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!

Blocked!

Now I'm really excited about this mani, despite the fact that it took nearly 2 hours and now I have a headache...

This was another scotch tape mani. I painted my nails with 1 coat of Sally Hansen White Out, and then I laid out thin pieces of scotch tape (cut up, of course) in a grid pattern. The colour pattern that I used was mostly random, but I did try to pick colours that would flow with each other:

Blues: Sally Hansen Pacific Blue, China Glaze Secret Periwinkle, American Apparel Mount Royal
Purples: Joe Fresh Iris, Essence A Lovely Secret
Green: Essie Turquoise and Caicos


It was a huge pain in the butt to do, but I am quite pleased with the result. The last few days have been lived out in a sort of high school reminiscent theme, so it is only fitting that tonight I will be heading down to my old high school to watch my brother's concert. I was going to do music themed nails as a result, but I decided I wanted to do something more all-purpose. I'm currently laid out on the couch, enjoying today as much as I can, since I'll be going back to work tomorrow, boo. :P

Forever Alone...?

Happy Valentine's Day! Quick (or maybe not-so-quick) mani that I did this evening as a wind-down from my midterm this morning:

It's 2 coats of Wet 'N' Wild Tickled Pink, with one coat of Essie Pure Pearlfection, and hearts and lips drawn on with American Apparel Angeline and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Cherry Red. The shimmer that the Pure Pearlfection adds can be seen in the picture below. Brilliant.

And the piece de resistance...

Even Forever Alone guy needs some love. Just trying to keep it real this Valentine's Day! :P

Valentine's Day Scrabble

Back in the summer, I read an article in the Lifestyle section of the Toronto Star about a "Nerd Wedding". They met as students working at the Science Center and they had the periodic table as the seating chart at their wedding. Needless to say, I was pretty jealous. There were those girls who wore those "I <3 Nerds" shirts back in the day, but I am willing to bet that not one of them was as serious about nerd love as I was.

Now I bet you're wondering what all this has to do with my NOTD. Well, the groom in that "Nerd Wedding" proposed to his bride by spelling out "WILL YOU MARRY ME" during a game of Scrabble. (So JELLY, by the way. This is number 2 on my list of dream proposals, right after "you can be sin²x, I'll be cos²x, and together, we will be one)

So now that you are sufficiently convinced that I am a crazy person, on to the nails:

The base colour is Joe Fresh Caramel. If you ask me if I bought it just for the purposes of this manicure, I will vehemently deny it each time. The thumbs have Sally Hansen Sweet Sunrise as the base and the hearts were painted on with a small paintbrush in American Apparel Angeline.

LOVE! Thanks for reading!

Supernova

So I saw this thing on a bunch of other blogs, and I thought I would try it out since it was so cute and it looked like candy. My excuse for changing my nails last night was that my previous manicure was not "professional" enough to wear to school today, but...

Obviously this was not any more professional than the last. But I really wanted to try it out. I put 1 coat of American Apparel - Supernova under 2 coats of Rimmel - French Rose from their French Manicure Pro collection. Supernova is a bunch of larger multicoloured (blue, orange, red, green, silver, and gold) hex glitter mixed in with smaller round silver, gold, magenta, and orange pieces, with even smaller green glitter in a clear base. I think it's close enough to Happy Birthday to fill that hole in my collection without me having to drop the $20+ on the actual Happy Birthday, and it was made especially better by the fact that I got this puppy for $3.

I like how the sheer pink polish mellows out the multi-coloured glitter and made it somewhat less inappropriate, haha. Initially I didn't like how the silver glitter turned white, but it's growing on me. The only think that hasn't sold me on this look is the fact that the sheer pink French Rose actually looks a little gray, which isn't the cute candy look I was going for -- if I ever do it again, I'll definitely try a pinker polish.

Here's a close-up of the index finger on my right hand:

I put a thinner layer of pink on this hand than I did on my left (pictured above) and I think I like having more of the glitter show through. I'm definitely digging how the gold glitter turns a pale yellow. I don't know why, but the little green pieces floating in the cloudy off-white top coat kind of reminded me of sour cream-n-onion chips...it was probably my hunger talking.

In other news, I came home to find that my mom tried to organize the miscellaneous polishes I had lying in a basket on top of my filing cabinet. I  never realized how many I actually had until I saw today that the miscellaneous polishes (not counting the ones in my rolling storage tower and the ones hiding in my desk drawer) filled 2 shoeboxes, neatly lined up! I quickly promised myself that I would not buy any more, but we all know that this is the emptiest of all promises, especially since the OPI Holland collection is coming out and I want I Have a Herring Problem and Wooden Shoe Like to Know in addition to Zoya Skylar so bad it's a bit ridiculous.

And so, that ends the hour of lazing around for me. Hopefully in 2 weeks I can come up with something a little more lab-appropriate. :P

Sally Hansen Gray by Gray + DOTS!

I've been feeling somewhat pleased about my productivity within the last 2 hours, so I am rewarding myself with a quick post and then maybe a new mani when I break to watch SNL tonight.

This has been on my nails since Tuesday:

Please excuse the messiness -- I would have cleaned it up before I took the picture except that I noticed a little white scratch on my ring finger and I wanted to take a pic before any more scratches had the chance to appear. I used Sally Hansen Gray by Gray for the base and American Apparel Mount Royal for the dots. I didn't like this when I first put it on, but I have to admit that it's grown on me.

In other news, I totally fell off the wagon again, since seeing Barielle Elle Spell at Winners. I'm feeling a bit of buyer's remorse, though, since it came in a set with 4 others, two of which are dupes of things I already own...

Oh well.

An Exercise in Self Control...

Christmas break is officially over, and although I really should be getting some more work done before the work piles up and literally crushes me underneath its weight in printed out textbook notes, I am...here.

My dotting tools and brushes came in the mail today!

I got them on eBay for like, $2 each set. I bought a brush/dotting tool at Sally's a couple of months ago for $7, so you can imagine that I kicked myself when I found them online for a significantly lower price. To be completely honest, I bought the brush set mostly for the striping brushes. I thought buying the brush set would be a money-saving manoeuvre - buying a striping brush to use with all my different nail polishes would be a lot cheaper than buying a whole lot of special striping polishes. We'll definitely see as time goes on if my genius plan was indeed...genius.

Also today was the long-awaited trip to American Apparel to finally use my 5 polishes for $15 team buy!

(Left to Right) Supernova, Angeline and Mount Royal

I shared the 5 polishes deal with a friend, because, again  I  would like to appear like I have some self control. I've never tried American Apparel polishes, but I've heard good things and can't wait to try them out. We've been pretty excited about getting our hands on Supernova, what looks to be a dupe of Deborah Lippmann's Happy Birthday, so we each grabbed a bottle. I also picked up Mount Royal and Angeline, after a lengthy self-debate over whether I wanted a pink one or another blue polish. Of course, I wasn't fooling anybody with my self control bit because on my way home...

This is a Joe Fresh polish in Hunter. It was the dark teal possible dupe (?) for Nails Inc. Kensington that I was looking for to complete my "set" of the Wyndham. Bonus, it was only $2 as they were on sale! If I only knew that they were half off I might have picked up the much-coveted Twilight, which was sitting right there. Again, I couldn't decide if I wanted it bad enough, so I left it on the shelf.

In other news, my new pair of boots totally gave me killer blisters today after our walk around the mall. In retrospect, I shouldn't have even been wearing them at all, since it is still snow-less in Toronto. Time for a foot soak, and...newer, more comfortable boots?

- K