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?

Pacific Blue

I'm trying pretty desperately to catch up right now with my swatches. I had been posting them every other day or whenever I had time to do so, but now that school is starting up again tomorrow (BOO), I  figured I should get a move on with posting some of these before they fall into the black abyss.

This particular polish is an oldie but a GOODIE. I've worn this polish at least 5 or 6 times on separate occasions, which makes it one of the most frequently used ones in my collection. The bottle is about half to two-thirds empty (though it doesn't look it in the pictures since I'd just shook it), and I feel like maybe it's time to be getting a backup bottle. 

This is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Pacific Blue:

Light box, normal bulb

Light box, full spectrum bulb

Indoor lighting, with flash

Pacific Blue is a bright blue cobalt creme. It's a part of the Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear permanent line currently, and I sure hope they won't be removing it any time soon, since it's gorgeous! The formula was good; the pictures above are using two coats.

I originally bought this colour on a whim and put it into my purse, only to bring it to school the following day. I asked a good friend of mine if she liked the colour as I happened to discover it while rummaging through my purse and she commented that it was very bright and was probably best suited for pedicures. Needless to say, I wore it as a pedicure for the next month or two! I wore it as a pedi on my vacation to Florida earlier this month:

The excuse for this foot picture is that it has the ocean in it, and the beauty of the ocean cancels out foot ugliness.

The love for this colour just keeps on spreading, too! My newly nail-obsessed friend Susan asked me to pick a bottle up for her a few weeks ago. I hope that she, and anyone else who owns this beauty, is enjoying it as much as I have over the past few years!

Club Havana

In my polish collection, I have a drawer full of greens, a drawer full of blues and purples, and a drawer full of reds and pinks. The colour I have and wear the least of, even more-so than yellow, is orange.

Which is a shame, since orange has been really big this summer. Tangerine Tango, a red-orange, was even Pantone's colour of the year. I did do an orange/red gradient earlier this summer, but I haven't worn orange on it's own at all this summer. In fact, it must have been at least a year since I've had an orange mani!

I might be jumping on the orange bandwagon a little late, but here is Wet 'n' Wild Megalast in Club Havana:

Club Havana is a pink-leaning orange with an awesome formula (two coats to level, but could be opaque at one), and an even awesome-r price! (I don't remember off the top of my head, but I believe these are around $2.50-$3 ish at Walmart). All photos above were taken in my makeshift light-box.

On a side note, is anybody else as impressed as I am about how I managed to shape my nubs so nicely? I usually end up rounding the tips off when I cut my nails and then shaping them into squares once the nail has grown enough off the nail bed...it's just easier that way in my opinion. But this time I just cut the nails a little less than usual and then filed them the rest of the way down. I'm loving it!

Avonspiration

 For as long as I've been into nail polish and cosmetics of any sort, my mom has been bringing home Avon catalogues from work. In fact, there was a brief period where she was trying to become an Avon lady for some extra cash (for shopping, of course!). It didn't happen, and I continued with my limited purchases of mail order cosmetics.

However, the latest catalogue made its way into my hands at the beginning of last week and I saw this picture:

I only own one Avon nail polish (Avon Jade, which is...perfection), since the colour selection in past campaigns left a little more to be desired. BUT, this display of nail art really caught my eye and I knew that I had to try and replicate at least one of these. The pinky nail on the topmost hand struck me as both the simplest and the coolest looking combination.

I would have never come up with this colour combination on my own! I started with 2 coats of Essence You Belong To Me, a light, Tiffany blue nail polish. I tried to make the diagonal line precise by using scotch tape, but I was too impatient to wait for the Essence to dry completely, so I ended up lifting the polish right off with the tape! 

I ended up free-handing the diagonal with the brush on Sally Hansen Chartreuse Chase, a light green/yellow quick drying polish with blue shimmer. It's a nice colour, but I didn't like it when I wore it on its own, so I had my reservations about using it in this manicure. Luckily, it went well with the blue and this mani turned out amazing.

I got so many compliments on this look, which was especially pleasing considering how simple the design was.

 Loved it, loved it, loved it!