Tag: nails

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Kitty Cat Nails 🖤

Happy Halloween Eve everybody! 🎃

So confession time: I’m the queen of the last minute Halloween costume. Seriously I was the girl always looking for something to wear the day before Halloween (or worse, the day of Halloween). This year I’ve got our Halloween all ready, but if it wasn’t already prepared, then I would probably go with last minute Halloween costume go to: a kitty 🐱. & if I were going as a kitty for Halloween, these would be the perfect nails to go along with that costume!

Polishes used for this design:

  • Base Coat: OPI Natural Nail Base Coat
  • Top Coat: Seche Vive
  • Essie Wrap Me Up
  • Essie Merino Cool
  • Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Black Heart
  • Sally Hansen I ♥️ Nail Art Pen in Red
  • Small detail brush & dotting tool from Bundle Monster

These nails were surprisingly easy to achieve. The leopard print is just blobs of colour outlines with black using your small detail brush. The cat is a bit harder to do, but not by too much—just takes a little bit patience to get it done. & if you feel like you can’t freehand a kitty, you can just as easy wear leopard print on all your fingers instead or use a sticker or decal. 

Yep, that’s a onesie & what inspired my colour choices for this leopard print. Who else has totally worn a onesie for a Halloween costume? I mean, they’re pretty perfect for Trick or Treating! Keep you warm & then you immediately can hop into bed (with a chocolate bar or two or fifteen!)

What is your favourite Halloween snack? I’m totally a gummy candy girl. The hubs & I are taking the little guy trick or treating a few places & we already have the candy situation figured out… he gets any chocolate as I’m lactose intolerant, I get the gummy candies & we’ll split the chips. & the little guy… well he gets to be adorable in his baby flash costume. 

♥️

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SWATCH SUNDAY—China Glaze Cast A Spell

Happy Sunday everyone! Hope you’re not too hung over from whatever Halloween shenanigans you got up to this weekend! (& hey candy bar hangovers count too!) I thought for Swatch Sunday this week, I would delve deep into my stash & grab a Halloween shade to share with you! 

This is China Glaze Cast A Spell which the internet tells is from the 2012 Wicked collection. I picked up my bottle a year or two ago in a clearance bin at Chatters—one of my favourite places to find lost polish treasures—so it’s relatively new to me. 

Cast A Spell is a blacky green thickly packed full of golden flecks of shimmer. The formula was fantastic, & it applied in two super easy coats. It’s one of those shades that glows on the nail, & I can see why it would be part of a Halloween polish collection—it’s the perfect shade for the modern Witch who cares about her mani while out casting her spells or buying eye of newt from her local Trader Joes. 

Seriously though, this polish is gorgeous. I only own a few Halloween shades in my extensive stash, & I think 90% of them are from past China Glaze collections. They just do extremely well when it comes to Halloween collections & you can’t help but just love them. Cast A Spell is outside my usual polish comfort zone colour wise, but there is just something about it that makes me not want to take it off. It’s a great Autumn shade that I don’t think exclusively needs to be kept for Halloween night. 

& for fun I added some pumpkin stickers I purchased at the Dollar Store on vacation for an instant accent nail! 🎃


Do you have a favourite Halloween polish/collection either from this year or years prior? Let me know in the comments below!

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Halloween Skull Nails 💀 

We are only FOUR days away from Halloween which means I only have a couple more days to get in a few more spooky designs. My next Halloween design is one that is quite popular on Instagram—Jack Skeleton’s face (or just a skull since I don’t want any Disney copyright person coming after me!) 

For this design, I wanted to do something quick & easy for those who may be looking for a last minute Halloween nail design that isn’t too complicated to do. 

  • Base Coat: OPI Natural Nail Base Coat
  • Top Coat: Cutex Quick Dry Top Coat
  • Revlon Elusive
  • Ardene Ice Mist
  • Sally Hansen Hard To Get 
  • Kiss Products Nail Art Striper in Black 
  • Bundle Monster small nail art brush
  • Bundle Monster dotting tool 

This design was super simple to do! I decided to freehand my stripes because I wanted my stripes to look somewhat imperfect. I also like that they’re over such a sheer base colour. These really are super simple to do & I feel like you can accomplish them at any nail art level. My eyes/nose were the hardest to get right but even though they’re not perfectly symmetrical, they still turned out fun & Halloween-y. 🎃 For the eyes, I just created blobs using my larger size dotting tool & the mouth length using my striper. I then went in with my smaller brush & created the teeth & nose. 

What are you wearing on your nails for Halloween? Do you have any Halloween designs you’d like to see me take a stab at before Tuesday? Leave your suggestions here or on Instagram & I’ll try my best! 🖤

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Edge Perfection Easy Peel Polish Barrier Review

So recently I mentioned that I seriously needed to invest in some new liquid latex because I’ve been out for a while & like magic the nail art gods listened! Or, at least, the lovely folks at Edge Perfection did as they sent me their peel off polish barrier to try! 

From their website:

Edge Perfection is…

5 Free, Thiuram Free, Ammonia Free, Cruelty Free, Vegan, Prop 65 Compliant, Canadian Cosmetics and EU Cosmetics Compliant too! 

Edge Perfection is a low oder polish barrier designed to make clean-up around the nails easier than ever. When using our product you’ll be happy knowing you’re using the highest most pure liquid latex on the market.

Pretty awesome claims & definitely had me curious! I’ll be honest… my previous experience with cuticle barriers only includes glue based peel off base coats (didn’t really work for me) & a Born Pretty Store liquid latex which did work but smelled weirdly fishy. So I was definitely excited to try out something new. 

My first experiment? Well a gradient of course!

So you can use this as a barrier while applying your base coat of colour (perfect for those whole have trouble painting with their non dominant hand!). I don’t have much trouble staying “within the lines” so I applied it around my cuticles after my base was already painted. It goes on a pale green-ish shade (above) with no smell that I could notice. When applying I suggest using a light hand to get the best application. The tub has a wand with brush inside. I like the fact the brush is shorter—makes for a more precise application. 

Apply to all nails. I always stick to one hand at a time as I find trying to sponge with latex on my fingers just leads to my fingers sticking together. Dry time is pretty speedy—as you can see above I started with my pinky & moved to my thumb & pinky was already dry by the time I grabbed my phone to snap a picture. It dries down almost clear but with a hint of the mint so it’s easy to find to pull off. 

Now it’s time for nail art! I sponged on my gradient using three shades (Color Club Silver Lake, Revlon Elusive, & Essie Under the Twilight) until they were well blended. Always a messy process. 

Using tweezers, pull off your latex barrier. Above is right after I peeled off Edge Perfection (before I applied top coat). As you can see, it really did keep things quite clean! There are a few little bits of polish left on the nail but that is just an issue of not getting the product close enough to the edge (middle finger) or not far enough down the finger (pinky) & can easily be fixed with a clean up brush & a little acetone. 

& after I cleaned up the little scraggly bits of polish left over & applied top coat. Pretty gradient nails! 

As you can see, Edge Perfection seriously minimizes the mess usually associated with gradients & other messy nail art. There is nothing worse than trying to do a cool but messy nail art look & spending half an hour cleaning up around the nail. I really, really like the brush applicator with it because it’s so easy to apply & get in as close to the nail as you need to be. I also really love the fact that there is no overwhelming weird smell. 

If you’re interested in purchasing Edge Perfection for yourself & giving it a try, you can purchase it directly from the Edge Perfection website as well as CVS & What’s Up Nails. Personally, I think it’s a great product & I was really impressed with results! I can’t wait to use it for more (messy) nail designs! Except to see a lot of gradients in my future. 

*PR SAMPLE* Some of these items were sent to me for review. However, all opinions are my own

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SWATCH SUNDAY— Deborah Lippmann New York State of Mind 

It feels like forever since I’ve shared a Swatch Sunday — October has been a bit of a crazy month! But today I’m sharing a gorgeous red I just recently rediscovered in my stash: Deborah Lippmann New York State of Mind. You know how I feel about red polish & this one is definitely a polish for all my fellow red lovers out there! 

This candy apple red takes two coats for opacity (which personally I find hard to find in a red polish). It also has a beautiful pinkish shimmer scattered throughout & gives an extra pop on the nail.  It’s almost like it glows from within. I own a lot of red polish (that’s what happens when you spend 3+ years wearing nothing but red shades), & this one is definitely special. It would be a great choice for the holidays, because Christmas (& Christmas nails) will be here before we know it! 

I scored this polish as part of a mini collection of Deborah Lippmann shades at Winners, so I’m not sure how easy this polish will be to find. But if you can get your hands on it (& you like red nail polish… or really just red nail polish in general) I definitely recommend picking it up!

What’s your favourite red polish? Let me know in the comments below! ♥️