Snow Leopard

I have this awesome friend named Michaela, and she's probably the most crafty and creative person I'll ever have the pleasure of knowing.  She likes doing her nails too and we often talk nail polish, so I was super excited when she decided to get the Bundle Monster 2011 stamping plates.  I have the 2012 set, so last week we got together and borrowed some of each other's plates!

One of the plates I borrowed was BM-221, specially for this leopard print pattern.  I had just recently done a leopard-print mani and wanted this one to look different, so I used my newly-acquired OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls (LOVE) and stamped with Konad black polish. 

My Boyfriend Scales Walls is seriously the most perfect white ever.  For all intents and purposes it serves as a white polish, but it's heaps more flattering than most which look like white-out.  It also wears really well, these pictures were taken after three days of wear and I only had one small chip on my right hand!  

Last weekend we got the first dump of snow on the mountains, so these nails felt appropriate.  I'm really happy with how they turned out, and wouldn't be surprised if I re-created them a couple more times before winter is over!  Also, don't forget to like the new Globe & Nail Facebook page!

What do you think of this?  Do you like this different winter leopard print look?  :)

Badass

I've got to admit, I was biased towards this colour before I even wore it just because of the name.  I'm wearing this polish right now and have already had multiple opportunities to tell people who like my nails that it's Badass.  Win. 

This is two perfect coats of Sheswai Badass, with one coat of Seche Vite.  Badass is a vampy red-toned brown with a stunning dark red shimmer that gives the polish that glowing look. 

I picked this up on sale at Winners, hooray sales!  It's my first Sheswai polish and I'm extremely impressed with the formula, it's the definition of perfect!  The brush fit my nails perfectly, and the polish covered completely in one coat but I added another for depth.  

I actually put on Badass to use as a base for an indie polish (post to come soon!) but I just had to give this polish it's own post, it's so beautiful!

I LOVE this polish, I think it's a great colour for fall.  Do you like it?  Do you have any Sheswai polishes? Do you get biased towards polishes because of their names?   :)

Also, don't forget to like the new Globe & Nail Facebook page!

Shiny Funky French

First, I have some exciting (and long overdue) news: Globe & Nail now has a Facebook page!  It'll be a great way for me to connect more with all my followers (and blogging idols!) and I'm really glad that I finally got one going!   If you have Facebook, head on over there and like my page!  :)

Today I'm paying homage to the blog that started my obsession with nail polish, Chloe's Nails.  This has got to be one of her most iconic and re-created manicures, I've seen it everywhere!

I started with Sally Hansen Black Out, followed by a coat of Seche Vite and then Essie Matte About You.  I taped off most of my nail and painted the tips with more Seche, and then added a strip of black striping tape.  I was worried about how the tape would hold up without a topcoat, but I took these pictures after a day of wear and the tape hadn't come off yet!

Yea, sorry about the bubbly pinky.  That bugged me too. 

So how do you think I did with re-creating this famous manicure?  I really enjoyed wearing it and I certainly got a lot of compliments! (Many of which were proceeded by "What happened to the pinky?" Grrr)

Don't forget to head on over and like the Globe & Nail Facebook page to keep up to date with all my nail-painting madness!  :) 

Aphrodite Lacquers: Printemps a Paris Collection

Of course I'm mid-photo-crisis when I receive two Aphrodite Lacquers from Rebecca's delightfully seasonally-inappropriate Printemps a Paris collection.  I managed to perfectly capture the lovely colour and depth of these polishes, but you'll have to excuse my oompa-loompa fingers for the time being. 

First I have Terre (translated to Earth,) a pastel-green base (which my friends affectionately described as "frog" when they saw it) with emerald-green and yellow small hex glitters, and hidden green shimmer that comes out to play when the light hits it just right.  I'm not normally a fan of shimmer and glitter in the same polish, but Rebecca nailed it (no pun intended) with the barely-there shimmer that just adds another dimension to the polishes. 

I've used four coats for the pictures, with one coat of Seche Vite; I was very pleased with how smooth this was!  You know when you put top coat over a glitter after doing your mani at night, and then you wake up in the morning and it's all sunk and the glitter is super gritty again?  No problem with that here; these pictures were taken the morning after, with only one coat of top coat! 

The first coat required careful applicaiton, but the next three were super easy.  Great glitter suspension, and no dabbing required.  The jelly base is quite sheer, but if you don't have much free edge or a very visible nail line, you could easily get away with three coats like Stephanie did here. 

The second polish Rebecca sent me definitely does double-duty in terms of being seasonally-appropriate, this is Nuages, (translated to Clouds).  It's a white jelly base (love!) with silver, blue, and gunmetal glitters and a blue hidden shimmer.  

This polish fits in with the springtime collection because of the soft colours, but it's also reminiscent of a snowy winter scene, and I think this also makes a great winter polish for someone who doesn't like the normal dark colours that make up winter collections. 

This one is also four coats, but there is no top coat in the pictures; you can see that it's still very shiny by itself but I'd recommend a quick-drying top coat to help speed up the drying.  In terms of application, everything that I said about Terre applies here.  This one was a tad more sheer so I still had minimal VNL at 4 coats, but I didn't mind it very much with the white base. 

The only negative thing I have to say about this collection is that being a French speaker, in the names of the polishes there are some grammar and spelling issues, along with a lack of accents.  However, this has absolutely nothing to do with Rebecca's polish-making abilities, and I've been smitten with this collection from the get-go.  Anything with French, France, or Paris in the name, and I can't help but be biased towards it.  ;) 

You can find Aphrodite Lacquers always fully-stocked on Etsy, and keep up to date on Facebook. 

Will you be picking up any of the polishes from the Printemps a Paris collection?  Do you let the seasons influence your polish colour choices?

Disclaimer: The products in this post were sent to me for review and my honest opinion. 

Globe & Nail on StumbleUpon

I'm working on a post with some indie polishes from Aphrodite Lacquers to be posted later today, but for now I have a little favor to ask all of you.  If you're as addicted to StumbleUpon as I am (or even if you just have an account) I'd really appreciate if you could take a second to open my blog in this link, and click the thumbs-up "I like it!" button in the top left corner.  I'm  trying to spread the word about my blog, and the more it gets "liked", the more Stumblers will get directed to my blog!

Thank you so much, you guys are the best!  See you later with a polish post!  :)

Lighting Strikes Violet Femme

I feel like I haven't posted in so long!  Reality is that I had a couple of manis that I wore for three days, and I was having a crisis of sorts with my pictures (more on that at the bottom of the post.)  

Today's mani is my first venture into mildly Halloween-y nails.  I'm not at all excited for Halloween this year; I used to get excited about dressing up and going trick-or-treating with my friends (and the candy-eating that followed) but this year my mom has finally pulled the plug on that one and isn't letting me go, saying that I'm too old.  (16 isn't too old as long as you're dressed up, right?)  Since I do school online and am not at all the type to go to crazy parties,  I'll most likely be spending the night at home watching re-runs of all the Castle Halloween episodes alone.  

Mildly depressing rant over, here is my somewhat Halloween-y mani.  I don't care for the standard orange and black combination, so I went instead for silver and purple.  Close enough, right?  I started this mani with a base of Picture Polish Violet Femme, which in my opinion is the most perfect shade of purple polish ever.  Purple is my favourite colour, but I don't have many purple polishes because I'm so picky about exactly which shades I like; this one hits the spot!  It's deep and rich, and super saturated with an almost-neon purple pigment that is oh-so-perfect.  Two coats, and a stamp with BM-305 using Essie No Place Like Chrome, and this is the result.  

What do you think of the rotated picture? 

So, the picture crisis:  I used to take my pictures outside on the deck in the morning before I left for school and dance, but now the annual torrential downpour has started and is unlikely to let up at all until March.  That, plus the fact that it's not very light out by the time I leave in the morning, and I'm a little panicky as to what to do about my photos.  I made a lightbox and played around with it a lot, but I still can't get anything close to what  I want my photos to look like.  I'll play with that, and hope that I can get something to work!

How do you like my Halloween-ish mani, or do you even think it says Halloween at all?  Hate to be a party pooper but is anyone else as not-excited for Halloween as I am?  

Half-Moon Gradient

Good morning!  It's been a couple days since I've posted, but I was really enjoying my last mani and ended up wearing it for 3 days!  (Yes, that's a long time for me!)  Since I'm one of the few bloggers who actually posts what is currently on my nails, I had to take a short break from blogging while I enjoyed wearing my leopard-print nails.  

Anywho,  today I've got a half-moon gradient that I've seen floating around quite a bit.  The main reason I tried this was because I have an audition on Sunday, but I have a social event to go to immediately afterwards and was looking for something that I could do in french manicure colours while being more interesting than a plain french tip.  I gave it a trial run in these colours to see if I liked the look, and it turns out I LOVE it!  

I began with a base of two coats of Orly Plum Noir, and a coat of Seche Vite to speed up the drying.  I then used hole-reinforcers to block off the half-moon shape, and sponged on a gradient of Plum Noir and Nails Inc. Power Pink, followed by a second coat of gradient with Plum Noir and Revlon Raspberry Scone.  Two coats of Seche Vite to smooth it all out.  

As I've already made clear, I absolutely love this; I keep looking at my nails and thinking that I should be seeing them on a model in a magazine or something!  I think that this is such a chic, modern and edgy look that would look great in so many different colour combinations, (dark red and gold for Christmas?), and it wasn't difficult at all!  Needless to say, I'll definitely be repeating this design on Sunday in french mani colours, so keep an eye out for that post early next week!

What do you think of this look?  Do you like my colour choices?  Are there any specific colours that you think would work great for this?  :)