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!



Ultra Flashback: Purple Gradient

So, remember when I said that it would seem like I was still here, even though I wasn't? Because I scheduled those posts?

I LIED. I said I would schedule posts, but then I got to packing, and doing my nails for this vacation, and...well here we are. I'm back from Florida, and I'm ready to start blogging again. I'll ease myself in with a flashback.

Back when my collection consisted of almost exclusively Sally Hansen polishes, I tried to do something that resembled nail art but was actually just clever brush stroking on my part. This was 3 years ago now, long before I felt the need to keep doing my nails week after week. I probably had these on for weeks, followed by naked nails altogether.

This was one coat of Sally Hansen Purple Potion as a base, with the top half painted on with one coat of Sally Hansen Deep Purple, and a coat of Sally Hansen Disco Ball to finish. I impressed myself with my first foray into "art" after having made poor attempts at drawing wonky flowers on my nails all through elementary school.

It's a pretty see-through design, as Purple Potion is pretty sheer and Deep Purple could have used another coat to reach opacity, but hey, this was my first attempt at true artsy-ness. We'll give past me a break.

I'm With The Lifeguard, ON VACATION!

I started the first hours of this summer on a vacation (like, literally hours, I brought my suitcase with me to the exam), and I'm in Florida now, so it was only fitting that I sported some crazy neon to celebrate summer.

I'm With The Lifeguard is a bright neon green from China Glaze's 2012 neons collection. The formula on this one is much better than is expected for neons. It went on smoothly and required no coat of white underneath.

You can see some VNL in these picture on my ring finger. I did three coats on my middle finger because there was a bald spot, and I think it shows in the degree of opacity between those two fingers.

These pictures accurately show the brightness of this colour, but they do lean a little more yellow than in real life. I'm kind of reeling at the moment, because my dad destroyed and threw out my lightbox without even asking me first, so I have to once again take pictures against random backgrounds. Hopefully I can get another lightbox fixed up when I get back from my holiday.

I've scheduled the next few posts -- technically, this one is also scheduled -- so I'll be here, even when I'm not here! I'll be having some fun in the sun, and hopefully you will be too!

Jeans and Cocktails

Last Saturday, my friends and I went out for drinks and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try out this cocktail manicure that has been floating around the interwebs.

The idea is that you paint the first 3 fingers on the hand you hold your drink with in a bold accent colour so that it stands out as you hold your drink. I originally started with a plain manicure using a duochrome polish, but it clashed with my outfit so I switched to the cocktail manicure.

I started out with the "base" colour, for lack of a better word. I used a polish from the new Maybelline Color Show line called Denim Dash.

What's interesting about this polish is that it has a fine silvery-gray shimmer and it dries matte, giving the illusion of looking like denim. Genius. This is such a special polish. It has a twin called Styled Out that I originally passed up on because I thought it would be too similar to Essie's Smooth Sailing, but I pretty much ran back to Wal-Mart to get it when I saw that these polishes marked "Denims" had such an interesting finish.

For the accent colour, I used Optical Illusion from the recent China Glaze Prismatic collection, a dense glitter in a tinted base that shifts from teal to pink depending on the angle/lighting. The flash pictures bring out this crazy mermaid-scale-like quality to the colour. There are no words.

Lightbox, direct

Lightbox, indirect

Lightbox, flash

Flash

 Bonus, the bottle that I got at Winners came with one of those limited edition silver bottle caps, which is something that I've always wanted to have from China Glaze, but for some reason I just never got one, even when the opportunity presented itself. I'm a very picky polish fiend.

I was also hoping to get a picture of me holding the actual cocktail that I drank that night, but...it never happened, for obvious reasons, LOL. Instead, please enjoy this picture of me holding a wine glass filled with blue water as a simulation of the true purpose of a cocktail manicure.

 I hope you enjoyed that extremely pic-heavy post and had just as good of a weekend as I've had. (I know that the event I'm talking about happened two weekends ago, but I wish you happiness and funtimes all the same.) 

Cocktail manicures (as per the chart from China Glaze) are supposed to be representative of a certain cocktail, but since I just matched the colours to my outfit, I'm not sure what cocktail it would have represented...what cocktail do you think it could have been?

China Glaze: Strawberry Fields vs. Ahoy!

I've gotten so many compliments on my Olympics nails, it's crazy! I went to dinner last night and discovered a fellow polish fiend in our waitress when she saw my nails and immediately recognized the Olympic rings. We discovered that we both did Christmas light nail art for the holidays...soul mates!

Anyway, this is yet another case of me not getting a particular polish because I thought it would be too similar to something already in my stash. Clearly, I was being delusional.

China Glaze's Strawberry Fields is from their 2009 Summer Days collection, a favourite of mine; Ahoy!, is from China Glaze's 2011 Anchors Away collection, another huge favourite of mine. Pink, golden shimmer, must be the same, right? WRONG:

Direct Sunlight

China Glaze is a much warmer and lighter pink with a much stronger golden glass-fleck shimmer. Ahoy! is a darker, berry shade with a more subtle, more pink-leaning shimmer.

Lightbox

Flash

Natural Light (Indirect Sunlight)

Strawberry Fields is a shade that I associate more with summer, due to it's warmth. The first time I wore Strawberry Fields, a friend of mine liked it so much that she asked me to get her a bottle! Ahoy is something that I would probably wear more in the spring or winter, though I did wear it a few weeks ago to try it out. They are similar, but they are definitely not the same. I'm glad to have both of these in my collection.

The good news is, these seem to be additions to China Glaze's permanent line of colours at Sally Beauty Supply. As far as I can tell, China Glaze is only available from Sally's, Chatters, and occasionally the Beauty Supply Outlet here in Canada, for about $6.49 or $5.99 at Sally's with a Sally Card.

I cannot stress enough how much I love my Sally's. :D

Countdown to The Olympics #1: It's Today!

It's today! It's today!

Let's keep this short, shall we? I'm off to work soon, having PVR-ed the opening ceremonies to watch later on today. This is my final Olympics manicure:

Abstract Olympic rings! I used the same colours mentioned in my first olympic manicure, plus a coat of China Glaze White Cap for some golden shimmer. I've already received a bunch of compliments from complete strangers at work and while going about my day, though I'm not sure if they know that the lines are supposed to be parts of the rings. I used a thin paintbrush to make the curved lines.

Hope you all enjoy tonight's festivities, wherever you are!

Countdown to The Olympics #2

What are the Olympics really about?

Just kidding. (Or am I?)

Clearly, I am. This is the Summer Olympics. My people are only good at sports in cold climates. And my actual people (and by this I mean athletes from the Philippines) don't really win so much at global competitions, see Miss Philippines 2010 and her mistake-free life.

The answer would be something along the lines of global unity and camaraderie. Good sportsmanship. Recognizing that we are all one. World peace. Nothing major major. (Goddamnit, Miss Philippines, was it so hard to think of a single thing you'd done wrong?)

Anyway. Since I don't have hundreds of fingers, I only did 3 flags. Where I'm from, where my parents are from, and the host country. The pinky was supposed to be the American flag, but in the end I decided that it would have been too much effort for such a small fingernail. Instead, I went with the "WINNING!" theme and painted it gold, OPI's Bling Dynasty.

The maple leaf was a temporary tattoo, the stripes on the British flag were done using a striper brush, and the sun on the Philippine flag was made with a dotting tool.

The colours I used were: Wet 'n' Wild Red Red, Sally Hansen White On, Color Club Almost Famous (yellow), and Essence Walk on Air (navy blue).

Here's the whole hand, with the Olympic flag showing as well. Amazingly, I did this without the aid of any striping or scotch tape. In the second picture you can see that my lines and edges are not 100% perfect, but they were definitely good enough to show you guys, haha.

That's it for now. Tomorrow I'll be posting my final Olympics manicure! :D