I Less-Than-Three You

When people stop to ask me what colour I'm wearing, you can bet that I'll always have the answer on hand. Which is probably why I expect nothing less of others when I see them wearing a particularly interesting polish. So when a girl walked into the pharmacy wearing an electric blue metallic number, I needed to know.

**number of digits not 100% accurate

Me: That's a nice colour you've got on your nails.
Girl: Oh thanks!
Me: ...so, what is it called?
Girl: Um...I don't know.
Me: ...
(awkward pause)
Me: Have you used this medication before?

Okay, so the exchange may not have happened exactly like that. Maybe. But nevertheless, it sent me into a frenzy, as usual. I needed to know. (It's not completely lost on me how crazy I must sound.) Lucky for me, I am a master googler (google-er?) with a photographic memory specific for nail polish.

I narrowed it down to China Glaze Frostbite, a bright, almost electric blue shimmer. I wanted to use the word "frost", but I don't think this polish is quite the right texture to be calling it that. I associate "frosts" with nightmarish brush strokes, and that didn't happen with this. This is 2 coats -- it applied flawlessly.

The index finger is 2 coats of Sally Hansen White On with a heart drawn in with OPI Danke Shiny Red. Funny thing was, I put in the heart nail because I meant to do what I thought was an Asian peace sign showing off this nail in my funny grad photo, but right before somebody informed me that doing the peace sign with the back of my hand facing outward is actually some sort of offensive gesture, so I quickly decided against it. In the end, the most you see of the heart is the top of it peeking out from under the fake diploma they made me pose with. 

Frostbite is definitely one of my favourite blue polishes in my collection, and I've worn it a couple of times since getting my hands on it last fall. I love it when polishes that I have come with a great story attached to how I got it or when I wore it, and Frostbite is definitely no exception.

An Ode to St. George

On the first day of Frosh Week, back in '08, my rather inattentive (looking back) leader informed us that we should specify on our resumés that we attended U of T St. George, which was obviously far more impressive than any other University of Toronto campus.

I won't say that I disagree with her comment, but I am pretty biased of course. I had a pretty tough time that year, so when I came out on the other side I made sure that everybody knew it. Actually, If we're being completely honest here, I will admit that when she said that to us, I didn't actually have a resumé. Oops. 

(This is a no judgment zone. I was seventeen.)

Anyway, when A-England first appeared on my nail polish radar, I had some pretty strong lemmings for their holographic shades. However, since they were only available from e-tailers that charged a hefty sum for shipping to Canada, I stayed away. But when Nail Polish Canada started carrying A-England, I knew the time was right. And if you know anything about me, you know that I am a fiend for teal. 

I ordered A-England Saint George a few months ago, but it had been sitting in my drawer for awhile, waiting for the right occasion. In my books, any occasion is the right occasion for teal and holo, but with my impending graduation, the beginning of June seemed like the right time.

Saint George is a deep teal shade with a scattered holographic effect. The picture above shows it to be a little more blue than it is in real life. 

The holographic effect is really subtle. I usually don't go for scattered holos that much, especially if they are priced similarly to an A-England polish, but I really enjoyed this one. I ended up wearing it for only 3 days because I felt like the colour was way too dark for me to be wearing during the summertime, but I did love it. The formula was also fantastic -- I could have probably gotten away with a single coat, but I did 2 to make sure everything was level. I will say that the topcoat seemed to diminish the holo effect a tiny bit, as topcoats usually do, but since the holo wasn't that in your face to begin with, you can't really tell the difference.

I love it, I love it, I love it! 

A-England polishes go for $13.50 on nailpolishcanada.com, but shipping is free for orders over $25!

Celebrate

I will confess that I googled "prom nails" a week before I did this manicure, and I watched a prom nails tutorial on cutepolish's channel which may or may not have influenced the outcome.

PROM NAILS. For my "adult prom", as I had described it to my co-workers.(Prom as an adult, get your mind out of the gutter, there's hardly enough room in there for mine.)  Prom, as in that dance that people have when they graduate, which is what I just did.

I needed it to go with my dress, and I needed sparkle. Oh, and it had to be lazy-proof.

I used 2 coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Grey Area as a base. My dress had a purple-toned silver bottom with a pearly off-white bust. I know that my description doesn't help much, but trust me, this worked. For the sparkle, I used Hard Candy Celebrate Sequins, a clear base packed with tiny holographic round glitters mixed in with larger hex and square holographic glitters. I wanted to get a glitter gradient effect, so I dabbed the glitter on the lowest quarter of my nail nearest the cuticle. After that, I went in for additional coats going higher up the nail, making sure to scrape off the larger glitters on the lip of the bottle.

This was a fun look for me to wear, especially with the holo glitters reflecting the lights on the dance floor!

And of course, the dancing was fun too. :P

A New Beginning

Remember that time when I said I would be posting more?

Okay. So I lied.

But it's for real this time. (Hopefully).

After my last post, I threw myself into studying. And then when it was all over, I figured out that I really enjoyed doing absolutely nothing. Including writing up things for this blog. But now I'm back (again), and I thought it would be fitting for me to open up this "new beginning" with the nails that I had while I was celebrating the end: my graduation from university!

I had gone back and forth in my mind over what exactly I wanted to do with my nails on that day for months. Yes, months. My original plan was to painstakingly paint on the initials of the people without whom I couldn't have survived the last four years. To up the sap factor, I was going to pick out the letters "LOVE" and paint them in a different colour.

I don't know what it was that ultimately changed my mind. Perhaps I didn't actually have enough friends to fill up my nail space. Or maybe I was afraid of missing people. It could have been that I actually do not know anyone who has "O" as an initial -- or if I do, I really don't care about them all that much (LOL, for real, I don't even know). I'm lazy, and that is probably the most likely explanation.

I ended up going with a simple french tip, mostly because I had put off doing my nails until the last second, and also because I figured I would also regret seeing something like neon leopard print in photos 20 years from now.

I started off with 2 coats of Wet 'n' Wild Sugar Coat. For the tips, I used 2 coats of Storm by Zoya, and then I lined them with a silver polish (a really ancient one in my collection whose label has rubbed off) using a striping brush. On my ring finger, I used a dotting tool to create a tiny heart with China Glaze Snap My Dragon from the 2013 Avant Garden collection. Finally, I used my smallest dotting tool to etch on the year of my graduation next to the heart. LOVE!

Sugar Coat is a little bit of a streaky nightmare. Looking back, I probably should have chosen a better base polish -- every other time that I've worn Sugar Coat, I've needed at least 3-4 coats to level it out, and when you're doing other designs on top, it's really not an ideal situation. Zoya Storm was opaque enough in 2 coats, but it would have probably benefited from a third...

All in all, I was pleased with how this all turned out. It had just the right amount of sparkle: classy, yet with that something extra.

Overall, I'm pleased with how everything has turned out, really. Today actually marks 5 years to the day that I graduated from high school, and I can't believe how fast the time has gone by. I'm in a period of my life right now that feels like a transition phase and it's really given me a lot of time to not only reflect on the past but also think about the future. I had a lot of regrets coming out of my first year at university, and I feel like I've spent the last four making sure that I would leave this place with very few. And I think for the most part, I've done that.

This is a really exciting time for me, and I hope that this comes through in my posts from this point forward. I've only got about 9 weeks or so left before I have to enter the real world as a full-fledged adult, so I hope to entertain you all with some pretty wild colours and nail art while I can. :)

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

Long time, no post

Happy...2013!

 

I almost can't believe how ridiculously long it's been since I've logged on. School was so incredibly busy, and I couldn't spare a second for myself. Not to mention that blogger wouldn't let me upload any more pictures. LAME.

 

Anyhow, I'm trying to play a little catch up on the weekends with the blog as well as some personal stuff, so here we are. This is how I wore my nails for a New Year's Eve party with some friends:

 



The base colour is Date in the Moonlight from Essence. It's a charcoal gray that leans a little blue, topped off with some bright blue micro-shimmer. It's really a beautiful colour on it's own. I would tell you something about the formula now, but to be honest I can't remember. I know that it didn't require an obscene amount of coats (probably was a 2-coater) and that it wasn't too thick or too thin.

I applied Diamond Drops (pictured) from Color Club starting at my cuticles. I was going to say "sponged", since that's what you usually do when you want a glitter gradient, but the glitter in this polish is more shard-like and not very user-friendly, so I ended up dabbing the polish brush against my nail to place the shards generally where I wanted them. I finished it off by using a dotting tool to put "2013" on my ring finger...in case you were unsure of what year was coming in.

I'll include this slightly blurry picture so you can see the blue shimmer a bit. It's not really in-your-face, but it is a nice addition:

 That's really it for now. I've got a folder full of pictures still left to share, and that's not even counting the ones that I didn't have a chance to photograph before I took them off!

See you (hopefully) soon!

November 2012 Topbox

Um...can we talk about how awesome the November Topbox was?

This was my second topbox, and let me tell you that it did not disappoint. (Like my first one did.)

I eagerly awaited the arrival of this particular Topbox due to the fact that the monthly survey asked me what kind of nail polish I was the most interested in wearing. One of the options was "sparkly", and I clicked on that, praying for Deborah Lippmann Cleopatra in New York.

I didn't get it, but what I did get instead was equally awesome:

Vera Wang - Lovestruck (sample size)
Described as a sparkling floral bouquet that blooms with instant attraction.

The scent on this one is definitely super flowery, but it's not too overpowering that it starts going into grandma territory, if you know what I mean. The scent doesn't last very long, however, as far as I can tell. I put it on this morning and I don't think it's quite all there anymore. Regardless, it smells amazing, and I will probably buy a full sized bottle...time will tell.

Benefit: They're Real! Mascara (sample size)

I'm a huge fan of Benefit mascara. I have been using Bad Gal lash mascara since the summer and I have been loving it. I started with a sample size and eventually moved up to the full sized product, so I have high hopes for "They're Real!". The brush on this one reminds me of a comb, whereas the brush that comes with Bad Gal is more of a soft-bristled type brush. The box claims that 94% of people noticed a dramatic change in length and volume and visible lift.

I took a lame picture of my eye to try and see/show if it had met these expectations:

Meh. Looks pretty meh. But it might just be the odd angle -- I did notice that it looked more voluminous than normal in the 15 minutes I was wearing it.

Pari Lip Paint in "Red"

I don't usually wear lipstick, and when I do I usually don't go for bright red. I'm not sure how to feel about it, but I'll give it a shot. After all, what is Topbox for if not for trying new things?

China Glaze - I Herd That (full size)

This is the item that I was most excited for, and while browsing the internet for November box reviews, I noticed that a  lot of people had received Exotic Encounters, which is a shade that I have owned since August. Wouldn't it suck to get something that you already owned??

Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised.

Look at that holographic glitter!

I Herd That is from the Fall 2012 On Safari Collection. It's a mix of fine gold and coppery glitter mixed in with some holographic bits. LOVE.

So that was my November Topbox! Did not disappoint in the slightest. VERY glad I didn't unsubscribe after my first box, which was for all intents and purposes a dud. VERY GLAD.