Candy- Cadbury Bubbly

I was originally thinking of candy hearts for the theme since it's still February. But an idea came to me while I was unable to sleep one night. I came out to my desk and saw a bar of Cadbury mint Bubbly that my husband gave me for Valentine's Day. I decided it would be perfect!

I did the Cadbury logo on my left hand. I was so excited because I thought that I would get to use one of my many purples that I have that are similar that I don't use that often. Then I got them out and realised that no. Once again I don't seem to have the correct colour purple, which seems to always happen. I wanted to use a shimmery purple, but they were all too much on the red side of purple. Instead I used Desire from Formula X, which is a cream. The lettering is done with Gold Fusion from China Glaze magnetix.

I decided to go with the actual chocolate bar for my right hand. I started with using Mint Tint from Sally Hansen. What a perfect name! I tried to do a blobbicure with some top coat, but that didn't work all that well. I ended up just poking holes in it with a dotting tool and then putting a top coat on and repeating. I'm actually pretty happy with the bubbles since they started off so poorly. I then added a chocolate french tip with A-piers to be Tan from OPI.

An InLinkz Link-up

Holo

I don't have many polishes with holo glitters in them, so my choices were only two. I chose the blue one because I used the black the other day on my reversed polarities manicure. I wasn't sure what sort of nail art to do at first, but then I figured that silver went well with the blue. It's a simple one, but I want to keep practicing doing a French tip.

The polishes were Brilliant Blue by L.A. Girl and Metallica by Wet 'n' Wild.

An InLinkz Link-up

Christmas Presents

The night before I painted these nails I had the great idea to use nail art tape and make it into a bow. I am most definitely being sarcastic when I say great because it was so HARD! But I was rather determined and I ended up making a few bows that I was happy with. I only needed one, though because I decided to have the present be my accent nail. (And I painted my other hand with another theme so I had time to do all the prompts)

I decided to do my other nails with French tips, but instead of white I wanted Christmas colours.

The neutral is Canberra't without You by OPI, the red is Scarlet by Ulta 3, and the green is Envious by Kmart. I also used Snow Me White by Sinful Colors under the red for the present to make the colour more vibrant.

An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

Christmas Tree

Through my surfing of nail art on the internet, I found some nail art with strings of Christmas lights. I thought they were beautiful and fun, so I added them with a french twist on my fingers with the actual Christmas tree as an accent nail.

I knew exactly what polish I wanted to do for my Christmas tree. It's one that I think is beautiful, but I haven't had a chance to wear it since last Christmas! It's called Winter Holly by China Glaze. It's a green microglitter with flecks of other Christmas colours of glitter. It's perfect for a tree. I added the two pictures to try and show the dimension to the glitter, but they don't really do it justice.

I painted the tree by doing a tape manicure. I first painted the tree shape with Metallica by Wet n Wild and then I added small tape strips. For the tree, I first painted with a coat of Con-fused? by China Glaze magnetix and then a coat of Winter Holly because that has a clear base and I wanted the tree to be fully coloured.

I used Coach Ella by Fresh Paint for the base colour of my nails and Snow Me White by Sinful Colours for the French tips. The string of lights was Blackest Black by Designer Brands. The lights were Shark Attack by Sephora, Envious by Kmart, Bananarama by Kmart, and Scarlet by Ulta3.

An InLinkz Link-up

French inspired gradient

I finally had a job interview! I normally have some very outlandish nails, so I decided to go with something more subtle and work-appropriate manicure. I was thinking trying my hand *ba dum tiss* at another French manicure, but I decided to go with a gradient. Ever since I realised how easy they are, I want to do them all the time! I love them! I still stuck with a French manicure theme, but with a twist.

For good luck, and because it's my favourite neutral, I went with Canberra't Without You by OPI, my wedding nail polish, for the neutral and Snow Me White by Sinful Colors for the white. I used Top Coat plus from Nicole by OPI for my top coat to smooth it all out.

I was really happy with how they turned out, although I'm glad that I've changed up my hand position so that you can't see my thumbs. For some reason I managed to mess up my thumbs on both hands! At least the core four look nice!

Funky French

This manicure is actually for the 14th as part of the OMD2, but as I have said earlier is a former post, I am going to be posting them when I do them and out of order because I will be busy for three weeks in July because I am getting married on the 19th. I will probably reorder them once we get back from our honeymoon.

I started with a white base colour, which I was not happy with how it turned out, which you can read about in the post linked above. I did, however, like the design of my nails. I decided to do a mustache for my funky French manicure. I used a dotting tool to make the mustaches. First I made the dots in the middle and then I lightly moved my dotting tool away to make the shape of the moustache. The larger one on my thumb was made differently and I used a bunch of dots that overlapped to get the shape that I wanted.

I left in the picture of them not cleaned up because as you can see they didn't clean up well and I ended up getting a big gouge in the one on my index finger as well as some blurring on that same finger and my thumb. I was not happy with the white nail polish.

An InLinkz Link-up

They smell as good as they look!

I leave for Australia, where it will be winter, in just over a week, so I wanted to do my idea for a watermelon mani before I leave. A few weeks ago, my mom and I bought some nail polishes from Revlon's Parfumerie collection. They are scented after they dry. One of the nail polishes that we got is called Ginger Melon. It's a beautiful coralish pink, perfect for a watermelon. I looked at some watermelon manis on pinterest for some inspiration and decided to go with a French manicure design.

First I painted my nails all the Ginger Melon. I did this before I went out to the park with my parents and we actually saw some peonies that were the same colour! We walked through the peony garden and along the river and I could not stop smelling my nails. I love this scent!

When I got home, I had to add the white part of the watermelon. I decided to sponge paint the white on my nails to make it look more like the natural variation in colour of the white part of a watermelon.

The next step was to do green. I used my Con-Fused? from the China Glaze Magnetix collection.

The green part needed some striping, so I used Low Tide by Spa Ritual. I tried doing some lines with a bright green on my right hand, but this colour looked much better.

Finally I added some black seeds with the old black that is in my collection and cleaned up my nails a bit. I love how they turned out and even smell like watermelon. They're so perfect!

Diamonds are a girl's best friend!

This week's theme for NAILS is Diamonds because the diamond is the birthstone of April. Yesterday, I decided to do my take on something that I've seen online that woman have done for their wedding nails. I decided to make a diamond ring on my ring finger nail.

I started by painting my nails with Cozu-melted in the Sun by OPI. After two coats, you could still see the nail line. I hate VNL, so I decided to try to do a French manicure. I always get a French when I get my nails professionally done, but this was the first time that I had done them myself.

I had seen online that there are a few tricks to getting perfect tips for French manicures at home. The two most common ones that I've seen are using the round edge of a bandaid and using reinforcement labels. I found some in the study room in our house, so I went with those since we don't have as many spare bandaids.

I put them on my nails and then painted the white tips, trying to be careful not to get any white in the hole!

When I took the labels off, I wasn't too happy with my nails. The labels were too small for my fingernails, so the edge ended up being thicker than the tip, as you might be able to see with the thumb since the gap is more visible. I ended up doing some touch-up free-hand. I didn't even both with the labels on my right hand and I think they turned out better.

Then I added a stripe of silver on my ring finger nail and put on a bejeweled jewel thing, that I found down in my mom's sewing room from probably 30 years ago, to be the diamond.

By no means were they perfect and I had to touch up the white more than a few times, but overall I'm pretty happy with how my first French manicure attempt worked out. I definitely learned some things, like it's better to just try to do the tips free-hand, but hey! Life's about learning!

 These are my cleaned-up nails today.