My 200th Post: Purple Watercolour Halloween Nail Art and a Small Giveaway!

Hi everyone! Today I have some fun Halloween-y nail art and a fun little giveaway to share!

If you haven't read my last post I know what you're thinking... it's late May not late October, what's with the Halloween nails? And like I said in my last post, Halloween is one of the prompts for Nail It Magazine's September/October Issue and I'm trying to get my nails in their super fancy magazine!

Today is a special day because this is Partial to Polish's 200th post! In honour of that I've picked out a cute set of coloured studs from Born Pretty Store for one of you lovely people to win! This isn't a sponsored post, it's just a fun little spontaneous giveaway I decided to throw together today! The widget will be at the bottom of this post so read on!

For this look I started with a base of Essie The Girls are Out, a lovely fuchsia polish with glowy silver shimmer. I then went in with Essie DJ Play that Song, Color Club Pucci-licious and China Glaze Fancy Pants. I basically followed the lovely Chelsea Queen's tutorial to get the water colour effect, but I also went over each nail with acetone and a little DJ Play that Song at the end to blend everything together a little better! Check out the picture below for what that looked like (with no top coat).

I fell in love with the waxy finish of this watercolour look, so much so that I've since made a wax effect top coat with some corn starch and top coat! If you're curious you can head to my Instagram through the button in my sidebar to check out how it looked!

For the spiders and birds/bats (I was going for very simple bats but I think they look more like birds) I used a small paintbrush and Revlon Espresso, my favourite black creme polish. After letting my nails dry I sprayed the spider and bat nails with a spray of hairspray and let that dry. I finished off with a coat of the top coat I always use, Essie Good to Go. I do that every time I do any kind of nail art now because the layer of hairspray makes nail art so much harder to smudge!

What do you guys think of these nails? I'd love to know in the comments!

Now, onto the giveaway portion of this post! It is open internationally and will be open for a week. One of the requirements is that you leave a comment on this post letting my know which colour combo you'd like to receive the most. The following pictures are from the Born Pretty Store website and if you click on any of them they'll take you to the item listing for more information. I have named each set below so you can easily let me know which is your favourite in the comments!

BPG (blue purple green)

POP (pink orange purple)

GYG (green yellow green)

OPB (orange pink blue)

Here is the widget, good luck everyone! The winner will have 24 hours to respond to my email or I'll have to pick a new winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks so much for reading everyone! I'll have a big random swatch post up soon of the bases for my nail art or polishes I wore on their own, so keep an eye out! Happy Thursday! =)

OPI Constellation Nail Art!

Yo yo yo my people! Today I have some fun constellation nail art to share!

I apologize for not posting for a while guys! I actually have a lot to post and I'm behind in posting, and for some reason that has overwhelmed me into not posting very often :P.

Anyways, a little while ago my mom bought me the current issue of Nail It! Magazine (the May/June one) and I found out you actually send in your pictures and your information to be featured. This made me really excited so I've done one mani for each of their prompts (Stars, Art Deco and Halloween) so far and I think I'll crank out a few more before the deadline (June 6th for the curious)! I'm so excited to find out if any of my designs get featured but I guess I won't know until September haha!

So when I was trying to think up a cool star design I immediately thought of constellations and I decided to go with it! I knew I wanted to do Orion and the Big Dipper seemed like a good second choice, and then I went looking for a third constellation that was relatively easy to paint with my left hand. I finished the look off with a messy five-pointed star, a spray of hairspray (to avoid smudges) and a coat of top coat! Ever since I discovered that spraying your nails with hairspray and letting it dry before top coating makes nail art much harder to smudge, I've been doing it!

The blue I used here is OPI OPI... Eurso Euro and the white is OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, both super nice one and two coaters, respectively. I actually did two super thin coats of OPI... Eurso Euro this time around because I think it might dry slightly faster that way!

What do you guys think of these nails? I'd love to know in the comments!

Thank you so much for taking a look everyone! I'll really try and start posting more regularly! Happy Monday! =)

Born Pretty Store Flower Water Decal Review

Hello everyone! Today I have a review of some Born Pretty Store water decals to share (link here, item G006)!

This will be a bit of a brief post because I want to spend more time figuring out my lighting today. I thought it was easier to white balance using a white background but it isn't at all! I look back to my Sally Hansen Brisk Blue and heart nail art post (link here) and think up until then my lighting and white balance was so nice for a while! Why did I decide to change it haha? I am using three lamps instead of one now which makes focusing and getting clear photos a lot easier, but I hope I can get back to pictures with good lighting with this set up! So I'll probably be going back to a black background for a while, sorry for all the changes and craziness! Anyways, onto the nails!

For these nails I started with two coats of OPI I Just Can't Cope-acabana and a coat of top coat. I then cut out, soaked in water and applied each decal and added a coat of top coat before moving to the next nail. These were super easy to use like the other decals I received from Born Pretty Store a while ago (link to the post here)! There was no issue with smudging the decals with top coat and they had really clear images and details as you can see!

To apply them I did basically the same thing I described in the other decal post I linked above, except I actually slid the decal off of the paper and into the water. That way I could pick up the decal with my clean up brush and have a little more control when placing it (not that you need to because you can move it around as long as there's still some water on your nail).

Overall I think these are really cute and easy to use and I love that there are big designs included! They really set these decals apart from most floral nail stickers or decals in my opinion!

See how crisp and detailed these are? So pretty!

What do you guys think of these decals or this mani in general? I'd love to know in the comments!

If you guys go looking for nail art stuff on their site be sure to use my coupon code SKBQ10 for 10% off! I'm really tempted to pick up their package of circle and square pastel studs (link here for the curious)!

Thank you so much for taking a look everyone! I'll have some star nail art on here to share with you guys soon so keep a look out! I'm still not sure what I'm going to do but wish me luck! Happy Wednesday everyone! =)

Art Deco Inspired Nail Art over American Apparel Coney Island!

Hey everyone! Today I have some art deco inspired nail art to share!

I finally got my hands on the Nicole by OPI Roughles collection last night and I couldn't be happier! I'm wearing the pink one (Rock the Look) already and I'm in love (despite the fact that pink is my least favourite colour)! They were even 50% off when I finally found them at Shoppers Drug Mart! I have been madly in love with the whole collection since it came out and I've spent the last month or so convincing myself I don't need them (mostly because I couldn't find them anywhere)! Expect a swatch and review of all four in the near future!

I am now happily going on a no-buy because I have so many untrieds in my collection, it's ridiculous :P. I've started a massive post listing all of my untrieds with pictures but dang is it hard work! I even want to include polishes I've only swatched on one hand because I want to actually wear them all out, so my post will be quite large! I think I have 376 polishes at the moment and I wonder if I've even worn half of them as full manis! Anyways, onto the nails!

As you can see, I've decided to go back to a light background for a while. I think it goes with my light blog layout better and I'm just liking it better now for some reason!

For this mani I started with two easy coats of American Apparel Coney Island and a coat of top coat. I have pictures of it alone, but I think I'll have a weekly or biweekly (the twice a week meaning) post of swatches of the bases of my nail art from now on.

Later that day I went in with OPI OPI... Eurso Euro and two small nail art brushes. I'm not sure how art deco-y these are because I kind of invented the design as I went! I didn't actually like this design very much so I didn't finish doing my other hand to go with it, but a ton of you on Instagram did! I usually post every mani I do on here and as long as I don't absolutely hate it, because everyone has nail fails in their own eyes!

What do you guys think of these nails? I'd love to know in the comments! :)

Thank you so much for reading everyone! I'll have another Born Pretty Store review up for you in a few days! Happy Monday!

Deborah Lippmann Hannah & Taping with Black Sheep Lacquer Purple Planet!

Hey everyone! Today I have a swatch and review of Deborah Lippmann Hannah as well as some simple taping nail art to share featuring a lovely Black Sheep Lacquer multichrome!

Today I've been enjoying another lazy morning with my boyfriend since he has Thursdays off. I'm especially glad about it because I've had a migraine all day that started last night, so I definitely wouldn't want to be running around! I took a Tylenol earlier but I don't think it really touched the pain. Oh well, I'm happy just laying around because standing up and moving around is mostly what's hurting. Anyways, onto the nails!

I played around with a bunch of different lightings, camera settings and poses this time around, and I'm still not sure what I like the best. The pictures with a white or brown background were just kind of for fun. I took them outside of my light box on full automatic settings, but they actually turned out better than my light box swatches!

I do think I'll be wanting to use my light box for my pictures, I just need to figure it and my camera out a bit more :P. I plan to spend more time fiddling with it today or tomorrow and I hope to make some decisions!

I found that custom white-balancing the pictures on the white background was easier to do and more accurate, so I'm feeling very tempted to go back to that. I didn't include any of those pictures here but maybe I will in my next post. I'd really love to hear your guys' thoughts on all of this! It would help so much!

Now, onto these nails specifically! I started with two easy coats of Deborah Lippmann Hannah; a gorgeous dusty dark green creme. It had a perfect formula and was super quick-drying! I also absolutely love the brush Deborah Lippmanns have, they're thin and kind of small and so dang easy to work with and get nice rounded lines at the cuticle!

Speaking of cuticles, this polish did stain my cuticles a little bit. I'm pretty sure that was because I had just pushed them back and they were a bit dry though!

The next day I decided to add little accents using Black Sheep Lacquer Purple Planet. I purchased it a while ago and I have been really excited to try it! I think I'll swatch it and have a post up about just it later this week!

Another decision I'd like to make is whether to use square pictures or pictures with the normal dimensions. Square pictures show up bigger on my blog and they're so easy to Instagram! What do you guys think? I'd really love to know!

I can't get over how pretty and how multichromatic Purple Planet is! I can't wait to get up some proper swatches of it!

Sorry for all the pictures here guys, I kind of went nuts!

Thank you so much for reading everyone! Again, I'd love to have your input on backgrounds and picture shapes because I'm pretty indecisive! :P Let me know what you thought of these nails in the comments too! Happy Thursday! =)

Sally Hansen Brisk Blue & Heart Nail Art!

Hey everyone! Today I have a cute heart nail art look to share!

I feel pretty bleh about these pictures except for the last one and lately I've really been thinking about changing up my poses/background/pictures in some way. I love the more artsy pictures like the bloggers Pshiiit, BeautyGeeks and Nail Escapades use! Maybe I could do some of those in addition to the ones or most of the ones I use. I've already made a few blog changes lately including my font, commenting system and a slight change to my blog title, and now I'm really wanting to make some more changes!

I'd love to know what you guys think of the changes along the way! I'm going to try out some new poses, backgrounds, lighting, etc. today so maybe I'll be back to you guys with a post asking which poses you prefer (again :P, link to the first time I did this here if you're curious). I know I haven't tagged all of my posts featuring indie brands with the tag "indie polish" and that's been bugging me for a while so that's another change I'd like to make! I also want to make sure I have the tags "review" and "swatch" on all the applicable posts because I'm not sure that I do. Anyways, onto the nails!

For this look I started with one easy coat of Sally Hansen Brisk Blue and a coat of top coat. I would definitely recommend not going in and trying to fix a spot you missed if you've allowed it any time to dry already. I made that mistake and let me tell you, they don't call it Insta-Dri for nothing! Things got real bumpy and even after two coats of top coat it still looked odd. But not to fear! If you just wait a minute or two more you can do an easy second coat instead to get the spot you missed.

I also want to note that I got a tiny bit of staining from this polish. I only used a thin coat of base coat and after hitting my nails with remover twice it was gone, so it was really nothing major! Doing two coats of base coat would definitely eliminate any possibility of staining though! Also, it did seem to stain my fingers that were holding the cotton pad while removing them, but that staining was gone before I remembered I should try and wash it off!

Next, I went in twice with OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls so the hearts could reach full opacity. I just realized I never took a picture of my other hand, but I put the hearts on my index and pinkie finger because I've been loving doing those kind of reverse accent nails lately! That's another change I'd like to make; always including pictures of my right hand in each post!

Thank you so much for reading everyone! I'd love to know what you think of the changes I've made and the ones I've been thinking of making in the comments! I'd also love to know what you think of these nails! Hopefully I'll have some more interesting pictures and poses for you in my next post! Happy Monday! =)