new Amazing Spiderman 2 polishes by Revlon, and really, really wanted to try them out! So I grabbed two of them, Superpowered and I’m Electro, and got started.

(The third one I bought, Spidey Sense, was also gorgeous, but it’s a reddish color and didn’t really fit into the manicure I was going for. I will have to do a swatch post soon with all three!)

metallic

 

The polishes I used were:

  • Revlon’s I’m Electro (from the new Amazing Spiderman 2 collection) — Lighter blue color on accent nails.
  • Revlon’s Superpowered (from the new Amazing Spiderman 2 collection) — Darker blue color.
  • ACO by Ardene in Golden Luxury –the gold accent’s on my accent nails.
  • Sally Hansen Diamond Flash top coat.

I had to take the picture with my flash off because it was so shiny I couldn’t take a picture well enough to capture the nail art. I really love these two colors. Each one is a duocrome, shifting between colors, although it’s not as evident on the nail as much as in the bottle. Of the two I think I’m Electro is my favorite.

Also, how much do you love the quatrafoil look? It’s another nail art technique I’ve never tried before, but have been seeing around on youtube, and pinterest. I will definitely need some practice for it to look right though. While these Spiderman polishes are awesome, they’re a little thin for application which made getting the pattern right a little difficult.

Plus Superheroes! I am a huge Superhero fan girl–usually for the DC Universe (I have a Batman tattoo). I just watched the first Amazing Spiderman movie the other night with the boyfriend, so I can’t wait for the next one to come out. You can count on me to be there opening night, no doubt rocking some kind of Spiderman themed nail art.