Born Pretty Store Pastel Stud Review & Mr. Candiipants Nail Art!

Hey everybody! Today I have a recreation of some of Mr. Candiipants' nail art and a Born Pretty Store review to share!

I've been picking up some last minute travel things and I'm getting ridiculously excited for my trip! I'm really curious to see how my nail pictures will be without a light box... guess I'll just use natural light! I've decided to bring the camera I always use for my pictures so the quality should be the same! Anyways, onto the nails! :)

To start I applied two coats of Essie Find Me An Oasis (very pale blue) to most of my nails and two coats of Maybelline Ultra Violet (purple) to the rest. Both had really nice formulas and I was very pleasantly surprised that Find Me An Oasis was a non-streaky two-coater!

I then went in with NOPI Strike a Pose (coral that always looks red next to other colours) and OPI My Vampire Is Buff (off-white nude) on all of my nails in different shapes! I then added a mint green colour to the purple nails using American Apparel Office! The only time I used a thin brush on these nails was for the nude stripes on the blue nails, though I really should have for the random shapes on the purple nails to get good sharp corners. Lastly, I applied some purple pastel studs from Born Pretty Store (link here) with a little blob of top coat on the nail and a dotting tool dipped in top coat. I'm happy to report that the colour on the studs didn't bleed whatsoever! The entire colour is removed by non-acetone remover though, so if you keep your studs like me, you'll end up with silver studs!

After giving my nails some time to dry I gave them each a spray of hairspray for a couple seconds and let that dry. Then I applied my favourite top coat (Essie Good To Go) and I was done! I always do this hairspray step now because I discovered how much harder it is for you to smudge your design with your top coat this way! Also, here is a link to Mr. Candiipants' tutorial for this super cute design!

What do you guys think of this nail art or these studs? I'd love to know in the comments!

Be sure to check out Born Pretty Store for any of your nail art needs, they have a really massive selection! And be sure to use my coupon code for 10% off, SKBQ10!

Thanks so much for taking a look everyone! I'll be back soon with a subtle red gradient and gold leaf top coat look that I'm very obsessed with and wearing right now! Happy Sunday! =)

Friday Swatch Spam: NOPI, OPI, Essie & Yume Lacquer!

Hello everyone! Today I have swatches of five lovely polishes to share!

I'm going to make this post short and sweet because I'm about to paint some nails and I've been accumulating swatch photos that I really need to post! I'm thinking I'll continue to post swatches of the bases of my nail art with the posts about the nail art like I was doing before. So I guess this'll be the first and last swatch spam post for at least a while! All of these swatches are of two coats of polish and some are with top coat, all had lovely formulas (though I Just Can't Cope-cabana was a little streaky and would have done better at three coats)! Let's get right to it!

OPI I Just Can't Cope-acabana- two coats and a coat of top coat

NOPI Rock the Look- two coats, no top coat

OPI OPI... Eurso Euro- two coats, no top coat (check out my peely nails :()

Essie The Girls Are Out- two coats and a coat of top coat

Yume Lacquer Galactic Punt- two coats and a coat of top coat

Thanks so much for taking a look everyone! I'll have some more half moon heart nail art to share very soon because I'm obsessed! Happy Friday! =)

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! =)

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!

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! =)

Pastel Water Marble & Textured Nail Art!

Hey everyone! Today I have a fun little water marble and textured polish combo to share!

I was sitting around watching a marathon of the Naked Gun movies with my boyfriend this morning, and it made for a really good day! I love Leslie Nielsen and outrageously silly movies! I have to watch them with my sister and dad because I know they'll love them too :D. I've also been checking out a ton of swatches of neon collections and summer collections and I'm itching to pick up some new bright polishes (though I should really stop buying polish)! Anyway, onto the nails!

For these nails I started with a base of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls and OPI Solitaire on the water marble and textured nails, respectively. Both were perfect in two coats, in fact, Solitaire was pretty darn opaque at one coat! It was also very fast drying and it has a perfect formula!

For the water marble I used four lovely China Glaze polishes; For Audrey (turquoise), Secret Peri-Wink-Le (purple that spread out and appeared blue), Dance Baby (pink) and V (orange). I found that they all worked really well together, or maybe China Glaze polishes in general work really well for water marbling!

I followed a lovely tutorial by PackAPunchPolish on Youtube (link here) for the water marble! I also included a sped up video of me doing this whole mani at the end of this post for funzies!

Here is my right hand! I kind of think this one turned out better but I wish the little dots of polish in the middle weren't there. I think they were from not cleaning the dotting tool before dipping it in the middle, so if you guys try this out you can learn from my mistakes!

What do you guys think of this mani? I'd love to hear in the comments!

Thank you so much for reading everyone! I'll try and post more frequently, I've been keeping busy despite being out of school and it seems I've been keeping too busy to post every two days! I'll have a cute nail art look with an awesome Sally Hansen blue up soon! Happy Thursday! =)