Grey Ombré

I'm sitting here trying to come up with some clever name for this like my Grey-dient.  Grey-bré?  Om-grey? Yea, not really working for me.

This was my first time trying ombré nails, and I really like it!  I've been sick for two days now (though I still have to go to dance - can't miss any rehearsals with the show coming up next Saturday!) and even though it was late last night, I had already been wearing my last manicure for three days and it was getting pretty chipped.  I wanted something fast and easy that was still more interesting than a plain mani, so I finally decided to try this. 

From thumb to pinky I used Sally Hansen Black Out, Orly Shockwave, Grey franken (2 parts Zoya Dove, 1 part Orly Shockwave), Zoya Dove, and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. 

I like the look of the colours transitioning from one to the next across the fingers!  I was a little nervous about having to mix a colour for the middle finger, but I think it came out just right.  I actually ended up liking the colour so much that I might make myself a mini bottle of it! 

I also went a little crazy with the nail file last night, they feel like such nubs after how long they've been the past few weeks!  Oops! 

I'm working on collecting some stuff for a giveaway soon, because lots of exciting events have all seemed to converge!  I just passed 300 blog followers, I'm getting close to 5000 Instagram followers (@emmaclarem), my next post will be number 100, and it's my 17th birthday next Friday, November 16th!  :)

The Final Frontier

Today I've got the second installment of what will hopefully become a weekly post on my blog, Castle Mani Monday!  Every Monday I'll have some nail art inspired by the Castle episode of the week, and if you don't watch Castle, this is the premise of the show.  

This week's episode is called The Final Frontier, and is based around a sci-fi convention where a murder (of course) happens to take place.  I based my nail art off of the shirt that Beckett is wearing in the episode stills.  Look, I even included a picture.  :)

Stana Katic as Kate Beckett & Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle

I used Orly You're Blushing as a base, and then used my dotting tool to draw on random blobs in Essie Merino Cool and Orly Plum Noir.  Two coats of Seche Vite for a smooth finish. 

I'm really happy with how this turned out, it was a little time-consuming but doesn't require very much skill at all.  It looks almost like animal print or camouflage, thought I'm not really sure in what situation purple camouflage would be useful. 

As I said at the beginning of the post, I hope to make this a sort of weekly thing every Monday morning, so look out for another Castle-inspired post next week!  Castle is on ABC Mondays at 7pm PST. 

Effie, Upgraded

Just a quick one this morning since I'm about to dash off to rehearsals all day, followed by a fundraiser performance tonight.  I really liked my Effie Trinket Halloween nails, but wanted to add something to them to wear for an extra day.  I didn't know what to add, until I came upon a post by Polish All The Nails that gave me some inspiration!

I replicated her design in this post, making triangles from the sides of my nails with the loose gold glitter from the Born Pretty Store. 

Sealed it all in with two more coats of Seche Vite, and I've got an upgraded Effie manicure!

If you don't already, you really should read Polish All The Nails; she does the most amazing things with loose glitter!  Wish me luck on the performance tonight!  :)

Happy Halloween, And May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor!

Three things: 

1. It's November 1st, so my 17th birthday is in 16 days!

2. Halloween is over, therefore it's officially Christmas time. 

3. Starbucks Christmas cups FTW. 

I had a really fun time yesterday, I dressed up as Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games!  Since I was going full-out with my costume, hair, and makeup,  I just had to do my nails to match!  

I started with two coats of Essie Super Bossa Nova, a bright pink polish that loves to stain.  Grrr.  I sponged Essie Good As Gold onto the tips, topcoated, and was done!   I was going for this look that she wears during the reaping, which is actually quite toned-down compared to her manicures in the rest of the movie!

I had dance until 7:30 last night (and then rehearsal ran over time,) after which I went to my friend's house, ate pizza, and we went out for a while.  Since we're "too old to trick-or-treat", we went door-to-door collecting non-perishable food donations to help the homeless.  Halloween for a good cause!

Unfortunately, we got stuck in the middle of a torrential downpour (of course, we can never have a rain-less Halloween!) and ran back to my friend's house, high heels, pencil skirt, ruffles and all.  At least I brought an umbrella!  

Hope you all had a great Halloween! :)

Quilted Chatters

Today I've got a beautiful polish to show you, once again thanks to my awesome friend Michaela.  I've had my eye on OPI Chatters Me Up for quite a while, and when I was at her house the other day (Halloween cookie-baking and nail-painting party) she kindly let me borrow her bottle.  I am now absolutely sure that I need my own bottle of this!  :)

Chatters Me Up is an OPI shade exclusive to Chatters salons in Canada, as far as I know.  It's a wine-coloured polish with a strong pink shimmer that's almost micro-flakies, and it flashes an orangey-bronze in the sunlight.  This is such a complex polish, and unfortunately it was impossible to capture it in all it's glory in pictures, so you'll have to take my word for it! 

I used plate BM-310 and Essie Good As Gold to stamp on this image, the finished look reminds me of a royal quilt, haha!

Chatters Me Up had a great formula, and covered completely in two easy coats.  Doesn't hurt that I love the shape of OPI's brush, it fits my nails perfectly! 

I'm really happy with how this turned out,  I'm actually still wearing it and going on day 3! 

Tomorrow is Halloween, and I have managed to make it to this point without doing a single Halloween manicure!  Remember this post when I was complaining about the likelihood of me spending Halloween at home alone?  Well I've decided to tag along with a group of my friends and we're going to collect food donations instead of getting candy!  I've also finally thought up an awesome costume (my activity on Sunday, haha)  and I will be doing my nails for tomorrow, but they'll be part of my costume and won't resemble anything Halloween-y.  I haven't told anybody (besides my family) what I'm being, and I'm super excited to dress up!  If I get a decent picture, I'll post it here along with my matching nails!  :)

Wishing everyone a safe and happy Halloween, and my thoughts and prayers are with everyone on the east coast!  

Feenix Polish: Falling For You & Feenix Rising

Today I've got two stunning polishes from Suzette, the genius behind Feenix Polish.  I'll just get right to it!

Falling For You is described as "a clear base to which we have lightly added two shimmering pigments in tawny colors.  To that, we have stirred in a mixture of ten different glitters, some of them matte.  The result is a riot of fall colors reminiscent of an October walk in the woods."

My bottle doesn't appear to have any shimmer in the base like the pictures in the listing do, but instead has a scattering of brown micro-glitters throughout; I think I like it better this way though.  The most prominent colours of glitter are red and gold (Gryffindor, anyone?)  I layered one coat of Falling For You over Sheswai Badass, and I must admit that I was very tempted to give each of these two polishes a separate post and call this one "Falling For You, Badass". 

This glitter is very dense, and you can get full coverage in 3 coats.  The base is pretty thick and required dabbing to get even coverage, but the glitter was very well-suspended.  Topped with one coat of Seche Vite for the pictures, though I'd recommend another if you want a perfectly smooth finish.   This polish attracted a lot of attention because it was SO glittery, but the fall colours were very pretty and not obnoxiously glittery at all!  

Feenix Rising is described as "an incredibly beautiful topcoat...which has proven incredibly difficult to photograph.  It is a clear base with four neutral holographic small glitters."  I found the glitters to not be quite holographic, but more iridescent, however the comment on being impossible to photograph was spot-on! 

This polish is SO stunning; my mom said that they looked like these, and she's right!  I tried to take photos of this under my normal lighting conditions, but I was ending up with photos like the first one below, which IN NO WAY looks like the polish does in real life.  Application was the same as for Falling For You, and I used one coat of Seche Vite for the pictures. 

This one is just so reflective, so I went to a shaded area of the house to capture the true depth and beauty of this polish.  Ta-da! 

Now just imagine all of the colours constantly changing (similar to a blue-green-gold colour-shifting flakie polish) and reflecting light, and it looks like mermaid scales on your nails!  I said that I got a lot of compliments on the last one, but this definitely one-upped the fall glitter! 

I tried it over so many different greens, blues, and purples, and they all looked amazing.  I finally decided to layer it over Orly Decoded, to let all of the different colours of the glitter stand out.  Looking at the finished look, you'd never guess I put it over a dark grey even thought the base of the polish was clear! 

So there you have it, two stunning polishes from Feenix Polish!  You can purchase Feenix Polish on Etsy here, and keep in the loop on Facebook here.  I'm absolutely in love with all of the polishes in the shop, I just might have to pick up a couple more... or a lot more.  

Which of these polishes is your favourite?  Are you planning on picking up any of these or her other stunning creations? :)

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

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?  :)