Return to normal programming! (?) And some nails!

Hey guys! I was a little burned out for a while there with the full on blogging, and I was finding it easier to just do quick uploads to Tumblr and Beautylish instead of writing full blog posts here. I'm still not 100% sure if I am going to be bringing this blog back to full speed or if I will go with Tumblr only. Since my work hours have changed (making it harder to get daylight pictures with my camera) and I got an iPhone (which means I can at least snap decent pics at work when there's light and then upload them from my phone) it changed the dynamics of my posting. Typing out a whole blog post on an iPhone is not fun!

For now, here's some pics of what's been on my nails since the last time I updated. If you aren't following already, check me out on Tumblr! I'm also on Beautylish! :)

As you can see, I've been far from inactive as far as nails go! I can't definitively promise regular updating on here, so please come follow my Tumblr or my Beautylish page. :) See you around!

NOTD Mar 27/13 - nude, black and silver glitter

Just a really quick and simple one today! I saw this look in Pinterest and thought it was very classy and pretty, so I had to try it out! I also finally spruced up my toes today! Feels good to be all polished up!

Colours are Essence in Black is Back, LA Girl in Romantic, and LA Girl Glitter Addict in Explosion.

NOTD Mar 23/13 - nude and blue leopard

Sorry for the bit of a gap in updates! I recently got an iPhone and I've been playing around with Instagram (username is kayleighk88 if you want to follow :) ) so I've been a little distracted!

I haven't managed to get a "real" photo of these nails but the Instagram photo turned out pretty good so I thought I would also share here!

I used a couple coats of Barielle in Beaches & Dreams and then for the middle of the leopard spots I used Essie in Butler Please, which I recently picked up on sale! Looove this colour, going to be doing more with it ASAP! The black is acrylic paint.

It seems like pretty much everywhere in North America except here in BC is getting crazy blizzards lately!! It's actually been getting sunnier and nicer here, still a nice little hailstorm the other day though, and even snow about 30 minutes away from my work, where it was sunny. What up, global warming?! But even this little bit of sun is making me hopelessly excited for summer to hurry up and come... I can predict my manis will only be getting more and more summery!

NOTD March 17/13 - Happy St.Patrick's Day!

Happy St.Patrick's Day everyone! I worked today so I didn't get into any kinds of festivities, but I hope you're all having fun of some kind today!

I looove this mani.. I know I say that a lot, but it's OK to love a lot of things... and I really do love this. It's so simple but it has so much impact. I was an easy mani to do, even the clovers only used a dotting tool and took about 4 seconds each! I think too that this is a good format for other kinds of manis... ie: use red and pink glitter and do the white nail with a heart on it for Valentine's Day... you get the idea!

Anyways, here she is!

The white is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On, the gold I layered under the glitter is Sally Hansen CSM in Gilty Pleasure, and the green I layered under the glitter is Sinful Colors in Envy. The gold glitter is Milani Jewel FX in Gold, and the green glitter is LA Girl Glitter Addict in Purge.

NOTD Mar 15/13 - Minnie Mouse inspired (again!)

I realized this is the third time I have done a manicure inspired by Minnie Mouse! Somehow that little mouse is just so inspiring with her iconic red with white polka dots and black bow! My Minnie Mouse design on my Etsy shop has been my most popular design, accounting for about 30% of my sales!

I recently bought a new red polish from a dollar store line I've grown to love, called Tivoli. This red is no exception, it applied like an absolute DREAM. This was two easy coats! The shade is Tivoli in NP193, and then I used acrylic paint for the dots and the bows!

NOTD Mar 10/13 - stripes and negative space

Negative space has been a growing trend with nail art lately, and I really love the look of it. I also really needed to find more reasons to use my striping tape, but I always hesitate to use it because I have to let my bottom layer of nail polish dry for so long before it's safe to put the striping tape over it, and I don't usually have the time! So combining a striped look and negative space was the perfect solution!

I applied the striping tape over my bare nails, and then used a detail brush to paint in stripes of the various colours. The colour palette I picked was black, gold, turquoise and coral. I'm really happy with how this turned out, I think it looked awesome!

The colours I used were Essence in Black is Back, Barielle in Do Unto Others, Sally Hansen CSM in Gilty Pleasure, and Barielle Blossom. My right hand was skittles of these colours because I did eventually get tired of fussing with the striping tape!! :p

NOTD Mar 7/13 - chevrons and dots

I couldn't just leave the chevron look alone! It's a design I really like and I wanted to give it another shot. This time I mixed it up - I did smaller chevrons on the thumbnail and bigger ones on the fingers, and then on my right hand I went for dots instead in the same colour scheme.

Here's a side by side shot of both hands!

The orange is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed, and the blue is Essence Let's Get Lost. White is acrylic paint!

NOTD Mar 5/13 - round-studded ruffian with Cinderella

A while back I finally picked up the much hyped Sinful Colors Cinderella, but I hadn't found a chance to use it in a manicure yet! I finally sat down the other night and had no firm ideas for what to paint on my nails, but I knew I wanted to incorporate Cinderella finally!

I started with a coat of Nicole by OPI in "Baby" Blue as underwear, then painted on a coat of Sinful Colors in Cinderella. Then I looked all around my nail painting station (grandiose euphemism for the top of my Helmer drawers) for inspiration, and saw my flat round studs! Then the inspiration came easy - a ruffian made of the studs. A few minutes later I was in business and pretty darn pleased about how the spur of the moment mani turned out! I would definitely try this out again with other colours. I think it's a great way to showcase a nail polish that has a cool and unique colour or finish without covering it up with nail art, but still incorporating some "extra" details.

Unfortunately slightly cloudy photographing conditions didn't do an awesome job of showing the pink micro-flakies in this polish, but trust me, it looks even more awesome in real life!

NOTD Mar 4/13 - violet and colourful glitter

I just loved this new shade of polish so much I had to find a way to use it! It's another dollar store one, can't remember the exact price but it was somewhere in the $2 range, and it applies marvellously for such a cheap polish! Doesn't have that stinky chemical smell some cheaper polishes can have too which is even more of a bonus.

I kept it simple (for me) with a couple coats of the gorgeous violet and then a glitter gradient that was multicoloured.

The violet is Tivoli Color Shock in shade NP127 (have I mentioned how much I hate it when companies don't actually name their shades? Grrr!) and the glitter is NYX Advanced Salon Formula Nail Polish in Multi Glitter. At least it has a name, but no points for creativity there.

NOTD Feb 25/13 - lavender and chevrons

I finally made my first foray into chevrons! I like the design a lot and although I'm not 100% happy with this mani, I know what I want to do differently next time to make it better.

My only issue with this mani is that I think the chevron stripes are too thick - next time I'll make them thinner. Other than that though, I like it! It's easier than I thought it would be to do - probably largely due to the fact that I used acrylic paint instead of nail polish!

Lavender is Revlon Top Speed in Lily, and the white is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On. Black is acrylic paint!

NOTD Feb 23/13 - 80's abstract!

This was actually from last week but I've been slow in getting stuff done, had a busy week!

My boyfriend really loved this design which was funny, he is supportive but he doesn't normally notice my nails all that much!

I based this off a design I saw on Pinterest, but I'm not sure where it originally came from. I just switched up the colours. This looks pretty 80's to me and I like it! Very easy to do and looks so fun!

The green is Essence in L.O.L. and the blue is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Blue Me Away.

NOTD Feb 7/13 - navy and mini hearts

This background colour would not photograph properly and it was so frustrating! It looks black but it is a deep navy! It reminds me of something you would see at American Eagle Outfitters, a pattern on a shirt or something. It's cute for Valentine's Day but it would work any time of the year, and in lots of colour combos! Here is a great swatch by the Polish-A-Holic which shows how the colour REALLY looks!

Background is Barielle in Berry Blue, hearts are Wet n' Wild Wild Shine in Red Red and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On.

NOTD Feb 2/13 - simple Valentine's glitter fade

Sometimes simple manis happen because that's what you're in the mood for, and sometimes they happen because you have somewhere to be but then you realize your manicure is looking totally busted and it's time for a new one. And time is short, so you do the quickest thing you can think of! This manicure is the latter! But even if it was rushed, I still really like it. I love the contrast of the really sheer, soft pink and the bright red glitter - I don't think this would look as cool with an opaque pink polish.

The pink is Essence in Sweet as Candy, and the red glitter is LA Girl Glitter Addict in Animate.

NOTD January 30/13 - valentine's day dotticure

The first of my Valentine's Day manicures is here! I really love this one, it started out with one idea (the dotted heart design) but then grew when I decided I didn't want to do that design on each nail. So I went for the cuticle dot gradient with a contrasting colour on the ring finger. Love this so much!

NOTD Jan 27/13 - matte grey, simple and classy

On Pinterest this week I saw a photo of a very simply mattified grey manicure, and I was totally inspired - grey isn't a colour I use a lot. But being me, I couldn't do just matte grey. I wanted to keep it fairly simple and classy looking though, so I toyed around with some different ideas and settled on grey with white polka dots and an accent nail of silver glitter, all mattified.

I love how these turned out!!! They're simple but still different, totally classy but cute vibe to them. This would be cute in any colour combination but I'm loving the grey/silver/white look.

Colours I used were Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Wet Cement and White On, and LA Girl Glitter Addict in Explosion. Top coat is GOSH Matt Effect.

Also, I think my indoor photo taking is a bit better this time. I messed around with the lighting in an editing program a bit and I think it worked nicely!

NOTD Jan 25/13 - funky abstract

This idea was sort of floating in my head for months, but I never got around to doing it. The idea for the pattern on my thumb and ring finger popped into my head and I thought it would look pretty cool, and when I finally decided to make it happen, the perfect colours jumped out at me too!

Now that I look at the pattern in reality, it really kind of reminds me of tire tracks, especially when I was first drawing it on and started it in the middle of my nails. The black rhinestones I added on as a last minute addition to make it a little more balanced and add a bit of pizazz to the plain nails.

The green is an awesome shade I recently picked up, Essence in L.O.L., such a gorgeous chartreuse shade, LOVE! The lavender is Revlon Top Speed in Lily, and the peach is Illamasqua Purity. I painted the designs with black acrylic paint, and the black rhinestones are from Born Pretty Store!

NOTD Jan 21/12 - mint and magenta with studs

This was a manicure that started out totally different and then needed to be resuscitated because it failed SO BAD!

Remember that Aruba Coconut manicure I did the other day? I wanted to carry on the Bath & Body Works Escape Collection theme, so I started the mani with several magenta nails, and then on the middle nails I was going to do a design based on the packaging of another bottle from that collection. But they looked SOOOOOOO bad. Like laughably bad guys. Epic fail bad.

So I wiped off the polish from those two nails and quickly did something simple so I wouldn't spend another eon doing my nails!

Also, forgive my subpar indoor lighting photo-taking skills. My new job is a full time 9-5 type deal, so there are not going to be many opportunities for me to take manicure photos in daylight unless I start bringing my camera to the office and taking photos out the back during my lunch. Which is an idea, come to think of it...

Both of these were polishes I bought yesterday, and both Revlon. The pink is Revlon Top Speed Bubble, and I LOVE it. The formula on this polish is amazeballs. So smooth and gorgeous, perfect in two coats. The colour is straight up BARBIE. <3 <3 <3 I don't usually go this googoo for pinks but what can I say... the mint is a repurchase, it was on clearance at the drugstore, Revlon Minted. Studs are from Bornprettystore.com!

NOTD Jan 19/13 - inspired by Madeline Poole

I saw this gorgeous mani on Tumblr, and something about the simple design and the yummy colours just caught my eye! I had to recreate it!

I tweaked the design a bit for myself, instead of the rhinestones I did a single gold pyramid stud on each nail. Love how this turned out, couldn't stop staring at my hands last night. :)

 The yellow is NYX Salon Polish in Pastel Yellow and I painted the triangles on with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mint Sorbet.

NOTD Jan 17/13 - Mr.Bubble gradient ruffian

Sometimes you just sit down to paint your nails with no real idea what you're going to do. You just look at your polishes til something jumps out at you and then you go with it.

When I did these nails, Lush Lacquer's Mr.Bubble screamed out at me for some more love - it's such an awesome polish but I've only worn it once. I decided to layer it over white polish (which I'm realizing is my manicure base colour of choice) in a cuticle gradient. But once I did it it just didn't seem like quite enough. There didn't seem to be enough of a fade from cuticle to tips, so it looked like I just painted half my nails with glitter. Not the effect I wanted. So to give the cuticle area more impact I painted on a stripe of Essence Ultimate Pink and turned it into a ruffian.

It was only after I'd finished that I had the thought that someone seeing my hands from a distance might think I had some horrible cuticle infection because of the bright pink colour! LOL But I had lots of compliments at work so I guess that wasn't the first thing people thought when they saw them!

I think these turned out pretty cool and unique looking, I don't think I've ever really seen a manicure like this one!

NOTD Jan 11/13 - Aruba Coconut tropical leaves

As many of you may know, I work at Bath & Body Works (although not for much longer!). This week we've begun receiving product for spring/summer, including the new 2013 repackages of the tropical themed Signature Collection products like Aruba Coconut, Bali Mango and Rio Rumberry.

You can already check them out on the website, although they won't be available in stores until after the weekend, but oh my goodness, the packaging is GORGEOUS. I knew I had to do some manicures inspired by them!

I started with Aruba Coconut. This mani is one of those ones I love the most when I see it from a bit of a distance, but when I look at it up close I get really nitpicky about the shapes of the leaves! Next time I try a design like this I'll probably use the sandwich bag method because it was hard to freehand the leaves on my own nails. But overall I really like this mani and the colours especially!

Background colour is a polish I picked up at the dollar store, and I am very impressed by it! I'll be back to grab more shades. It's Tivoli Color Shock NP153 (no real name :( I hate that!). Then the leaves are Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mellow Yellow and Green With Envy, LA Girl Disco Brites in Turntable, Essence Walk on Air, and one bit of the leaves is a mixture of the two previous shades.