Lilac Nails Inspired by MrCandiipants Featuring piCture pOlish Swagger & Hex Nail Jewelry!

Hello hello my lovelies! Today I have my first proper blog post in a long time to share, inspired by a MrCandiipants design!

I am still so happy to be done with school and finals, it's great to not have to worry about! Anyways, onto the nails!

I started with two coats of piCture pOlish Swagger. The formula was amazing and it was almost opaque at one coat! For the leaves I used OPI Green-wich Village and that mixed with some Revlon Spanish Moss, and for the flowers I used OPI Hello Hawaii Ya?, Essie Play Date and Essie Warm & Toasty Turtleneck.

I left one nail lilac-less on each hand to add some Hex Nail Jewelry charms. I just apply them with a bit of top coat, double top coat them and they stay right on (I wore this look for six days with no problems)!

So what do you guys think of this look? I don't love it because I didn't execute it very well. I'd like to try a look more like the MrCandiipants one, basically with better leaves/greenery!

Thanks so much for taking a look guys! I just took this look off so I have no idea what I'll be back with! Happy Saturday! :)

Leaf Nail Art Guest Post At Polish Those Nails!

Hey everyone!

I was asked to do a guest post by the lovely Marisa of Polish Those Nails and a few days ago it went live! Check out the post here for more information and pictures of this look!

Happy Sunday guys! :)

Simple Leaf Nail Art Inspired by Jaunty Juli & Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Top Coat Review!

Hello my lovelies! Today I have some simple leaf nail art to share as well as a top coat review!

I'm sorry I've been posting so sporadically guys, I'm really going to try and get into some routine with my blog even if it means just one post a week! I am very overwhelmed and unmotivated at school lately and I think that lack of motivation has carried over into my nail life. I haven't even put away and reorganized my nail polish all semester and that's something I do often and love to do! Would you guys be interested in seeing an updated collection post when I finally get organized? I'd love to know!

So about three weeks ago in this post I mentioned that I ran out of my absolute favourite top coat (Essie Good to Go) and so did London Drugs, and instead I picked up a bottle of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Top Coat. I went from loving it, to thinking it was okay to hating it in the last three weeks. As you can see from these pictures, my nails are bubble and bumpy city! The bumpiness is the first thing I noticed about this top coat; it doesn't even smooth out a layer of polish as thin as a stamped image! That is why I thought this polish was alright for a little while. Now I've discovered it either doesn't play well with certain polishes or needs the polish under it to be completely dry (which is exactly not the idea for fast-drying top coats) for it to not bubble up like crazy. Either way, my Essie Good to Go has none of those problems so I've already picked up a new bottle! I do like that this top coat smells kind of like vinegar (yum!) and dries quite shiny and pretty quickly though! However, I am also finding that I get tip wear quite a bit faster with this top coat. Usually in one day or less in as opposed to four or more days in with my Essie one.

Now, onto the nail art! These were inspired by these nails by the lovely JauntyJuli! I started off with a base of two thin coats of Revlon Espresso and a coat of top coat. I wore that alone for a day (complete with a ton of bubbles from the top coat). The next day I went in with American Apparel Mac Arthur Park (green), OPI Did Somebody Say Party? (orange) and Essie San Tropez (nude) on either my Winstonia Kolinsky #0000 or #000 Brush (I used both for different leaves).

I allowed my nails a lot of time to dry, and then I decided I wanted to add some gold leaf top coat to the empty spaces. I used Jessica 18K Gold Leaf Top Coat for this, but it doesn't have a lot of flakes per volume of top coat so it was a struggle. I then waited a while longer and applied a coat of top coat. The lack of gold flakes per clear base also caused those areas to stick out very badly because as I said above, this top coat does not level anything out at all.

Here is my camera-shy right hand! This is seriously the only pose it can do so I'm just going with it haha.

I think I would have liked these nails a lot better if they didn't look so bad in macro pictures! What do you guys think of these nails or this top coat? Do you use it and love it and is it just me having problems?

Thanks so much for taking a look everyone! I've ordered a bunch of Hex Nail Jewelry charms so I'll probably have a post up on some pretty soon! Happy Tuesday! =)

B Squared Lacquer All Aboard Swatch & Review plus a Mrcandiipants Fern Design!

Hey everyone! Today I have a lovely teal scattered holographic polish and some fern/leaf nail art to share!

The end of the semester is really sneaking up on me so I think on the nights I don't have homework (like tonight) I really have to get my butt in gear and work on all of my genetics write-ups! I'm feeling very excited for the semester to end because school has been really overwhelming lately. Anyways, let's get on to the lovely polish to take my mind off things!

B Squared Lacquer All Aboard is a turquoise blue/light tealish blue crelly polish with a scattered holographic effect. This is polish is one of my favourite colours so I absolutely love the look of it! There is also a perfect amount of holo pigment that it doesn't look super silver indoors, meaning it looks awesome inside or outside!

The formula on this polish was an absolute breeze to work with, slightly thick allowing for lots of control and no cuticle-flooding! It appeared to not self level right after I applied it, but rest assured it does while it dries! This polish really impressed me and I'm really excited to try the other polishes I received in the same giveaway!

You can see how this polish self-leveled perfectly here because I didn't use any top coat for these photos! What you see here is three easy coats and no top coat. This polish also dried really fast and it's 3-free! Love it!

I also included some pictures in natural light with the flash on to show off the holographic sparkle! You can also see how freaking shiny this polish dries on its own here! This baby is just too pretty guys.

And now we have the nail art! I used an Orly Instant Artist striper polish in the colour Sky Blue for the ferns! This nail art is a MrCandiipants original design and you can watch her Youtube tutorial for these here! The striper uses water-based paint (which I assume means acrylic paint) so it doesn't dry up on the brush or anything lame like that. It was super easy to work with and I love the colour of it next to All Aboard!

After the nail art dried I applied one quick coat of the only top coat I ever use, Essie Good to Go! This mani looks super awesome (to me at least) and it hardly took any time at all! It reminds me of tacky tourist shirts so naturally I love it!

What do you guys think of All Aboard or this nail art? I'd love to hear in the comments!

Thank you so much for reading everyone! I've finally caught up in posting so I can't tell you what I'll be posting next because I have no idea! Anyways, happy Thursday and I'll talk to you soon! =)