Polish All the Nails

Ever since I found the new Color Club Halo Hues 2013 collection at a nearby Winners, I keep using them but then being unable to fully capture how amazingly holographic they are.  This is the third time I've used the collection and the third time I'm actually angry at my photo setup for eating the rainbows.  This is why these pictures look weird; I was so desperate to get the holo going I shoved an ikea lamp sideways into my lightbox and it was still not that holo-y.  Just pretend there are twice the rainbows, k?

It's no secret I think indie polishes are awesome.  I love them for all their sparkliness, uniqueness and that they're just made by people.  In their houses.  Sometimes though I just have to go back to the indies that started it all for me, the irreplaceable Nerd Lacquers.  I'm lucky enough to own about a dozen and I thought I might let some of my favourites see the light of day.  Let's take a look at Warrior Ethos, Event Horizon and All of Time and Space.

So I knew I wanted to do something glitter tonight but I wanted to not just be your run of the mill glitter pattern.  When I found my favourite blue holographic glitter it hit me: RIDICULOUSLY BRIGHT GRADIENT WITH SPARKLIES OVER THE TOP CAN'T NOT BE AWESOME.  So that then. I wanted a gradient using creme polishes, preferably in a blue-green-yellow gradient.  Four American Apparel polishes fit the bill so I set to work using Imperial Purple, Passport Blue, Malibu Green and Crescent Heights, purple through lime green respectively.  I just used the normal sponge method: start with a white base, paint stripes of polish on a makeup sponge in the same height as your nail, apply maybe three light coats, making sure you move the sponge up and down a bit to blend it all in.  I found that I sometimes need to apply a colour or another at the tips or cuticles, to make sure the white doesn't show through.  Then, using a top coat I found at Dollarama because I reall...

I have something of a love-hate relationship with bar glitter.  Sure, you can create some amazing patterns with it but oh man, when it sticks up and catches on things?  Kiiinda annoying.  That's the best thing about hand-placing it - minimises the chance of sticky-uppy bits.  What better a companion to a rainbow than neon orange too, no matter how hard it is to photograph.  Imagine neon orange duct tape when you look at the following pictures, because it actually exactly matches it in person.

Hello!  Again, not dead, just still trying to find time for getting home after work at like 7ish, going to the gym, making dinner, doing my nails, taking the photos, editing them and writing the post all in the one night.  I used to have a good system where I'd take the photos at night and write the post at lunch at work but damn my new socialable co-workers! Anyway, like any person who ranks how awesome something is by how rainbow and/or sparkly it is, I was pretty damn excited to see the new China Glaze Holographic polishes show up at my local beauty supply place.  I mean, you all saw how great the OMG Collection was, right?  Yeah, this isn't that great.  Not by a long shot, especially with the stunning effort Color Club is putting into their new holographic polishes which I just found at the Winners on Spadina.  Run on sentences, hooray!  I very nearly bought all twelve of the China Glazes on the spot, thinking at the time that the fluores...

So I know I just did a post about my new holographic bar glitter but I don't care, it's sparkly so you'll probably see a lot of this in the next little while.  Having just tried stripes the other day, I wanted to see what the horizontal version would look like and it hit me: this could make for an awesome French tip!  To start, I applied three coats of China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise! It doesn't have the best consistency in the world (you really need the three coats) but the colour is so fantastic I can look past it.  Using a cheap top coat and working from left to right, I went to town with the glitter.  You have to be careful when working with such skinny glitter pieces - too much top coat and it will go over the glitter and look icky.  You can see that happening a bit on my middle finger.  Don't do that.  Very thin coats of glitter are your friend.  Once I was done, I put a preliminary coat of Seche Vite on to stick it all down t...

You might remember in my last post I get the newest set of stamping plates from MASH nails.  That wasn't the only thing in the package, there was also a set of 12 holographic bar glitter pots.  I'm normally not the biggest fan of bar glitter.  It sticks up, it catches on things, it generally drives me a tiny bit crazy.  This set had the most perfect set of rainbow colours I had to try out a hand-placed glitter arrangement.  So I present rainbow glitter pin stripes! To start, I applied my usual two coats of Rimmel Black Satin over a base coat.  I've just switched to Essie Protein Base Coat and it seems fine.  I've had a lot of nail breakages lately so figured I'd better try something a little more proper.  Next, using my slowest drying top coat, I painted a strip down the side of my nail and went to work with my toothpick.  Sure, it takes a while but nice neat pinstripes make up for it.  I found the best way was to start at the cutic...

Hey! I'm here! Not dead!  It's just incredibly hard to blog and start a new job when I've been sitting at home not doing much for two months.  I'm now working for an agency in downtown Toronto doing front-end web development and it's really fun.  Anyway, I was lucky enough to get some new MASH stamping plates in the mail this week and I just had to try them out.  I chose ridiculously cute as a theme and away I went.  As I'm still not that good at stamping and I'm only half-way good with the Konad polishes, I decided on a black and white theme.  To start, I applied three coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.  If you're looking for a white to be something other than polish underwear, this is actually a really good option.  It doesn't go streaky at all.  Once I was sure each layer and the overall result was dry, I waited another ten minutes.  I can't even count the number of times I've stamped on my nail only to have still-wet polish...

So, things have been a bit quiet around these here parts, it's ok, I've just been going through the process of getting a new contracting job, incorporating myself and all the endless paperwork that that entails.  Given I had a three week lead time before starting, I decided to peace out and go to Cuba for a week!  It's so beautiful there I can't even words.  I mean, this is where I was all week.  This was the walkway leading down to the beach:   That's not a stock photo, I just held my phone up and that's what happened.  So I've been warm for a whole week.   But you aren't here for the Cuba photos, you're here for the nails!  I wanted something bright and colourful before I left and since I haven't done ruffle nails in a while, I think it's time!

Ever since I did this mani recently I've been wanting to do a better version.  The colours seemed like they would work together but it just didn't turn out how I wanted.  I wanted to try again and decided to learn from my original mistakes.  For example, make sure you use a super opaque creme polish on your top layer, don't bother with horizontal stripes and using thicker lines looks cool too.

I've been super into Tumblr lately and I've been seeing some people do fabulous things with a glittery base and solid patterns atop it.  I just had to try it out myself after seeing what Whitney at Dressed Up Nails and Stephanie at Sincerely Stephanie have done recently.  By the way, I kinda hate you Whitney, you're just too good and it makes me incredibly jealous!  I loved the idea of using Color Club glitter polishes from Christmas last year so I started off with two coats of Sugarplum Fairy and then just painted half my nail with Beyond the Mistletoe.  Both are completely awesome and sparkly micro holo glitter, the former slightly purple-toned, the latter slightly green.  I wish I could do the glitter justice, it just doesn't come off in photos! Once dry, I dotted on Wet'n'Wild On A Trip, Sally Hansen Pacific Blue, Nina Ultra Pro Blu Blaze and Nicole by OPI "Baby" Blue.  So many polishes!  But look, sparkly!

Oh man, it's getting super hard to keep coming up with ideas so I'm just going to keep on plumbing different techniques.  I'm super into sponge gradients these days so I thought I'd try my hand at overlaid gradients, in rainbows of course because they're the best.  And that way, I get to show off my giraffe ring!  We all win!  Well, we would have had I taken more care to remove the yellow polish stains from my fingers :/ To start, I applied two coats of my new white, OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.  Everyone seems to be using it these days and I can see why, it's one of the nicer, more even whites I've used in a while.  Next, I loaded up a makeup sponge with stripes of China Glaze Pool Party and Surfin' for Boys and American Apparel Neon Yellow to create the underlying gradient.  I'm getting pretty good at gradients these days, I find that I just need the two coats of gradient.  Makes things quicker.  After a coat of Seche Vite, I applied my...

Hot damn am I glad that Valentine's Day is over and I can finally stop staring at the collection of pink and red polishes on my desk that I never used.  Sure, it's nice to have all the holidays be inspiration for manis but it gets a bit old after a while.  Now it's all over and done with for, what, a month til Easter, I just had to have a go at a fantastic neon mani I originally found on Pinterest: Sparrow Nails' combination of China Glaze Purple Panic and Turned Up Turquoise Neon.  It's too blindingly bright for me not to! To start, I painted all but my ring finger in Purple Panic, leaving it to be Turned Up Turquoise.  Two coats is enough with these frosty neons, which is nice.  I added a coat of Seche Vite to each finger because I'm impatient and it makes the taping easier.  I then used my striping tape, painter's masking tape, pinking shears and dotting tools to make the various patterns.  Once they were all done, I finished off with another ...

Not into pink and hearts and flowers?  Me either!  Or, I tried to do a pink and hearts and flowers mani but turns out I can't draw even hearts for the life of me so it's the other end of the Valentine's spectrum for me!  I've been wanting to crack out the micro beads for a while now so let's take a look at my slightly scary studded nails.  Oh, and don't buy the caviar kits, just go to an arts and crafts store, you should be able to buy a bag that you will inevitably spill for about $1. To start, what I should have done was fix the settings on my camera so the colours aren't so wonky but it's too late for that!  After applying two coats of American Apparel, I went through my usual process for applying glitter, just using super thick coats of top coat and making sure the beads are pressed all the way down into the polish.  I used a toothpick to pick up the beads, it seemed to work ok.  I kinda cheated here and didn't add my usual covering coats of...

Ok so yeah, I know I just did this kind of manicure but it's totally different, I swear!  I found more pink glitter so the colours blend together nicely and I spaced the glitter out more!  Pretty much though it was the Reddit Monthly Meetup on Saturday night and I wanted sparkly nails.  What more can I say! To start, I did the usual two coats of Rimmel Black Satin.  Someone remind me to get a new bottle, cos it's getting a bit gluggy.  Anyway, next you'll need a think swipe of your non quick-dry top coat, I'm currently using Sally Hansen Invisible.  You almost can't apply this thick enough because you need to reallllly smush the glitter in there, so no bits stick up.  If I even have one piece of glitter sticking up, I can maybe go six to ten hours before I'mma need to get rid of it.  It's the main reason I trim all my glitter to fit, so it's nice and smooth.  I've found that with the big pieces of glitter, start in the middle with a colu...

Oh, it's fun to bribe your artist friends with french toast so they'll do art on your nails that you can then blog about!  I have a wonderful friend Erica who comes round to our place most Wednesdays and I just had to get her to paint me a teenie-tiny rocket with a space cat.  I have a cat called Rocket and if I ever get around to making my own line of glitter polishes, for sure it'll be called Rocket Polish.  With a cat in a rocket for a logo.  So that had to be the nail art I requested!  She's an excellent artist, you should go look at her work :D I needed a nice spacey deep blue so I started off with two coats of Sally Hansen Navy Baby.  Erica then painted the rocket ship, rocket cat and other spacey things with acrylic paints.  I managed to top it off with a coat of Seche Vite without smudging the design, so I'm happy.  Look, space!