Gaga For Green Swatches and Stamping

China Glaze Gaga for Green

Long time no talk! I've been away for a while and I totally meant to post the day I left, but you know how it goes. I got so busy with last minute packing that I didn't have the time to post. I'm back now and not going anywhere for a while so expect some make up posts! Today I have a colour that I really love and I tried some stamping over it too. 

One of my favourite nail designs is cherry blossoms even though I rarely do them. I tried today and was pretty satisfied with the results. I started with a base of China Glaze Gaga for Green from the Electropop collection. This shade is a fun and bright summer colour. It took two coats of this and application was smooth.

 I liked so many of the colours from this collection and this was one of my favourites. I really like how bright it is and I don't have many greens like it in my stash. It seems like a cheerful colour too, a great way to end my summer vacation. 

Gaga for Green with s9 Cherry Blossoms

I stamped using Konad special polish in Dark Purple and plate s9. I love how cute the cherry blossoms look and it's interesting how big the image is on the plate. I like using sections of branch to make my own patterns on each nail. It feels a little more creative than stamping a premade scene. Unfortunately I may have went too quick with the top coat and smudges a few branches or flowers. 

I like how it turned out but I think the colors turned out to look much different on the nail than they did in my mind. I would like to try this again using other polishes to stamp with and maybe a lighter base. The purple turns brown which is good. but the flowers shouldn't be brown. 

Misa Hot Pink Zebra Nails

Misa Party In the Masquerade with Zebra Stripes

Hello lovely readers! I hope you are all having an awesome week and hopefully have some fun plans for the weekend. I cannot believe summer is ending so soon! I still have so much left to do and so many manicures to try!

My nails are super short right now and it is driving me crazy! Since it's still summer I feel like dark vamp shades aren't appropriate, so I had to turn to my other fix for short nails. Neons. I recently discovered that although I hate my nails as nubbins, they don't look half as bad with a bright polish on.

I went with a screaming hot pink by Misa, called Party In The Masquerade. This is two coats of the colour and it is crazy bright. I really love neon nail polish since it is such a simple way to add such a pop of colour. It's exciting and young and fun, which always cheers me up on a bad nail day.

This Misa polish is really nice too; smooth application and great pigment. I don't have that many Misa polishes but the ones I do have are amazing. They all apply really nicely and actually seem to dry fairly quickly.

Party In The Masquerade with Zebra Stripes

Please excuse the flash in the photos. I tried so many times but it never really got out of my way. I'm sure you can get the idea of the manicure anyways. I just got a new camera and I haven't quite figured it out yet. I think the pictures are pretty clear though, so that is something good, but the flash is killer.

I added some freehand stripes using a Misa striper in black. The colour is called 30. Point Of No Return and its my go-to black striper. I'm not very artistic so these makeshift zebra stripes were all I could manage. I really want to work on my freehand and striper brush skills.

Anyways, a bright neon polish, in pink no less, and animal print make for a perfectly 'me' manicure. This was a quick pick me up mani and it definitely worked. I can totally forgive my short nails when they look this cute, and I hope you guys can too!

Thanks for reading!

Recent Post Roundup: Swatches, Mascara, & Stripes

CND Swatch

Here is a little roundup of some recent posts you may have missed. I haven't done this in a while so there were a lot of posts to pick from. I grabbed a few I thought you might be interested to check out in case you missed them. 

Abstract Striper Nail Art: This post has a swatch of an OPI Spiderman polish, as well as some freehand nail art done with stripers. 

The Ultimate Red Lipstick: This post talks about my three favourite lipsticks on the market! Check out the perfect red lipstick from Rimmel's Kate Moss collection. 

Striper Nail Art

CND Electric Orange and Emerald Shimmer: Check out a bright bold orange from CND along with a CND Effects polish for some added shimmer.

Maybelline Mega Plush Mascara Review: Here are my thoughts on a recently released Maybelline Mascara. 

Those are some recent posts you might have missed for now, see you soon with many more!

Thoughts This Week: Nail Length, Buying Polish, & Foundation Feelings

Good morning my dear readers! Today I have a new little segment that I wanted to test drive with you guys. Being a total girly-girl and beauty junkie, I am almost always thinking about something nail polish or makeup related. I read magazines and blogs everyday so there are always new ideas floating around for me to think about.

Since we can't meet up for a chat in a coffee shop, I wanted to see if you might want to talk about some beauty thoughts here once in a while with me. This post will be the guinea pig of this concept, so we'll see how this one goes and hopefully we can keep this little chat session coming back.

My first topic of thought is nail length. Personally I feel the best with medium to long nails, and whenever mine get short I get self conscious about them. They can be tricky to handle if they get too long, and shorter ones are less to worry about, but for some reason I feel like I need a little length to like my nails. So what do you guys think about nail lengths that suit you? I'd love the hear your opinions on this in the comments!

Another thing that has been on my mind lately is buying polish. I used to be so eager to get the latest colours, but by now I feel like I need to save for school and such. I feel so boring that I haven't bought a new nail polish in months. I still see all the swatches of upcoming collections and definitely drool over them, but I haven't bought anything recently. What about you guys, have you seen it all or do you still find polishes to purchase?

The last thought I wanted to share with you guys was about my feelings on foundation. I used to think it was an unnecessary extra step a few years ago, but within the last year I have fallen in love. The minute I put on foundation I feel like a brand new blank canvas. It is surprising to me that this is probably one of my favourite steps of my morning makeup routine when only a short while ago I thought it was useless. Now I love it, but what about you guys, do you need foundation, love it, or hate it?

At the very least this post allowed me to share my thoughts and get them out of my head. I would love to hear the various opinions you guys have so please join in and we can pretend we're sipping lattes together while we chat. I hope to learn a little more about each of you wonderful followers through this post too, so feel free to share your thoughts on the topics.

China Glaze Sea Spray Swatch

Hello everyone! Long time no talk! I have been a bit MIA lately because I was on a cottage girls getaway for a few days! We had an amazing time tubing and making s'mores and swimming. It was such a great time with my friends and even though we all were so sore from the intense tubing, we enjoyed every moment. We had great food too, and lots of fun photo opportunities outside. It was a wonderful time to relax but now its back to business.

Today I have a simple swatch to show you. Its a polish I really like to wear when I need a refreshing look. It isn't too pale that it looks boring, but it definitely is a far way from the typical dark or bold shades I usually sport. This is Sea Spray from the China Glaze Anchors Away collection. I liked a lot of the polishes from that release but this is the only one I own.

China Glaze Sea Spray

Its a nice shimmery blue with a hint of grey or silver to it. Kind of like a sparkly cloud or something. It makes a great base for designs too, so I may try to Konad over it later tonight. For now I like it alone since it is a nice breath of fresh air from the colours I have been wearing lately.

This applied really nicely and took only one coat to get great coverage. I love one coat colours! Such a great time saving thing, it makes manicures so simple. This one was a little too free flowing and did flood my cuticles, but with some clean up, or a steadier hand, it isn't really an issue.

So there you go, I'm back from my getaway and I'm looking forward to catching up on all the awesome beauty blogs on my reader. I also noticed that we've reached 61 followers which is awesome! I am planning to celebrate when we hit 100 so expect a little giveaway coming up. Hopefully that happens sooner rather than later!

Thanks for reading!

Maybelline Mega Plush Mascara Review

Before I bought this mascara I read many reviews on other beauty blogs and the overall consensus wasn't the best. Many reviewers said that it does not add any length or volume, just a colour to your lashes. With the new gel formula it made it harder to add length and volume, and I guess that is understandable. I wanted to try it for myself anyways, so I bought a tube and went to town with my lashes. I kept the warnings in mind but wanted to see how it worked...

Maybelline Mega Plush Volume Express Mascara

After a few days of testing and wearing this mascara I found my personal verdict - I love it!

I never thought I had long lashes to begin with, but if this doesn't add length and only coats what you have, then I must have something. I don't think the credit is all due to my lashes, I do believe this mascara adds something as well. Maybelline's Mega Plush Volume Express mascara worked really well on me. Everyone has different lashes and look for different aspects in a mascara, so I can only vouch for how well it worked on me.

Before Mascara

I do have to warn you about the wand. It is very flexible and every time I swiped up my lashes I feared it would fling back down and hit me in the eye. The first few times using this wand were very nerve wracking for me. I would much prefer a stiff, straight wand that I can control. This one wiggles a bit too much for my liking (and safety) so I am not a huge fan of that factor.

I liked the shape of the brush. It resembles a football - a little fatter in the middle but still fairly fat on the ends. The bristles were typical for most mascaras, nothing special but nothing weird. I found this easy to use and easy to coat all my lashes in a few strokes. Some skinny brushes make it hard to cover my lashes so I have to go over and over one spot. This one was a breeze, I brushed a few times and it was done. 

Wearing Mascara

For what I look for in lashes, this delivered it all. They were dark and long and did not clump together at all. I typically have medium to short length lashes and I feel like they are nothing special. I can't leave my house without mascara because I really feel like I have none on my own. As you can see in the before picture my lashes are pretty unimpressive. 

In the after picture though, I have long dark lashes! They don't have a ton of volume, which the name suggests, but they definitely have length. Since I had read the reviews beforehand I was not expecting volume, however if I had bought it without those warnings I probably would have been disappointed. If you know what you're getting with this then you'll be fine. Expect darker and longer lashes, but no added volume. 

Overall, although the wand scares me and it doesn't not meet the claim for volume, I do like this mascara. Simple to apply with a great big brush, and results of longer and darker lashes. It kind of looks like naturally awesome lashes which I was not blessed with, but with this mascara I can totally fake it. 

Abstract Striper Nail Art & Spiderman Swatch

OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls

Happy Friday everyone! Today I have some cute nails that I did and am pretty impressed with. I normally suck at anything freehand - I am not artistic at all! These nails aren't too complex but I did them on my own and didn't even smudge anything so I am pretty happy about that.

I used three Misa Stripers for my design, and I cannot imagine using any other brand now. These ones are so pigmented and apparently I can manage to work with them without messing up my nails so I like them a lot.

The colours I used were 01. Crazy For Banana (the yellow one of course), 11. Relax Don't Do It (the purple), and 12. Pink Heart (the pink).

As a base colour I used one from the OPI Spiderman set, called My Boyfriend Scales Walls. This polish is really cool since it is kind of white and kind of grey. It even has a hint of blue to it in some lights. It reminds me of clouds on a rainy day. I wore it on its own for a day before adding the colours to it this morning. The photo of it is two coats of the colour.

I started off adding pink stripes in a few directions, some straight and some on an angle. I was going to overlap my stripes but changed my mind last minute so they don't touch each other. I think I like this better than if they were to cross over since it allows the base colour to show through.

Abstract Striper Nail Art

I have realized in these photos the blue and grey tints to My Boyfriend Scales Walls is totally evident. Sometimes in real life it didn't show but in both of these images it definitely does. I like that this polish isn't stark white since I am not too sure I could pull that off. This softens it a tiny bit and adds a little extra interest.

Overall this is a pretty simple look but I really like it. Its easy and I don't need to have any artistic skills. I will definitely be doing something like this again with other colour combinations. I seem to be work well with striping brushes so I need to find some more nail art ideas that only require those.

So there you have it - my Friday fingertips! I am off to my cottage for a family fun weekend, and I hope all of you have some great plans as well!

Thanks for reading!

Bumblebee Stripes

For some reason I was totally feeling bumblebee colours today. I really don't know why and it wasn't because I saw one or anything like that, it just popped into my head and would not go away. I decided to try some striped nail art to get my quick fix of bumblebee for the morning.

Bumblebee Nail Art Stripes

I used a base of  a yellow polish by Hard Candy, called Splendid. This is a total dupe for Zoya Pippa, but for me this one takes two coats and Pippa takes three. Splendid is actually a perfect bumblebee yellow, its bright and bold and doesn't lean too light or too orange.

Although in the picture I am holding a bottle of Sinful Colors polish, it was not used in this post. I tried a photo with the yellow polish bottle and it was a little awkward, so I grabbed a darker polish to let the nails show up better. But just as a note; it was not used in this manicure.

To create my black stripes I actually used a nail art pen. I picked up my Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen in Black and went to work. Now I know they aren't the neatest stripes ever but they fit the bill for bumblebee nails. I have very bad control with precise nail art like this, which is why I stick to Konad or dotting tools. I really am nto naturally artistic in the least, so to even create these stripes is an accomplishment for me.

Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen

Note to self - I really need to look for my black Misa nail art striper since I am sure that would have worked better. This pen is so pointy, which is great for little designs and detail work. but it was hard to fill in a thick stripe with such a tiny pen tip. I did the best I could with my lack of artistic nature. 

Question for the comments - What is the best method you use to create stripes? I'd love to hear how everyone else does it so I can get some tips and get a better striping skill set. Leave a comment and let me know!

Thanks for reading!