Tag: Essie

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Mani Swap with @mugglenails

It feels like forever since I had to opportunity to join one of my fellow nail art addicts in a mani swap. So I was super excited to be able to team up with a fellow Canadian nail polish addict @mugglenails in a fun design swap. Meghan always comes up with such creative nail art patterns & colour combinations. So it was really fun to scroll through her feed to pick a design to recreate!

I had narrowed it down to two designs of hers, but in the end I kept coming back to this blue & aqua design. There is something about the colour combination which felt so nautical, I just couldn’t get it out of my head. Very, very Summery! For her design, Meghan recreated my green vine design from a few months back.

For this design, the polish I used were:

  • Base Coat: OPI Nail Envy
  • Top Coat: Essie Gel Setter
  • Essie First Timer
  • Icing Stores Mermaid Mint
  • Essie All the Wave
  • Born Pretty Store Aurora Rainbow Nail Striping Tape (item #40423)
  • Medium sized dotting tool

There is something about this colour combination that just makes me swoon. Maybe because it feels so Summer-y & reminds me of the ocean. I mean, I’m an East Coat Girl… the ocean is in my veins. I will always adore a nail design with a nautical theme. All this design needs is a quick accent anchor for it to go full nautical. But I kind of like the fact that it’s kind of subtle–it makes this design a much more everyday look. This colour combo isn’t my everyday choice, & yet I’m completely obsessed with it!

What do you think of this mani swap? Do you think my recreation was successful? Share your thoughts down in the comments below!

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Rustic Floral Pattern Nails

Can you never have too many floral manicures in your life? Personally, I don’t think so. We all know how much I adore flowers–from clothes, to shoes, to cellphone cases to my nails, I can never have enough! Recently I found a Rifle Paper Co. phone case at Winners on payday, so I decided to attempt to recreate said pattern on my nails.

My attempt definitely turned out a little more rustic than its inspiration, but I think that is why I love the end result so much!

For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: OPI Nail Envy
  • Top Coat: Essie Gel Setter
  • Boho Green Make Up Moonlight
  • Quo by ORLY Breathable Pep in my Step
  • Sally Hansen Miracle Gel Pretty Piggy
  • Sally Hansen MG Pretty Peony
  • Sally Hansen MG Off the Shoulder
  • Essie A-List
  • China Glaze Sun Upon My Skin
  • China Glaze Metro Pollen-tin
  • YSL Vert D’Orient
  • Sally Hansen Insta-dri Thyme is Money
  • Essie First Timer
  • Sally Hansen I ♥️ Nail Art pen in Black
  • Bundle Monster detail brush

I’m kind of excited for Summer because it means I can change up my backgrounds & use outside. How lush does this design look with green grass in the background? Definitely throwing my pictures back to my pre-light-box days with these photos & I’m loving it! Seriously, staged photos are awesome but something about natural light makes your manicures look that much better.

If that doesn’t say Summer, I don’t know what else does! Also I’m never, ever going to get sick of doing floral. Never. How could you ever get sick of something so pretty! Hence why I keep filling my closet with more & more floral clothing pieces. The obsession continues! 🌿🌼🌱

what do you think of this design? Are you feeling Summery? Leave a comment down below & let me know!

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Quick & Easy Summer Nails

Happy Summer lovelies! & Happy Friday! I hope everyone is as excited for sunny days as I am! ☀️ seriously, the last few months has felt like a never ending Winter with a little fall thrown in for good measure. I’m very excited for sunshine & beach days… even if I spend most of my time hiding out within the walls of the Mall.

I just got over a very busy couple of weeks, which meant my nail designs needed to be fairly simplistic (since I had no time to do my nails!) That means I’ve been wearing either solid colour nails or going with simple accent nails. I’ve had these nail stickers from Icing in my nail art collection for a few years now, but I felt like I haven’t worn them in a while. I really wanted to have a contrasting colour to my base shade, so I decided to pick one of these turquoise starfish stickers as my accent.

For this manicure, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: Sally Hansen Green Tea + Bamboo Strength
  • Top Coat: Essie Gel Setter
  • Essie Sunday Funday
  • Deborah Lippmann Make Someone Happy
  • Icing Stores Nail Art Stickers (beach themed circa 2015/2016)

Originally I was planning on just wearing Essie Sunday Funday on its own with the starfish sticker, but it really felt like it needed something extra which I why I added the glitter gradient on my other nails…. & I LOVE how it turned out. Like, seriously love. It gives the design that Beachy feel I was hoping for without too much work. Like I said, it’s been a CRAZY few weeks with a lot of late nights at work, so nail art has taken a bit of a back seat. Thank goodness I have a huge back stock of nail art stickers & decals & other goodies to make doing my nails so much easier!

I think coral & turquoise is going to be one of my favourite colour combinations for Summer. After seeing them together here, I’m definitely going to need to do a half moon design featuring them… like now! (Or whenever I recover enough to actually function for nail art haha.)

what do you think of this simple design? Do you use nail art stickers to fancy up your nails? Share your thoughts down below!

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Neon Saran Wrap Splatter

Happy Tuesday lovely… a very rainy, gross Tuesday (again).

I thought it would be a good day for some more bright & colourful nails, featuring one of my favourite easy to do designs–Saran Wrap Splatter! This is a design I do a surprisingly amount–which you may have noticed–because it’s easy to do, doesn’t require any specific nail art tools & truthfully is not too messy to clean up. & the colour combinations are endless.

For this design, the polishes I used were:

  • Base Coat: Sally Hansen Green Tea + Bamboo Strength
  • Top Coat: Essie Gel Setter
  • Essie Find Me An Oasis
  • Essie Strut Your Stuff
  • China Glaze Purple Panic
  • Plastic Bag (I used a plastic grocery bag that I cup up into smaller pieces.)

Please ignore the chip on my middle finger above–I keep forgetting to take pictures of my nails until after work, which leads to the above situation. Thankfully the design is so busy you barely notice the little chip at the tip. Also I’m loving the combination of this fuchsia & blues–the colours go really well together over the pale blue.

What do you think of this nail art design? What colour combination would you like me to try in a Saran Wrap splatter next? Share your ideas down below!

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SWATCH SUNDAY— Crafting a Layered Green Holo

Happy Swatch Sunday lovelies!

Today is a bit of a different post for me–instead of featuring single polishes on their own today, I’m showing off 3 polishes layered together to create one amazing look!

I’ve been really loving layering polishes together–it’s similar to creating franken shades only instead of mixing everything together, your layering one on top of another. Obviously this could only really work with layering more sheer shades over more opaque ones (which works well with a lot of the Layla Cosmetics hologram effect polishes I own.)

For this particular look I started with 2 base coats of Essie Turquoise & Caicos & then layered a coat of Layla Cosmetics Jade Groove over top. I’ve worn this Holo on its own but found it didn’t have enough of a green/mint pop to it on the nail. By adding some undies, it really showed off the colour I wanted. & then, because I’m absolutely Holo obsessed right now I finished off with a layer of Quo by ORLY Trash Glam (aka. ORLY Sparkling Garbage for my non-Canadian friends!) The end result is a whole lot of holo happening on the nail.

Seriously, this is a distracting amount of sparkle happening on the nail. In the sunshine, it was actually incredible how many rainbows you could see.

I love how you get the linear holo from Jade Groove but then the scattered holo from Trash Glam picks up the light too & it’s absolutely memorizing! I definitely need to find a linear holo top coat so I can transform every polish I own into a Holo Polish too! Let me know what your favourite ones are!

I hope everyone had an amazing Sunday. 💚✨