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 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 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 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 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 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.

NOTD Dec 25/12 - Snowman!

The last Christmas manicure of the year! Always sad, there are so many cute Christmas manis to do but such a limited time to do them! This was inspired by a mani I saw at Polish Etc. I added glitter on top of the white to make it look like glittering snow!

Merry Christmas everyone!

NOTD Dec 24/12 - icy winter blues gradient

Just a simple winter blues gradient! It has a tiny blue flakies topcoat over it to make it look extra icy cold! I love how it turned out. :)

 Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On, with Nicole by OPI "Baby" Blue sponged on and Revlon Scented Polish in Colada Fizz on top!

NOTD Dec 13/12 - Christmas presents

This is one of my favourite Christmas manis so far! Presents had been in my mind for a while but I wasn't sure how I wanted to execute them so I kept putting them off. I finally figured out how I was going to do it, and alternated several holiday appropriate colours and glitters. They are so cute!

The colours I used were Sinful Colors Envy, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On, Sally Hansen CSM in Gilty Pleasure, Nicole by OPI Positive Energy, Essence Glamorous Life, and various striper polishes and glitters. Honestly, too many to list!

NOTD Dec 12/12 - Viridian snowflakes

I love snowflakes for a holiday nail design (if you hadn't already noticed) but I wanted something with a slightly less traditional colour this time.

I chose Illamasqua's Viridian, a gorgeous shimmery deep blue-green shade! See a swatch of it alone here. Then I added white snowflakes with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On, and topped it with a holographic silver shimmer (NYX Advanced Salon Formula in Disco Inferno). Simple but pretty!

NOTD Dec 6/12 - snowflakes and dots

Another cute snowflake design! I know everybody does them but there are so many options for snowflake nail art and I think they're so adorable. This one features some cute contrasting dots in Christmassy colours. I did my right hand with just dots since drawing snowflakes with my left hand felt a little too daunting this time around. Usually my right hand is identical to my left hand, but I give myself a break now and then!

The background is good old Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On, the blue is an Art Club striper I got in a set, the red is Wet n' Wild Wild Shine in Red Red and the green is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Green With Envy.

Guest post at Ruby's Nails!

Hey guys! Go check out my guest post over at Ruby's Nails, featuring this mani! :)

NOTD Nov 20/12 - peppermint swirl

Do you ever kind of look up, look around, and go, "Holy Crap! It's late November? Wasn't it just summer like, last week?" I don't just mean weather wise... I mean it was pretty mild through most of September and even October... but I feel like this fall so far has gone by extremely quickly and all of a sudden, BAM, it's almost the end of the year! Crazy!

Anyways, continuing with the spirit of the approaching Christmas (and assorted other holidays) season I have another festive manicure! This one is inspired by peppermint candies!

This may look upon first glance like a water marble, but in fact since I totally refuse to subject myself to the what seems to be torturous process of water marbling, I took a different route with this. I painted my nails first with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On, and then took a miscellaneous red striper polish and painted on curved diagonal lines that tapered at one end.

I did each nail one at a time so the polish wouldn't dry before I got back to it, and took a needle and dragged in through the lines, going first one direction and then the next time in the other. Then I topped each nail with NYX Advanced Salon Formula in Disco Inferno for a bit of glittery fun! I loved these and they seemed to be real eye catchers, I got lots of compliments on them!

NOTD Nov 10/12 - Lest We Forget

I wanted to do something appropriate for that important day that comes before Christmas season truly begins - Remembrance Day. Poppies are the symbol of that day, and so I thought it would be perfect to do a poppy design on my nails. I actually see them more than I would see the poppy pinned to my chest, so the reminder of what to be so thankful for seems more ever-present.

 I did a design of poppies and buds as well, I really love how this design turned out overall and I'm pretty proud of it!

The background is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On, the black is SH Xtreme Wear in Black Out, and the red is Wet n' Wild Wild Shine in Red Red.

NOTD Oct 30/12 - black and red glitter gradient

Just a quick one today! I wore these nails to pair with my Halloween costume this past weekend, which was a black devil costume - just a simple horns headband and a tail and I wore all black. Cute and simple and these nails gave it a little bit of colour! Not the best picture but it was cloudy and early and I was in a rush!

I used a few colours in this - basic black obviously, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Black Out. Then for the reds I used Illamasqua Scarab, Revlon Cherry Crush, and LA Girl Glitter Addict in Animate.

NOTD Oct 18/12 - pumpkin tips

More Halloween manicure goodness! I really loved CutePolish's apple manicure which I recreated last month, and it got a great response. Not surprising because it's such an adorable design!

I was brainstorming for Halloween mani ideas, and it occured to me how perfect that manicure was for adapting to Halloween! Instead of apples, I drew pumpkins! The ones on my ring fingers have made it to the jack o' lantern phase, but the rest are just plain and simple gourds. :)

I love how these look, they're so cute and perfect for the season! Hope you enjoy them too!

For the pumpkins I used Cherimoya Mango and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sunkissed, and for the highlights I mixed a bit of white in with Mango. Then I drew the stems with Revlon Chocolate Truffle and the vines with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Green With Envy, and black for the jack o' lantern details!