Joe Fresh Sea Blue

I love Joe Fresh.

Seriously. When it first made an appearance in my life, I thought it was mighty strange that they would try to sell clothes in the middle of the grocery store. Pretty soon, my wardrobe was packed with Joe Fresh clothes. I bashfully admitted to my fashion forward friend that I secretly kind of loved them. When she approved, I was actually kind of shocked. It was cool to like the clothes from the grocery store.

So, it's absolutely no secret that I am in love with their nail polish line as well. Trendy, wide range of colours...and affordable at $3-4 a bottle! This is Sea Blue.

Sea Blue is not a shade that I would necessarily associate with the sea. Usually when I think of the sea, I think of a more greenish, light blue. This shade is a blurple creme. The above picture shows 2 coats + topcoat. 

Joe Fresh polishes are 3 for $10, so more often than not buy three at a time. Their colour selection is pretty impressive, and I am particularly partial to their blues. I could probably create a gradient with my Joe Fresh polishes only (lightbulb!). The bottles are smaller than the average nail polish bottle (6mL vs. the usual 14-15mL, which I guess makes them on par for price with some other brands), but they are definitely worth a try if you ever have the chance. 

Indecision in Red and Blue

Can you tell I'm just trying to get all my school-related manicures out of the way? I'm trying to sever the ties, I promise I am.

Remember last year's school spirit manicure? Well, for this year's game (back in April), I decided that I was going to top it no matter what. The only problem was, I didn't know how I was supposed to go about doing that. And as was the case for most of my during-the-school-year manis, laziness was a major factor.

My friends always make fun of me for my indecisive tendencies. It's why I can't eat at the Pickle Barrel without getting an anxiety attack. And it's probably also why I now own 200+ bottles of nail polish. In the end, my indecision led me to do this:

Fun fact: apparently U of T Pharmacy is pretty indecisive about what their colour is as well. This was going to be an all blue number, but I remembered that somewhere in between 2nd and 3rd year the colour had switched from red to blue, and I was unsure if it had switched back since I'd left school in December. So I threw a red nail in there for good measure. 

Thumb: 2 coats of Joe Fresh Indigo, "U of T" drawn on using a fine-tipped dotting tool with Sally Hansen White On

Index: 2 coats of China Glaze Frostbite -- love this colour. I honestly just wanted an excuse to wear this electric blue beauty again.

Middle: 2 coats of Sally Hansen White On as a base, with dots in Joe Fresh Indigo (darkest), Joe Fresh Cobalt (medium blue), Sally Hansen Blue Me Away! (lightest), and Essence Let's Get Lost (aqua).

Ring: 2 coats of Joe Fresh Apple, a deliciously bright red. Dots in a combination of Joe Fresh Indigo, Sally Hansen White On, China Glaze Frostbite, and more Apple. Can you tell I went a little bit dotty with this manicure?

Pinky: we have Nina Ultra Pro in Cobalt, with a coat of Wet 'n' Wild Stars & Stripes. Cobalt is a jelly, so you can still make out my nail line despite the 3 coats that I used. The formula on the glitter polish was a bit thick, and I used an orange stick to place the stars onto the nail because it just wouldn't come off the brush on its own.

In the end, I kind of wished I'd just stuck to alternating red and blue or something, because this mani was hella confusing. And we didn't even win! :(

Don't Stop Beleafing

To kick off what should be the beginning of a blowout summer for me and my nails...

GO LEAFS GOOOOOOOO!

If you're wondering what kind of a genius I must be, painting the logo onto my ring finger, don't. I used a temporary tattoo! I did 2 coats of Sally Hansen White On and waited for it to dry completely before I pressed the tattoo onto it. I sealed the whole thing in with 2 coats of INM Out the Door Topcoat. The other nails are done in Joe Fresh Indigo.

The wear time for this mani was pretty unbelievable. I didn't expect the logo to last that long -- I put it on right after the last game of the regular season, and I fully expected it to be chipped off by Game 1. However, the logo outlasted Game 3, and I eventually took it off myself after more than a week of wear! I credit the 2 coats of topcoat -- the second incarnation of this Leafs manicure only got one coat, and it barely lasted through the day...

My life has been so busy for the last few months, I haven't had a chance to come on here and post about my nails! I'm studying up for licensing exams, so I obviously won't be posting too often in the next 2 weeks, but I fully plan on getting back on track once all that is done! This is my last summer before entering THE REAL WORLD (dun dun dun!) and I intend on wearing the heck out of the wildest numbers in my collection.

If you want to check out my other hockey-themed manis, you can click right HERE.

I haven't been getting too much done in the way of studying with all this hockey madness going  on...OMG OMG GAME 7 CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?? (For real, last time this happened in this city, I was graduating from elementary school.)

-K

Flashback: Happy Halloween!

(EDIT: So I totally just failed at technology -- I wrote this post ON HALLOWEEN, thinking that I had published it, but it turns out that I never did. WHOOPS! Secondly, I actually never had time to post that "more on that later" since Halloween because I've been so swamped with schoolwork and I took a me-day yesterday, so... :$)

I told myself I would never write a blog post in class, but here we are. (I'm bored as f*** right now, but I can't be bothered to do anything more interesting.)

With Halloween being only 3 days after my birthday, I actually did not do a Halloween-themed manicure this year because my birthday one was so labour intensive that I had to keep it on for at least a few days. I did have some Sally Hansen Salon Effects on last week to make up for it, but more on that later. Instead, I'm going to show you what I had on last year. LAME.

Except not, because it was pretty epic.

I used Color Club Almost Famous as a base and then I used scotch tape to mark off the bottom part of my nail before putting on one coat of Joe Fresh Crush. I ended up free-handing the white tips with Sally Hansen White On because I simply did not have the patience to wait for the lower coats of polish to dry enough to stick tape onto them -- I remember trying after a coat of Seche Vite, but even still the polish underneath lifted straight off.

I did this on my birthday last year, as a treat to myself for finishing my patho midterm. Can you guess what it is? If you can't, I hope you know that I'm judging you pretty hard right now.

Can you at least guess what (or who) my thumb was supposed to be?

I couldn't resist. .Cute little Frankenstein thumbs? Be still my beating heart!

I used China Glaze Entourage which is a light lime green with green shimmer running through it. The hair was painted on with a black striper in no particular pattern over the tip of my nail. The eyes were done using the end of a paintbrush, as this was my pre-dotting tool era. (Can you tell?)

Here's the whole hand:

Pretty!

Needless to say, I didn't go out that Halloween. Can't remember exactly why not, but it was probably some BS (cPhm) midterm or another. My cuticles were looking pretty awful...must have been my pre-body butter days, as well.

This year, I totally copped out. I only wish I had the time to do an epic design, but...oh well. Nail strips next?

Cupcakes, Glitter, and Rhinestones, oh my!

At the beginning of the school year, I told myself that I wouldn't let myself get behind on anything: school work, social life, extracurriculars, and this blog. Sixty days later, and I'm 0 for 4 -- especially when it comes to posting on here. 

BUT today is my BIRTHDAY, so as a present to myself, I'm going to try and get caught up. (Or, at the very least, I'm going to post my birthday mani.) It's my last year of school, and it's only fitting that, after 4 consecutive years of birthday midterms, I should have one last birthday midterm to deal with before I get the heck outta here. 

The concept for my birthday mani flip flopped through a number of different concepts, many involving Halloween nail appliques, gold leaf, and glow in the dark nail polish. I tried to combine all the ideas in my head, but when I finally got down to painting in all the base colours, it looked so tacky I could have died...sort of like a skittles mani on acid. So I made an executive decision: to bring on the bling.

Lightbox (more colour accurate)

Flash

Lightbox

I used Nubar Violet Sparkle (3 coats) on the pinky, middle, and index fingers. Violet Sparkle is mixture of densely packed, finely milled glitter in a purple base. The purple leans more to the red side than to the blue, as seen in the lightbox pictures, which are more colour accurate. I do have to warn you, however, that this one is topcoat hungry. I used 2 coats of clear polish + 1 coat of Revlon Quick Dry, and it still feels gritty.

The cupcake was a last minute addition to this ensemble. I love cupcakes, I love to make them, so why wouldn't they be featured in my birthday mani? I painted a french tip on my ring finger with Essie's She's Picture Perfect and used a striping brush to paint on the stripes in Joe Fresh Iris. The icing was painted on using a large dotting tool, and the sprinkles with a small dotting tool.

And just in case there wasn't enough bling already:

I have never actually used rhinestones before, and when I bought these at Walmart I thought that they were simply rhinestone "stickers", so I waited for my 2 coats of Iris to dry before I even opened the package. Lesson learned.

Blurry shot to show off the SPARKLE

I ended up using a wooden cuticle stick dipped in clear polish to help me place the rhinestones, which worked well enough. The sheer number of rhinestones I used was just cray. The second "2" is a little wonky just because I didn't have enough space for it. :S

By the time I finished the "22" on my left thumb, I was in no mood to do it all over again on my right, so instead I stuck with a simpler (but by no means easier) heart design:

Right Thumb

Despite the fact that I didn't end up putting in my most extravagant ideas into my birthday manicure, I'm pretty pleased by how it turned out. It took forever to do, but I would say it was worth it if only just to have awesome nails on this gloomy, rainy day.

Back to work, I guess. :(  Happy Birthday to Me!

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?

Joe Fresh Peacock

Now I'm going to warn you all beforehand. There is an accent nail in this swatch, and you're going to be seeing it more than once. Let's call it the evolution of a manicure.

This is the earliest incarnation, using Joe Fresh Peacock.

 Peacock was the first polish from Joe Fresh that caught my eye. Navy blue base filled with light blue shimmer that turns pink at the most extreme of angles. Unfortunately, the duochrome doesn't translate onto the nail, but if you try really hard you might be able to coax it out. This was 2 coats of Peacock with no topcoat.

As for the peacock feather nail...it was something I'd been wanting to do for ages now. Peacock feathers absolutely FASCINATE me. The colours are so very pretty and the feathers are just so...ethereal. I have a peacock feather hairclip that I've been staring at for days now. I always wondered: do they breed peacocks specifically for making jewelry and home decor? Or is everything synthetic...?

Anyway, the ring finger has 2 coats of Essie Navigate Her. The peacock feather is drawn on mainly using a Sephora by OPI nail art pen that I got for $3.00 on clearance earlier this summer. The green one is called Read Between The Lines. The olive streaks are brushed on using a striping brush in Zoya Yara. As for the "eye", it consists of dots made using a dotting tool in OPI Just Spotted The Lizard, China Glaze Custom Kicks, and Essence Walk on Air.

I was very pleased with the results of my free-handing of the peacock feather, especially with all the comments I've been receiving. Accent nails have been a huge thing for me this summer, and these are some of the best I've done so far. Yay!

Not-So Itsy-Bitsy-Teeny-Weeny Black Polka-Dot Tankini

Most hyphens used in my entire life, ever. True story.

I want to tell you that this mani was some genius idea that happened before I went on vacation: matching with my new bathing suit!

However, this is not the case, as I came up with the idea somewhere in between the plane ride from balmy Florida and the car ride home to rainy, unseasonably chilly Toronto. Although I loved the look of my bright blue toenails against the white sand beach, not to mention my neon green fingernails against the blue of the ocean, I couldn't help but feel a bit of my tacky side crave matchy-matchy fingernails.

Here is a picture of my bathing suit:

 

 

This is not me. I am far too insecure to post a picture of myself wearing it. But the visuals brought to you courtesy of the Sears catalogue were merely for you to understand what is coming next.

Cloudy Day :(

I originally wanted to do just black with polka-dots to reflect the pattern, but I thought that doing that would be far too predictable and boring, so I decided to do the matte triangle. I like both how the matte area contrasts sharply with the shiny area and how it reflects the very top part of my tankini top. :D

I used Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme for the base, Sally Hansen White On for the dots with a dotting tool, and Joe Fresh Matte Top Coat. I freehanded the lines between matte and shiny, so the triangles are not all the same size, but you get the idea.


In elementary school, and in the first part of high school, I was notorious for being very matchy-matchy. Thankfully, that has toned down a bit, but I just could not resist doing this fun design!



Bright...and Shiny!

Does anybody remember that movie Bubble Boy? My family used to subscribe to The Movie Network back when I was in elementary school and it used to play every couple of days. I LOVED that movie back in the day! When I was trying to come up with a title for this post, the song that the weird cult sang popped into my head and it seemed appropriate: Bright! And SHINY!

I'm warning you now, this post is picture heavy.

When I started this manicure after chopping off my long nails, I had no idea that the 2 polishes I picked would turn out to be so special. I used Joe Fresh Starry on my accent nail, and an unnamed Sally Girl neon purple polish that's been sitting on their display at the front counter for ages now. I bought it as more of an afterthought -- neons are in, I figured that it was time to jump on the bandwagon.

The bottle appears to be a neon fuschia/purple hybrid colour and that's what I expected to see when I put it on. When I actually did, underneath the halogen bulb of my desk lamp, I saw pink. Fair enough. I layered three coats over a white base to achieve something that didn't resemble a streaky mess.

Joe Fresh Starry is a mix of chunky silver holographic pieces in a sliver base. At first glance, it would appear as though this polish would be too sheer to wear on it's own, but instead as a holographic glitter top coat. Wrong. I used three coats of Starry on my accent nail and it turned out reasonable opaque.

Holographic glitter is, by now, no stranger in the world of nail polish. What makes this polish stand out is the texture of that glitter: it appears to be irregularly shaped, like shards. What's more is that these shards reflect every colour of the rainbow in the sunlight and under indoor lights. There's even an inkling of a linear holo going on, despite the fact that this polish has scattered glitter, if that makes any sense. In some lights you can see the colours very subtly separating into lines. I tried really hard to capture it, but I don't think I did it any justice.

I definitely knew after an hour or so that Starry was a special polish, but it wasn't until I switched from the halogen bulb of my desk lamp to the fluorescent lighting in my bathroom that I noticed something special about the tiny little Sally Girl polish: it was actually purple...?

For a few days I was pretty confused about which colour it actually was because I would take a picture of it in one lighting and decide that the picture showed the true colour of the polish, only to take another picture in another lighting and decide that that picture was also colour accurate. What the heck? If you don't believe me, take a look at these:

Sally Girl neon purple is a chameleon! Just look at the top picture...the pinky is a different colour in the same picture, just because it was turned at a different angle! Crazy. In the sunlight I would have said the colour is closest to the top picture, but as I'm writing now under some indoor lighting, the colour is closest to the second picture, if not a bit redder.

Needless to say, I'm an obsessed woman. I can't get over how amazing these colours are! Sally Girl polishes retail for about a dollar for each mini bottle (see above), Joe Fresh polishes run at $4.00 a bottle, or $10.00 for three at Joe Fresh boutiques or at your local Loblaws grocery store.

And for you Bubble Boy fans...

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

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!

Finger Paints Flecked

Yay! More flakies!

Finally got a chance to use one of my prized Finger Paints Flakies, in Flecked!

So pretty! More pictures:

Blue!

I really have nothing else to say, except that I can't stop looking at my nails and watching the colour shift between bright green, teal, and blue. I layered it over Joe Fresh Hunter, which looks like a dark teal in the bottle, but it dries a lot darker on the nail, I find, so it looks almost black. I tried really hard to capture it in the last picture above. The formula was pretty good, going on in 2 coats (you could try a third if you really wanted, but...). The only thing I would say is that the dinky little white cap it comes with is pretty awkward to use. I kept scraping the nails on the hand I was brushing with against my desk.  I would post the picture of it on its own, but it just looks like black...

Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with myself for putting together this combo for under $10 when just 2 months ago it took all I had in me to resist The Wyndham at $23. :D

Back to work!