Girly Bits: Push It

Wow, it's been a month since I last posted!  Time really flies when you're busy - I'm just on the tail end of a 3-week tour performing all over Eastern Canada, and it's been great!

I'm going to try to clear out my drafts folder a bit over the next couple weeks, so here's a gorgeous polish from Girly Bits that I wore in the summer but haven't shared with you yet.  Take a look at Push It!

Push It is the silver sister to The Power of Love, which I posted about here.   This polish is a silver holo, with silver and copper glitters mixed in.  The mix of the glitters in the holo base gives this polish some awesome visual texture, and you get very different looks depending on the lighting.  

Two coats of this polish give perfect coverage, and I've topped it with one coat of LaCC 2013 top coat.  The first photo is in direct sunlight to show the holo (which is stronger in real life,) and the second photo is in indirect natural light, so you can see the glitters better. 

This polish is part of the Girly Bits 80's Girl Band Collection, and you can purchase it and lots of other stunning Girly Bits polishes online here.  You can also like the Girly Bits Facebook page to keep up to date with new releases.  

It's time for me to sign off for now - I've got another show tonight and will be heading to the theatre soon!  In the mean time, what do you think of this polish?  Are you a fan of holos with glitters mixed in?  Let me know in the comments!  :)

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

Denim & Fairy Cake

You may remember that I went to a dance convention in the US over the last weekend in January.  Being from Canada, I of course had to pick up a few (well... eleven) polishes, since they're so much cheaper in the US!  I got five Butter Londons, four NOPIs, and two OPIs, but I ended up only paying half of what they were all worth!  :)

Today I've got some nail art using two of my new polishes, take a look!

While perusing the interwebz last week, I came upon this look by Pshiiit and knew that I had to recreate it!  I started with NOPI Denim To Earth, a lovely indigo base with subtle purple shimmer that is camera-shy.  Once that was dry, I taped off my chevrons and painted on two-ish coats of Butter London Fairy Cake before quickly removing the tape.  

I wasn't sure if I wanted to add the matte tips, but the look was missing something so I decided to just go for it.  Boy, am I glad I did!  One freehanded coat of Essie Matte About You over the tips definitely pulled the look together and finished it off!  

I'm starting to collect more Butter London polishes and really loving them, much to the dismay of my parents because of the price tag! ;)  I'm really happy with these polish purchases, they look great together!  How do you like this look?  Would you try it in different colours?  :)

Indie January: Emily De Molly Ode To The Elite

I haven't shown a glitter topper since Day 1 of Indie January, which is why today I've got a huge explosive glitterbomb of a polish!  Emily De Molly Ode To The Elite is a clear base jam-packed with every kind of silver holographic glitter under the rainbow; take a look!

I've layered one coat of Ode To The Elite over two coats of A England Jane Eyre.  The glitters seemed to congregate at the bottom of the bottle and I did go fishing to get a good assortment of shapes on each nail.  I dabbed on the glitter for an even covering, and topped it with one coat of Seche Vite (though you'll probably need two for a smooth finish - the glitter ate my top coat after I took pictures.)

I love this one in the pictures, but in person it was just a bit too chaotic for me.  I prefer uniformity, so this had a little too much going on in my opinion. 

Emily De Molly polishes are currently available through Llarowe, and her own website will be up and running soon!  As always, Facebook page! 

How do you like the mix of different glitters?  Right up your alley, or too chaotic?  Do you own any Emily De Molly polishes? 

Disclaimer: The products in this post were sent to me for review.

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a fun New Year's Eve, I know I did!  I have a quick post right now with yesterday's mani,  but as of this afternoon, I'll be starting my full month of indie-only posts!  More on that at the end of this post.  

I spent most of yesterday watching movies with my friend so I didn't want to do anything too fancy that I wouldn't be able to appreciate while sitting in a dark room curled up in a blanket, but I still wanted something festive and glittery.  I saw my untried bottle of Zoya Electra sitting on my desk, and knew it would be perfect!

Because I wanted absolute full coverage, I layered three coats of Zoya Electra over two coats of China Glaze Silver Lining.  The super-fine silver glitter was a perfect base for the bar glitter, giving me full coverage without the appearance of layering.  I was extremely surprised by how easily Electra applied, fantastic!  Two coats of Seche Vite for a smooth finish. 

I enjoyed wearing Electra a lot more than I thought I would, all the holographic bar glitter is absolutely gorgeous when the light hits it!

Now as for my month of indie posts... I've got a ton of untried indie polishes, so each day I'll have a post featuring one new indie polish.  Posting every day will be a challenge for me (and require more planning than my usual  "I'll post when I have something new") but I'm really looking forward to it!  I hope you'll join me on my blog this month, though your wallets will probably hate me by the end of it!  :)

Silver Snowflakes

Another Christmas-y manicure today!  Christmas is less than a week away (*gasp*) and time for Christmas nails is is running out, so let's get right to it!  :)

I started with two coats of OPI The Spy Who Loved Me and one coat of Seche Vite to speed up the drying before stamping the snowflake design from BM-323 with Essie No Place Like Chrome.  I finished the look by placing silver holographic glequins from the Born Pretty Store in the centers of the larger snowflakes, and applying one last coat of Seche Vite

. 

OPI The Spy  Who Loved Me is a gorgeous bright red with a goldish-red glass fleck/shimmer.  It applied so perfectly, and is a great holiday polish! 

I really liked this look and was planning on wearing it for two days, but I got a huge dump of indie nail mail the next day, so off it came!  :P  

Christmas seems to have come so quickly this year, and I'm going to try to get in as much Christmas nail art as I can!  I'm still stuck on what polish to wear on Christmas, but I'm not really sure how much it matters since I'm pretty sure I'll be getting some polish for Christmas and will probably do my nails multiple times that day anyways, haha!  

Have you decided what your Christmas manicure will be?  A favourite polish or nail art?  :)

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?  

Silver Stripes

Good morning!  If you read my blog with any sort of regularity, you'll know that I LOVE stripes.  Until now I had always just cut my own strips of tape, which was unpleasantly tedious and time-consuming.  I don't know why it's taken me so long to get some striping tape, but now that I have it I'm never looking back!

I got a 12-pack of striping tape from the Born Pretty Store.  Each roll holds a lot of tape, and even with my affinity for stripes I think it'll be a long time before I run out!  For this manicure I started with two coats of my brand-smackin'-new Butter London Big Smoke. (While I was away my mom got me three Butter Londons, and they are also my first, which makes me a wee bit excited.)  The formula on Big Smoke was absolutely flawless.  I topped that with one coat of Seche Vite before adding the stripes. 

I put on the stripes by cutting pieces of tape that were longer than my nail, placing them on, and then cutting them to length at the edges of my nails using nippers. I topped it with two more coats of Seche Vite and it was still a little bumpy, but nothing that bothered me.

The tape stripes lasted surprisingly well.  After the second full day of wear some of the edges started poking up, but I was able to make it three full days with near-perfect stripes!

You can use my coupon code below at checkout at the Born Pretty Store for 7% off your order.  They have a ton of great nail art supplies for really good prices, and free worldwide shipping! 

I also wanted to let you know that a couple days ago my blog passed 10,000 pageviews, and I have over 2000 followers on Instagram!  Woohoo!  Thank you guys so much for all your support!  :)


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

More Studs

Just a quick post right now since I'm on a break at school, with two more looks I did recently.

Here is Revlon Popular that I picked up last week along with Whimsical.  This is two coats layered over one coat of Essie Limo-Scene.  In retrospect, I probably didn't need a base colour.  Popular is medium silver hex glitter and silver micro glitter in a baby pink base.  It goes on very easily, and the glitter spreads evenly.

On each nail I brushed on a little Seche Vite where I wanted the studs, and then I placed them with tweezers.  I topped it with 2 more coats of Seche Vite.  I'm still not sure whether to call these studs or rhinestones... I really liked this but unfortunately I only got to wear it for one day because I was smart and did it the day before a dance competition.

Next I've got some nail art I did for a contest on Instagram.  This was my first attempt at doing galaxy nails, and I was really happy with how they turned out, though they did take longer than I'd care to admit.  The pictures don't do it justice, they looked much prettier in real life. 

I started with 2 coats of OPI Black Cherry Chutney, my go-to vampy shade.  Then I sponged on SH Xtreme Wear White On, followed by SH HD Laser, SH Xtreme Wear Mint Sorbet, SH Xtreme Wear Lacey Lilac, Orly Prelude To A Kiss, The Colour Workshop (unnamed sparkles), and SH Nail Prisms Pink Rose Diamond.

  

Yes, I own two vintage Sally Hansen Prisms, one of which I used in this.  I got them before started collecting polish and was barely even interested.  Now I'm very happy to have them.  

I attached the star studs the same way as the ones before.  Topped it off with 2 coats of Seche Vite.   

Instagram effect

That's all for right now, but I'm also writing a guest post on a new mani I've done for the lovely Alexis, so stay tuned for more on that soon!

Newspaper Nails Tutorial

Just a quick post tonight with some (very) old photos and a tutorial I made a while ago.  I really like the look that this creates, and it's very simple to do! 

Here is my most recent attempt at the newspaper nails that I was sporting for the Castle season 4 finale last Monday; (my Caskett 'shipper heart is still going crazy).  Since Castle is a writer, I thought this would be appropriate. Unfortunately, it turned out worse than my previous two attempts, and I was left very disappointed. 

2 coats Seche Vite

Base is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'White On'.  I didn't really like this as a base for this one; I found it a bit stark and at times I was getting flashbacks of elementary school when people used to paint white-out on their nails. *Shudder*.  I wish I had something closer to "My Boyfriend Scales Walls' from the OPI Spiderman Collection.  I feel like that colour would have been better underwear for this. 

I used regular newsprint for most of the nails, but on my thumb I cut out letters to spell "CASTLE, always".  Because of the ink not wanting to transfer this time, it was impossible to read in person.  Grrr. 

Instagram effect

 On to the tutorial!  Please keep in mind that this was my first-ever tutorial, and was made quite a few months ago when my nails and cuticles were in a cringe-worthy state.

I hope that was easy enough to understand.  Excuse the font and the... cats. 

I think it didn't work the most recent time because I used a different, higher-quality newspaper and the ink was of better quality and therefore wouldn't transfer as easily. 

Once again, I would like to apologize for the state of my nails and cuticles in the following photos.  For your own safety, I advise you don't enlarge these. Seriously. 

That's some nice chipping right there.  And below, you'll see the mother of all air bubbles.  

As for what I have on my nails right now?  I got back home relatively late last night from dance competition, but couldn't bear to have naked nails for one more day so I quickly put on Orly 'Oui'.  This one was a birthday present from my sister, and I haven't worn it in a while and forgot how pretty it is.  Purple and gold duochrome with LOTS of shimmer/microglitter! 

3 coats 'Oui' with 2 coats Seche Vite

If you have any pointers or questions about the tutorial, or if you'd like to see more tutorials, please leave a comment.  I love reading comments!