Raspberries Over a Sponged Yellow Base Featuring Girly Bits These Hips Don't Lie!

Hey everyone! Today I have some fun raspberry nails to share!

This post will be a bit of a quick one because I think I'll try and get a few more written while the motivation is flowing! I did this look a little over three weeks ago, so naturally my nails are crazy long now. I'm at the point that I feel they're too long but too lazy to cut and file them. That means I'll be doing a big chop pretty soon! :P

Onto the nails!

To start, I applied two coats of Cirque Carpe Diem (a white creme) and allowed it to dry. I then painted random blobs of Girly Bits These Hips Don't Lie (yellow) and American Apparel Neon Orange (yellow-orange) onto a damp sponge and got to sponging!

After a while, I decided what I wanted to do and went in with a dotting tool and Essie Plumbery. Next, I went in with the same dotting tool and Deborah Lippmann Jessa for the darker (inner) raspberry colour.

I then decided to try a Kiko polish I picked up in Germany last summer for the leaves and stem. I used a small detail brush and Kiko Meadow Green!

At first I thought the two different yellows of the base weren't showing up in pictures but I'm glad to see they kind of did!

What do you guys think of this look or yellow nails in general? I'm really loving yellow lately and I have another look featuring yellow that I'll be posting soon!

Thanks so much for having a look everyone! I'll be back with a third go at the MrCandiipants spring floral design (on myself; I've done it several times on others as well)! Happy Tuesday guys! =)

ILNP Phoenix (H) Over Essie Carry On!

Hey everyone! Today I have another of the ILNP holographic ultra chrome flakie polishes to share!

Today's post will be a quick one because it's ten o' clock and I need my sleep! I'm really going to try and post once a day like I said in my last post. If I don't, I'll never get caught up on here!

Onto the nails!

I tried out a new nail shape here as you may have noticed. I immediately took this off and cut my nails back to round nubs after taking these pictures :P. The claws suit many people but not me!

I started off with two coats of Essie Carry On. After that had dried, I went in with ILNP Phoenix (H) followed by a coat of top coat!

What do you guys think of these gorgeous toppers? I'm loving them!

Thanks so much for having a look everyone! I'll be back with a post a day for the foreseeable future! Happy Thursday! :)

Watercolour Easter Egg Nail Art for Nail Crazy in April!

 Hey everyone! Today I have some Easter egg inspired nails to share!

My last day of school was last Thursday so I've been relaxing, spending time with family and cleaning my room and my house. I think I'll start studying for finals today as I have four to write this month. They are nicely spread out which I'm very thankful for! I do this stupid thing where I worry about my exams because I haven't started studying for them, despite having lots of time. This means I can't fully relax because I'm constantly worrying about finals. So like most of my problems, there is an obvious and easy solution but I'm just too lazy to do it :P. However, now that my room is quite clean, I think I'll be able to start studying!

Anyways, onto the nails! Be ready for a ton of pictures!

For this look I started off with two coats of American Apparel T-shirt and a coat of top coat (Essie Good to Go). T-shirt is an okay white, it seems really great on the first coat but you have to do a thick second coat to avoid balding. The second coat doesn't seem to distribute evenly or self-level at first, but it does somewhat as it dries. And it's close enough to opaque at two coats for a design like this which is nice!

The other day I picked up six bottles of Wet N Wild Wild Shine Clear Nail Protector from Dollarama, with the intention of making six jelly polishes for nail art. For this look though, I decided to mix a tiny bit of a coloured polish with a bunch of Clear Nail Protector on a piece of paper to get a watercolour effect. I mixed and applied the sheer polishes with a medium-sized paintbrush.

I used all American Apparel polishes for the watercolour blobs including: The Valley (dusty robins egg blue, the lightest blue shown here), Mount Royal (navy blue, looks blurple here), African Violet (dark/medium purple), Berry (dark burgundy/berry), Sunshine State (yellow), Dance (pale orangey nude) and Rose Bowl (dusty orange-leaning pink).

Next, I decided to go in with some acetone on the same brush to spread the colours around and mix them together! It ended up making some white spots which I think looks cool!

To further blend the colours and to lighten up the look, I applied one coat of a sheer white polish (Essie Waltz).

After some cleanup and a coat of top coat (again, Essie Good to Go) I was finished! The same day I ended up doing this look on my mom and her best friend, except they wanted all of their nails to be blue and green so I used The Valley, Mount Royal and Malibu Green (a green-leaning teal, link to a post where I used it as a base for some brain/vine nail art here)!

Since it was Easter Sunday that I did these, my mom actually ended up ruining basically all of her nails getting the turkey dinner ready right at the end :P. But my mom's best friend's nails are still going strong and I can just do my mom's nails again!

What do you guys think of these nails? I might be doing this technique a bunch from now on so I'm really glad I didn't make the clear polishes into jelly polishes right away! I think it looks quite cool when all of the nails are the same colours so I'll have to try that soon!

Be sure to check out all of the other lovely ladies' Easter nails down below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Thanks so much for taking a look everyone! I hope you guys all had a chocolate-filled long weekend! Happy Tuesday! :)

Half Moon Nail Art Plus Little Hearts: a Re-creation of an Adorable So Nailicious Design!

Yo yo yo my lovely people! Today I have a recreation of a design that So Nailicious posted recently (link to her post here)!

I'm currently on a week long reading break from school which is really nice already! I just want to make sure I start my homework before Sunday since I have so much time to do it haha! I've been working on my lighting and white balance a lot lately and the next nails you see from me will be better colour-wise! I had to adjust these pictures so my skin didn't look so red and unnatural because I hadn't figured it out by the time I took these :P. I'm thinking my new soft box diffuses the light too much to the point that I might need brighter lamps, but I did end up getting better pictures of the next look I'll be posting here so I'm not really sure!

Anyways, onto the nails!

I started off with two coats of American Apparel Lopez Canyon. It was almost opaque at one coat and it probably could have been if I had have been more careful!

I then went in with two more American Apparel polishes, MacArthur Park and Berry, and a small paintbrush from Michaels (Artist Loft Vienna 18/0 Spotter). I let that dry for a while and then spritzed it with a coat of hairspray so my top coat wouldn't smudge the design. After that dried I applied a coat of top coat (Essie Good to Go) and I was done!

I really love how the little heart changes up a half moon mani so much!

What do you guys think of these nails or their inspiration? I'd love to hear in the comments!

Thanks so much for having a look everyone! On Thursday I'll be back with a swatch of the gorgeous piCture pOlish Fool's Gold! Happy Monday guys! :)

Above the Curve Valentine's Collection Swatches and Review: UPDATED!

Hey everyone! Today I have swatches of the Above the Curve Valentine's Collection to share!*

I'm just going to start off by saying these all had perfect formulas and consistencies (apart from a little glitter settling) so I don't have to repeat myself throughout this post! Another thing I really love about this collection is that Shawn and Angel (the makers) didn't include a pink (because I don't really like pink on myself and it's my least favourite colour). Purples, plums and browns are definitely more my thing! I loved each and every one of these and didn't want to take them off as I was swatching, but stay tuned to find out my favourite!

UPDATE: I found an easy way to white balance my pictures using GIMP (a free photo editing program) so most of these pictures are now white balanced (it made the Sun and flash pictures worse)!

First up is All You Need is Love! Wine, a lovely plum-coloured polish with holographic microglitter and a bunch of different sized and coloured glitters!

What you see here is two easy coats and a coat of topcoat! I probably got less glitter on my nails than I would have from a perfectly mixed bottle but I love the look of it this way! I think it's harder for glitters to redistribute in small bottles because of the brush and mixing balls in the way!

This is my favourite from this collection! I'd love to know your guys' favourites in the comments!

Here's a shot of this baby in the Sun! Check out all the holographic glitter! Are you guys as in love with this as I am?

Next up is Circle of Love, a clear-based glitter polish with metallic pink and holographic silver microglitter and a bunch of circle and heart-shaped glitters in different sizes, colours and finishes!

This is one thick and dabbed coat of Circle of Love over one coat of American Apparel Mount Royal! Now that there is a bit of product gone from the bottle I think it will be easier to redistribute the glitters when I use this again! Even still, I managed to get quite a bunch of glitter on my nails including some of the hearts!

I was very tempted to keep this one on but I think I have to go on a bit of a glitter strike. Even when I use the foil method and have three or so coats of polish under a glitter topper my nails end up peeling where the glitters were! Then I have to buff my nails smooth and I've been buffing them probably more than is good for them. It's really frustrating, I wonder if I should go on a Nail Envy break and use it as directed for a few weeks. Do you guys have any advice for me? Let me know!

Next up is You Java Me Crazy (love the name!), a warm brown holographic polish!

You know what I said earlier about my peeling nails? Even after buffing them you can see what I mean in these pictures! Since this polish was so opaque (I only used one coat and a coat of top coat) you can really see the places my nails are peeling. Anyway, my peeling nails aside haha, this polish is another lovely Above the Curve one-coater brown polish like Friday the 13th, so naturally I love it!

Unfortunately the Sun went down before swatching these last few polishes so a flash picture and a picture above my light box is the best I could do!

Lastly, we have Truly Madly Deeply, a metallic and holographic warm-toned purple polish! I am actually wearing this right now (as I often do with one polish per swatch fest) and it's definitely unlike anything I own which I love! I've been trying to get a picture of this in the Sun all day but it only came out once and I missed my chance! I hope it comes out again, if so I'll post the picture on my Instagram!

What you see here is two easy coats and a coat of top coat, it was very easy to work with like the rest of this collection!

You can't see the holo effect too well here, but you can see it's metallic aspect!

Thank you so much for reading everyone! What do you think of these polishes? I think you could wear them year-round and that they're gorgeous! Happy Friday everyone!

*These polishes were provided in exchange for my honest review.