Christmas Gifts Manicure

Finally, a current manicure!  The tree is up, the Christmas music is on the radios, the malls are operating on extended hours starting today, and therefore the Christmas manicures must begin!  This manicure is for the Nail Polish Canada nail art contest, and the theme for this week is gifts! Last week's was Snow, but I didn't hear about the contest in enough time to enter, so I decided that I would do this week's theme for sure!

The colours I used were:

Thumb: OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons with China Glaze Ruby Pumps, Barry M Spring Green and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls for the wrapping paper holly pattern, and a Misa silver striping polish for the bow.

Index finger: Cult Nails Coveted with OPI Goldeneye for the bow.

Middle finger: W7 Purple Paradise with A England Excalibur for the bow.

Ring Finger: OPI You Don't Know Jacques, with the wrapping paper pattern being the Misa silver striping polish again with Barry M Gold Foil, and OPI Live and Let Die for the bow.

Pinky: China Glaze Hey Sailor with MAC Everything That Glitters for the bow.

Although I do love my thumb, I think my favourite combination is the green and gold. I used tape to get the bows straight as I had originally attempted to free hand them, which absolutely did not go right. I will definitely have to do an entire holly manicure as it's kind of a running joke in my family that the only thing that I can draw that looks like it's supposed to is holly! I was glad to know this skill also transferred to nail polish designs :-)

If you'd be so kind as to vote for me, you can do so and check out all of the other amazing contributors here. I don't have any illusions of winning with all of the awesome competitors that I'm up against, but for me the point was more about having fun.  As this is the first Christmas where I've been really into nail art, it's also a fun excuse to try out some different designs.  This will be the first of many!! 

25th Birthday Manicure

This is the manicure that I did for my 25th birthday, and I absolutely loved it and was sad to see it come off! I don't remember all of the colours, but I do remember that the pinky is A England Perceval with Cult Nails Nevermore over top and striping tape, the ring finger is China Glaze Ruby Pumps, the gold on the middle finger was OPI Goldeneye, the blue base colour of the pointer finger is Cult Nails Living Water and the gold flake top coat on the thumb is OPI Man with the Golden Gun.  Red is one of my favourite colours, especially on nails, and so I couldn't resist making the colour the base of my birthday manicure.

Halloween Nails

Okay, now on to my Halloween manicures! I had so much fun with all of the different Halloween designs that I could come up with! My first one was meant to be a Candy Corn gradient, but I didn't even realize until after I had this on my nails for two days or so that I had put the colours in the wrong order! Oh well, I still liked the manicure! :-)

 The next one I just called Halloween dots. I believe I just put down a black coat, then a coat of sparkles before doing the purple, green and orange dots with a dotting tool. I really liked this one as well as I didn't find that it screamed Halloween, yet was still festive.

Next is my Jack O' Lantern face manicure. I thought this was super cute, even if it does look a little juvenile.  I did it all free hand and was very happy with the result.

The next one I call Halloween frills. It's a nude base colour with a dollop of Lush Lacquer Hey Jack at the base of my nail. I then did overlapping lines of dots in black, orange and purple to cover the edge of Hey Jack. The picture below this one is of my right hand where I just wore Hey Jack on it's own over a nude colour because I couldn't do the frills with my left hand. 

For this picture, I used the OPI So So Skullicious mini halloween set. I loved these colours! The skull on the thumb is one of the decals that came with the set. It was also my first foray with striping tape. It was very fiddly, but I thought the end result was pretty good for a first attempt.  It's supposed to be spider webs, hence the spider on my pinky.

This is a collage of the Halloween manicures that I had taken pictures of with Instagram and made with InstaCollage.  If you haven't tried those apps yet, you absolutely should, they're super fun! 

The middle one on the right hand side is another gradient with a stamped pumpkin that I did, but for some reason I can't find those pictures!  Oh well, at least I have a snippet of it! :-)

Essie Fall Collection and W7

For this manicure I used the Essie Fall Stylenomics mini set which came with a mini bottle of Don't Sweater It, Head Mistress, Recessionista and Stylenomics, all of which can be seen on my accent nail. This was also my first experiment with tape. I used blue painter's tape, and learned that top coat in between layers is of the upmost importance. On the thumb is my first and only W7 polish called Purple Paradise, which I absolutely love! I don't know that it's available anywhere in Canada, but I ordered it from Nail Polish Direct which ships from the UK.  The shipping cost was more than reasonable but they're UK prices so make sure to take the exchange rate into account. 

I really liked this manicure, it's so pretty for the Fall and yet still bright. I've always liked Essie and this Fall collection is no exception.

Lush Lacquer Afterall It's Fall

This is my first post of many about indie brand Lush Lacquer, I have absolutely fallen in love with this brand and basically all of their polishes. They were the first indie brand that I tried and I have had nothing but good experiences with them. This is Afterall It's Fall over top of OPI Wooden Shoe Like to Know. It's the perfect colour for fall, and yet it's still sparkly and therefore can cheer up basically any colour. It has all of the colours of the leaves in the fall when they're just beginning to change.  You can see the colours more prominently in the bottom photo as I used a flash.

Lush Lacquer can be found on Etsy here, and also on Harlow & Co. and Llarowe.  Be sure to check out their holiday polishes!

Long Awaited Galaxy Nails

Well that was a much longer break than I had originally anticipated! Oh well, stuff happens! Just incase you've been wondering for months now what my out of this world comment meant, here is the answer! It's Galaxy nail time!! Wooo!! I did these months ago and I absolutely loved them! I first saw the idea of doing a different colour "galaxy" on each nail on Very Emily here. She is an amazing blogger and not only does she have lots of nail art, but she has tons of makeup reviews as well. Without further ado, here are my galaxy nails!

This is my left hand where I attempted to do small stars in silver, but it didn't turn out quite as I had hoped. I left the stars off of my right hand, the pictures of which are below.

You can tell from the light which of the pictures were taken outside in the sun and which were indoor photos. The picture below contains all of the colours that I used, obviously I used a few on each nail. 

If I hadn't done it myself I wouldn't have been able to tell that I had used all of those colours.  Even looking at the pictures now I have a hard time believing it.