Polish All the Nails

Ok so I love blue polish the mostest but never got around to getting Nails Inc Baker Street until Friday.  That's silly of me cos it's the most perfect cobalt blue that my camera doesn't even know what to do with it.  *I* know what to do though!  Bar glitter stripes!  I heard you like stripes so I put stripes in your stripes, etc.  

So I found a new site to be obsessed with, Aliexpress.  There are literally hundreds of thousands of nail art bits and pieces on there - charms, glitter, decals, you name it - all for ridiculously cheap prices.  I sound like a shill but seriously, the stuff on there! I mean, look at this .  Squarely up my alley.  Anyway, I ordered some circle glitter from there, all is good but the reason I'm annoyed is I did not moisturise properly.  So instead of being able to focus on the sparklies, all I can see in these pictures is where I tried and failed to properly photoshop out my dry skin.  URRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.  I'm showing you anyway though, even though I'm probably going to have to do this over so it's right.

OH MY GOD what a pain in the arse these nails were to do.  They don't look it but all the way along, pain, pain and suffering.  First I tried to do white with blue stripes but it looked weird.  Then I did this but the blue and white both bleed, but in different ways.  Then I didn't clean up right and had to spend ages photoshopping the white bits off my fingers.  Just urgh.  Don't even get me started on the anchors.  I've spent like hours on this for no reason, all because I like anchors and stripes.  URGGHGHFGHGHGHGHG.  Just squint when you look at these, ok?  Looks more like how I want it then.

Ok so I loved those nails I did last weekend.  Balls-out crazy pants, rendered me unable to get my shoes and actually woke me up because they got tangled together, and 100% amazing.   These are it.  I'm basically jelly that I can't do them again this week so I'm improvising and applied all my Hex Nail Charms.  So much classier than last weekends' and coincidently the most expensive nails I've ever done.  So yay for sticking all the charms!

Ok so for a while there I wasn't working.  Love that, it's the best, cos sleeping is awesome.  While I should have been using the time to pump out the nails, I used it to go through all 283 pages of the nail art supplies section of aliexpress.com. This site is really amazing, cos it's so cheap.  You can get 10,000 rhinestones for $3.  So I bought a bunch of 3D nail charms.  I then decided it would be a good idea to put them all on at one.  TACKYTIME YAY ADHERE ALL THE THINGS! 

If you've seen the pictures of my full polish collection , it's hardly a secret that I like to buy polish.  I'm also quite cheap so that means usually it's the cheap brands that I target.  I don't know what it is, but Deborah Lippmann polishes just keep on being the exception.  First Va Va Voom and now Glitter and Be Gay, they're just so awesome that it's worth paying the extra for them.  Oh wait, they're sparkly, that's it, silly me.  Let's take a look at this sparkly shall we?

Alrighty!  It's been a little while since I've done a full set of mermaid nails and a trip to the One of a Kind show in Toronto this weekend is the perfect time to do them cos showing off and good lighting.  The girls from Beyond the Nail had a stand and I had to go say hi.  I love doing these mermaid nails, they're so sparkly despite the scratchiness.  It makes me happy when I get can get all the little pieces around the edges to fit and it's all neat and nice and :D

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I made this post a month ago, showcasing my entire polish collection.  Turns out, time flies and those photos were nearly six months old.  In that six months I managed to buy 50% more polishes.... that is a bit of a problem.  At least it's a rainbow problem this time!

I get asked quite a lot about whether I do my glitter placements on both hands.  Gotta be honest here, I totally don't.  Sure, I do my nails for wearing around and it's fun but it's more for the pictures and my left hand just isn't in as good shape as my right.  And glitter placements take ages!  What I do do (heheheh), however, is something that takes a tiny fraction of the time and looks close enough to a glitter placement that it doesn't look weird to just have the one complicated hand.  

Exactly two years ago today, I published this post, a mermaid version of St Patrick's Day nails .  Considering I'd been blogging for all of a couple of months at this point, I was proud of them at the time.  Two years have now passed and I know better than to use iridescent glitter, like, ever, and my placement has benefitted from the practice.  So that was a fine version but I CAN DO BETTER NOW.  So I am, even though I don't really like doing the themed holiday nails.  HERE IS A BETTER VERSION OF THOSE NAILS, LOOK, SPARKLY:

I'm trying really hard lately to not buy nail polish.  Or at least buy less.  It's hard because nail polish is my fun thing to buy, my luxury, even though I have ten times what the average person would consider an excessive collection.  A lady at the beauty supply place joked about an intervention today!  Like, shhhhhhhh this is my safe place.  Anyway, I saw Deborah Lippmann Va Va Voom the other day and it was too sparkly and I bought it so there's that.  LOOK AT IT.

Awww yiss, check it, two days in a row!  With complicated glitter each time, no less!  I am a blogging master!  Ok so if there's one thing I like almost as much as sparklies, it's matte circle glitter.  No idea why - maybe something about the extremely consistent size and shape.  I heart it and it's surprisingly hard not to use all the time.  I felt like using it yesterday so let's take a look at my rainbow monochrome matte circle glitter chevrons, shall we?

You guys know the drill by now: if I take people from the internet out shopping I'm going to do my nails extra fancy to maximise that sweet, sweet IRL attention.  I wasn't in the mood for using the super big glitter with its associated scratchiness so why not go too far in the other direction with super tiny glitter!  Yeah!  Sparklies!  

Alrighty, swatchy-swatch time!  The lovely ladies over at Beyond the Nail were kind enough to send me some polishes to review and were even patient enough for me to get around to actually doing said swatches.  They must know me well as both Mermaid Tail and Peppy Leopard were both very sparkly, which is about all I need from a polish.  Let's take a look, shall we? 

I'm really good at making sweeping statements and declarations about, say, posting everyday.  Problem is I'm terrible at following up on it.  What I am doing ok at is trying to actually use all the misc stuff I buy on the internet.  I've had these fruit fimo canes for ages and just haven't worked out a way to use them.  I've been playing with sculpey lately so I at least have the tools to slice canes thinly.  So then, considering I also have very strong nail glue, I thought I'd take the decidedly unsubtle route and just bung a bunch on.  Turns out that's actually an ok strategy!