Vintage Florals & Stripes

Happy Tuesday lovelies! I hope everyone had an amazing Easter holiday/long weekend full of chocolate eggs & family fun. We had a huge Egg hunt for our little guy & all his cousins & it reminded me of the excitement of being a kid & finding those chocolate eggs on Easter morning. Plus, who doesn’t love chocolate!

Today I’m sharing more florals with you–because I just can’t stop! This design is a recreation from a few years ago. This time, though, I decided to go with blue as my base colour.

The polishes I used for this design were:

  • Base Coat: Nailtek 2
  • Top Coat: Seche Vive
  • China Glaze Boho Blues
  • Art Club Nail Art Striper in Blue Paisley
  • Quo by ORLY Nail Art Striper in White
  • Sally Hansen CSM Killer Heels
  • Sally Hansen CSM Red It Online
  • Sally Hansen CSM Rose To the Occasion
  • Sally Hansen CSM Blush Against The World
  • Sally Hansen I ♥️ Nail Art pen in green
  • Quo by ORLY Second Hand Jade
  • Bundle Monster detail brush

Ugh these roses make me so happy. In real life, I’m not really a red rose kind of girl… but when it comes to nail art I can’t get enough! I just love the love of red roses against a contrasting background colour. & it’s been forever since I pulled out my bottle of China Glaze Boho Blues, & I forgot just how pretty of a colour it was. I love it.

It also is a beautiful base colour for Florals.

Is it starting to feel like Spring where you are? We just had a few days of Spring-like weather (which meant I got to wear my new Spring jacket!) so I’m very, very excited.

what do you think of this design? Are you sick of the floral designs yet? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below! 💙

Purple Dry Brush Quatrefoil Nails

Happy Friday & almost Easter lovelies! I’m off today with Good Friday & ooooooh do I have so many blog things to do! This has been a crazy week & I’m still trying balance working Full Time & keeping to my blog posting schedule. Thank goodness I’m going at multitasking! Today I’m showing off some pretty purple nails I did forever ago but didn’t have a chance to post yet. 💜 These nails were inspired by a make up bag I saw at Marshall’s.

For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: Nailtek 2
  • Top Coat: Seche Vive
  • Essie Go Ginza
  • Essie Play Date
  • Essie The Girls Are Out
  • China Glaze Grape Juice
  • Sally Hansen Hard To Get
  • Random clear nail polish
  • Born Pretty Store Clear Jelly Stamper
  • Born Pretty Store stamping plate BP-L003 (item #17921) — quatrafoil image

I’m digging all these purples together. I thought about creating a sponge mani, but didn’t have any sponges so a dry brush was my next option! I really wanted the colours to blend together, kind of like a gradient. So I used a random bottle of clear polish (literally it has no label & I no idea where it came from) and smeared the brush strokes together by brushing the clear polish over it over & over again. The cheaper & random the clear polish, the better things will blend. You don’t want to use a quick dry top coat because it dries to quickly. The whole point is to smear all the shades together.

It feels like ages since I played with my stamping stuff. This is definitely one of my favourite images from this particular plate. It just makes doing Moroccan/quatrefoil designs just so, so easy (& definitely quicker than nail vinyls!

what do you think of this purple design? What design are you rocking for the weekend? Comment down below! 💅🏻

Tropical Leaves! 🌿

Happy Friday loves! Still feeling like Winter here in Halifax (yesterday was the worst) so I’m feeling like embracing Spring on my nails as much as possible. Tropical leaves have been popping up on my Instagram feed a lot lately (shout out to @nailsbyharlig & @thebasecoat for each of their pretty designs!), so it felt like a good time to pull out my tropical leaves stencils from What’s Up Nails.

For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: Quo by ORLY Breathable Kiss Me, I’m Kind
  • Top Coat: Seche Vive
  • OPI My Address is Hollywood
  • YSL Vert D’Orient
  • China Glaze In The Limelight
  • What’s Up Beauty Tropical Leaves Stencils
  • Edge Perfection Cuticle Barrier

The green against the pink base is such a pretty combination. I adore the look of tropical leaves, but I could never imagine trying to freehand them… yet! Thankfully, nail vinyls makes it way too easy to create the look. 🌱🌿🍃

Anyone else love the tropical leaf look that’s been so popular on Instagram lately? I’ve been obsessed with all the greenery (a reaction to the lack of Spring in my life, I’m sure) so it’s fun to see everyone’s version of the look! Also it gets me excited for a month or two when it finally feels like Spring is really here.

What’s your favourite Spring nail art look right now? What are you obsessed with? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Negative Space Floral

We’re currently being bombarded with 25+ cm of snow here in Halifax, which is not so much fun. I’m really not a Winter person (well, once Christmas is over anyways.) So how about some floral nails to cheer us up? I wore this design this weekend, but with a raging Winter storm outside as we speak I kind of need something pretty & Spring-y to cheer me up. Did I mention I’m really, really over Winter?

Did you know it’s 49 days until Spring? Just a fun fact to get you through those long, chilly days ahead. Unless you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case do you have a spare room because I’m coming to visit!

I took so many pictures of this design. I know every floral manicure is my new favourite, but this one just turned out so well I couldn’t help but take a million pictures of it.

For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: Nailtek 2
  • Top Coat: Seche Vive
  • Matte Top Coat: L’Oréal the Matte Velvet
  • Essie The Girls Are Out
  • OPI My Pointe Exactly
  • China Glaze Ever Glaze Don’t Grape About It
  • Sally Hansen Instadri Petal Pusher
  • Essie Bachelorette Bash
  • Sally Hansen I ♥️ Nail Art Pen in Green
  • Essence The Green & the Grunge
  • Essie Play Date
  • Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow
  • Small detail brush (Born Pretty Store)
  • Small & large dotting tools (Bundle Monster)

So many polishes were used for this design, but it was so worth it. & I think the matte top coat just makes the end result that much more beautiful. This is definitely not a quick to do design, but floral just makes me so happy I don’t even care! 💗 I hope you love floral, because I have a feeling there will be a lot of floral leading up to Spring. Also even though it’s snowing today, I’m totally pulling out my favourite floral romper, since I have no plans on leaving the house today… except to maybe go to Starbucks & get coffee but even then I won’t be leaving the car.

What are your thoughts on today’s floral design? Are you a fan of floral nails? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Marbled Nails Using Acetone

Good Morning Lovelies! & happy Monday.

Today I have a have nail art design to share with you. I’ve written before how I love playing around with different techniques, & lately I’ve been really into marbled nails & the many ways to create them. For today’s design, I created a marble design using polish & acetone–a technique that I’ve shown off before.

For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: Nailtek 2
  • Top Coat: Seche Vive
  • China Glaze For Audrey
  • Quo by ORLY Feeling Free
  • Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Black Heart
  • Xroma Polish & Vinyls Spiral Star
  • Acetone
  • Q-tip

Obviously the easiest way to show you how to create this design was with a tutorial, so check out below!

I just really, really love this colour combination. There is something about turquoise & purple that goes so well together. Also why don’t I grab China Glaze For Audrey more often? It was my very first ever China Glaze shade, & now I remember why I fell in love with it. Just so pretty!

So what do you think of this marble design? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!