OMG: Oh My Glitter!

Good morning! I hope everyone's week started well. Mine was just barely tolerable, to be honest, but I'm sitting here writing up this blog post to cheer me up.

Hopefully.

I have a swatch here from this epic haul of shame that I got within days of school starting this year. It included, but was not limited to several new Essence Colour & Go polishes, plus a crapload of different funky pairs of earrings. I was looking for Essence I'm the Boss, but unfortunately that particular colour was either sold out or not currently on sale at Shoppers.

This, the first of 6 (or 7, I lost count) polishes, is Oh My Glitter:

Oh My Glitter is a medium purple with pink and blue micro glitter. A bunch of the new Essence shades have this wicked micro glitter running through them, and they're all stunning. This is no exception!

The formula was, as with all Essence polishes, was awesome. I used 2 coats, and although I got full coverage, these pictures make me think that a 3rd coat wouldn't have hurt. Maybe. I can't tell if those are bald spots or just reflections of light.

This colour was absolutely gorgeous. I almost didn't want to take this one off! I don't have any other purples in my collection that have this exact shade of purple, nor do I have any with this pretty shimmery glitter.  These new Essence polishes retail for $1.99 at Shoppers Drug Mart.

(Sidenote, has anybody seen the season premiere of How I Met Your Mother? Holy awesome.)

Turning Green

There goes yet another unproductive weekend. I swear, if I don't start doing stuff I'm actually going to die under the mountain of assignments and topics I'm going to need to cover before midterms.

So here I am with another post.

I have my priorities in order, clearly.

This next manicure I did a week or two ago in an attempt to squeeze out the last seconds of summer in the first days of school. The colour is Icing Little Blue Box, which I'm assuming is supposed to refer to Tiffany, but...this colour is definitely not Tiffany blue. It's more of a blue-leaning aquamarine. It applied nicely enough in two thick coats.

What I did next was inspired by The Polishaholic, Barielle's Do Unto Others and Buddha-ful were 2 colours that I had as lemmings in the past, more or less killed with the Finger Paints Flecked collection (in the case of Buddha-ful), or forgotten.

On top of Little Blue Box, I did 2 coats of Finger Paints Flecked, my favourite green-blue flakie polish. The results were stunning -- I could not take my eyes off my fngers.

HOWEVER, not everything was nice and perfect and ocean-y. I enjoyed the blue hue of the polish and the shifting of the blue and green flakies against it. I went to bed thinking all was ewell with the world.

Something happened with the pigmentation of the polish!

When I took the above picture, I didn't notice that any colour changing had occurred. I noticed as I was leaving for school the following morning, when I realized that my nails were now bright green instead of aqua. The yellow pigment of the polish must have been drawn out by the base of the flakie polish. It looked totally different from before! I wish I would have snapped a picture to show it  to you guys,.

I kept this on for about 2 days. I would have done longer if the colour had remained true to what it looked like upon application. Don't get me wrong: both these polishes are awesome, but maybe they  shouldn't be used together without waiting for proper drying time in between layers.

This colour sure was a beauty, and I can't wait to wear it on its own next time so we can truly appreciate its loveliness. :)

Something A Little Less Epic

Hello!

I feel like I haven't posted anything in ages, since I've scheduled the last 10 or so posts from before school started. On paper I'm up to my eyeballs in things to do, but there's still some part of me that's in denial and still chillin' on vacation mode. 

This is my last year in school, and that coupled with my extracurriculars, I often stay up late (ish) to get some extra work in. I just wasn't feeling it tonight. Falling asleep on top of my keyboard every 5 seconds, making some useful additions to my drug chart.

I should hope Angioedemafgfffffffffffffffffffffffffg is rare. It sounds terrible.

Anyway, the point of it all is that I was ready to head off to bed, despite the fact that I'd promised myself that I would come on here and get caught up on my posting. How sad it is, that I'm behind not only on schoolwork but on this too? Crazy. I'm even falling asleep as I write this.  bnhhgggggggggggggggggggggggg

What brought me here was this post on my friend's awesome blog. Which is 8261024842804 times more well written than mine. So in response, I'm bringing you something much less epic than Pikachu nails.

This is OPI Danke-shiny Red. I don't usually do reds, but I had a meeting coming up and I couldn't show up with the lined paper nails I had on right before this.

Danke-Shiny Red is a true red with shimmer that makes it almost feel metallic. This was one of those impulse buys, mostly due to the name. It was just too cute.

So there you have it. A post. A single post. With something very non-remarkable.

It's probably safe to assume that the days of nail art and epic ideas are behind us. It's going to be solid colour city over here for the next few weeks. YOU'RE WELCOME, bare rap battle nail.

Good night.  vbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

Electric!

Brace yourselves. I was really excited about this when I did it, and I hope you will be too.

YES. IT IS WHAT YOU THINK IT IS.

Pikachu Nails! Love!

Pokemon used to be my life. I ran home from school every single day to watch the show on TV, and I used to play the games for hours on end, mashing that B button in hopes of catching every Pokemon worth catching. And by that, I mean running away from every damn Caterpie I came across while wandering through the bushes.

The yellow I used was, no surprise, Color Club Almost Famous. I used Wet 'n' Wild Red Red for the cheeks, and Black Creme for the eyes. I used a dotting tool to make the mouth and nose.

Before you all die of cuteness overload, I should show you my attempt at making Jigglypuff nails. Brace yourselves again. You might want to have a trash can near...or a toilet.

It looks so retarded. I almost didn't post it, but I thought you had the right to know: I suck sometimes. Jigglypuff was always my favourite: such a shit disturber. Sad that it didn't turn out well.

ANYWAY, I'll snap out of this elementary school flashback for long enough to get back to work on reality and all the problems that it brings. See you on the flip.

Pretty Plumerias

When I was 14, I went to the Philippines on vacation with my parents. There were these cute white flowers that I would pick off trees and magical stuff like that, just collecting them and putting them in my hair.

These flowers are just so darned pretty! I hadn't thought much about these flowers until I saw them when I went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens at the beginning of this summer.

And then again when I bought these really cute earrings at the CNE!

Obviously, the last step was to put them onto my nails.

If you notice the black spots underneath the pinky, that was simply an experiment to see if permanent marker would mark my nails permanently. They did. But the focal point is really the flowers, so please pay the spots no mind. (They also spell out OMG, which is kind of embarrassing, so...don't look at it, LOL)

The base colour is Coral Reef from Sally Hansen, and the flowers were painted in white and yellow acrylic paints. I would have wanted the flowers to be more white, but I only had slightly off-white acrylic paint left, and since I did this on Labour Day I could go and get some. 

It turned out just okay, but I have to work on my art skills, clearly. I really liked the white on this pink, though. PRETTY.

What What, in the Bu...bblegum-Scented Polish

This is my friend Angel:

This is what Angel looked like 3 weeks ago:

 This is what she looked like when I met her:

Besides the colour-changing hair, she also happens to have colour changing nails. Sometimes this happens while we're working 8 hour shifts together. It's a mystery. ;)

Anyway, there was this one time when she had a pretty awesome colour combination on and I really wanted to copy it. This want was pretty bad. But I didn't want to be matchy matchy. (Okay, maybe I sort of wanted to be matchy matchy. A little.) Also, I didn't want her to start thinking that she was any more awesome than she already thought she was. (Okay, she might actually be pretty awesome. Maybe.)

She said some random creep bus girl kept staring at her hand. So I definitely had to try it out.

The light blue polish is from a set of unnamed mini scented polishes from Old Navy. This one was bubblegum scented, which was a departure from all the berry-scented ones that I already own. The scent was light and sugary, not the scent that I would associate with bubblegum, but nice and light enough that it didn't bother me to be wearing it. On my ring finger, I did a single coat of American Apparel Mount Royal followed by a coat of Sally Hansen Crackle Overcoat in Snow Blast.

If you're interested, this is what Mount Royal looks like without the crackle:

The formula on both polishes was good. Mount Royal could have been a one-coater, and the bubblegum polish went on in two coats. There was a bit of a bald spot on my thumb, but nothing another thin coat couldn't fix.

So that's the manicure that I badly wanted to copy off my friend. I have to say that I don't really enjoy crackle as much as the general population does. What's with it, anyway? I have an obsession with nice, smooth, cleanly lacquered nails. Crackle is neither of those.

But...I enjoyed this combination anyway. And I hope you enjoyed it too!

Almost Famous

Color Club Almost Famous is probably my most used polish, but even still, I have never worn or swatched it on its own. Until now.

It's the only yellow I own (out of the 3 that I do) that has a decent enough formula and bright enough of a shade (on my skin tone) for me to even bother wearing it at all. When I bought the Poptastic 7-piece set from Winners, I bought it for Pucci-licious but Almost Famous was a pleasant surprise.

I haven't been able to find Colour Club polishes outside the few loose ones at Winners and the ones in the 7-piece sets, but if anyone knows of anywhere that I can get these babies, I would love to know.

Another Avonspiration

Remember this picture?

The nails in this picture have some pretty bomb colour combos, so I had to try and recreate another.

I was going to do the white line/colour blocking on all the nails, but I honestly just did that first one and got lazy. The ring and pinky fingers are in Wet 'n' Wild Club Havana, and the index (and thumb) are in Color Club Warhol, a neon shade of deep pink that had a much better formula and opacity than I expected it to have.

I'll admit that this wasn't my favourite mani. It sort of looked like I couldn't decide what colour to paint my nails and then used the white line to make that painfully obvious to anyone who cared to look. Especially since it was right in the middle of my hand.

I really enjoyed the spread from the Avon catalogue, so I will probably be replicating more of those manis in the future. Keep an eye out for those!

Wishful Pinking

Now that summer's over, it's kind of a bummer. :( At least we still have the warm weather for a little while longer. I, for one, am not looking forward to the chilly winter air and slush in my boots! 

I'm going to show you the last colour I did a full mani with before school started. It also happens to be one of the many colours that proved hard to find for me, even though this is probably the least hard to find colour!

Coral Reef is part of the permanent line of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear polishes. I believe it's a colour that was added to the line more recently, since I haven't noticed its existence prior to this summer. I saw it at the beginning of the summer and thought, it's just pink. The usual first thought on pink polishes. So I passed it up. 

Of course I wouldn't see it again until summer was over, and though I thought it's just pink, I sure am glad that I picked this one up. It's not coral, as the name suggests. I would describe it as a not-quite-bubblegum pink. It's about the same colour as the container for my favourite Pink Grapefruit body butter from The Body Shop:

I don't have anything else like this in my collection (I think). It's not quite neon, but it sure is bright enough to be in that same vein. It was my last colour of summer, and it fit the bill perfectly.

On a related note, has anyone seen the new apparently "limited edition" shades from Sally Hansen? I saw it at the Superstore yesterday, but my phone was running low on battery and wouldn't let me snap a picture of it. It seems like they are just re-releasing a bunch of already released colours under a different name as limited edition releases. As far as I can tell there are a few of the shades which are dead ringers for already existing ones, but they could have different finishes for all I know. Anyway, not different enough for me to have bought any of them. 

Anyway, back to stressing. Have a nice day!

You Belong To Me

This is another tale of my trademark indecision. You have been warned.

When the Essence Colour & Go polishes came to Canada, I made a huge fuss over them here on the blog, as well as in every Shoppers Drug Mart that I came across. One night, early this summer, I trekked to a SDM that was only slightly out of my way coming home after work. At this point in my search, I had been disappointed with how sparsely stocked most of the Essence racks were. However, that night I was faced with a full rack. DECISIONS!

I picked up a couple of unique shades and plunked them into my shopping basket, but there was one shade that was peeking out at me. This shade did not strike me as too unique: a Tiffany blue colour, a la Tiffany Imposter (Finger Paints) and For Audrey (China Glaze). I owned neither of the 2 previously mentioned polishes, nor did I have any strong desires to be purchasing either. Mint greens and light blues were in vogue when I started mad collecting last summer, so I had a truckload and a half of these shades.

But still. It was $1.49!

I walked back and forth between the checkouts at the front and the Essence rack near the dispensary and post office at the back about a half a dozen times before I finally decided to bite the bullet and just buy it already. I had wasted far larger amounts of cash before...

The colour was You Belong To Me by Essence, and now it does, indeed, belong to me!

I did, however, notice a difference between this and the other shades that I own, which is a bonus. There is a subtle, barely there shimmer in this colour, which I found to be very pretty, but not as in-your-face (if that makes any sense, since I already described it as barely there) on the nail. The formula, as always with Essence, was awesome: one coat was pretty opaque on its own, but the second was to even it out/force of habit.

Another wonderful thing I noticed was that in these pictures, it leans green whereas in the Avonspiration manicure, it was blue. Both are colour accurate. Chameleon, or optical illusion? You be the judge!

Back To School!

It's happening. It's really happening.

This will be, as far as I can tell, my last first day of school. I think it's kind of ridiculous, to be honest. I feel like I'm five. I can't have possibly gone through 19 first days of school. That shit cray.

For weeks, the plan was to go all out for today and do rainbow leopard print to inject some colour into an otherwise miserable day. That changed when I realized that this might be (probably will be) my last first day of school and I won't ever have the chance to do another first day of school themed manicure! So the leopard print was scrapped. And I did this:

This definitely is not an original idea. The pencil was from cutepolish (who apparently got the idea from a magazine), and the lined paper has been there and done that all over the interwebs. Most of my notes are taken on my laptop these days, and I haven't used a non-mechanical pencil for years, but these made for some pretty cute nail art. I also hope you've noticed that I'm holding pens instead of a polish bottle. (Tee hee.)

I've seen versions of the lined paper mani with doodles all over them, but I liked the look of the plain lined paper so much that I left it alone.

The white base I used was Sally Hansen White On, the lines were Sally Hansen Coral Reef and Tip Toe (Old Navy) Bubblegum scented polish. The pencil top is Joe Fresh Caramel, the orange is  Wet 'n' Wild Sunny Side Up, the ridges are Joe Fresh Crush, the erase is Coral Reef again, and the silver part is Sally Hansen Celeb City.

I did end up doing one doodle, on my thumb, which is not visible in the above pictures:

So, to everybody going back to school, I wish you good luck and a wonderful year. And, to the future Class of 2013: let's kick some ass this year, huh?